Latest / Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast) / What it really takes to get your beauty brand stocked in Sephora, with Alpyn Beauty’s Founder Kendra Kolb Butler

Transcript

What it really takes to get your beauty brand stocked in Sephora, with Alpyn Beauty’s Founder Kendra Kolb Butler · Imagine If with Doone Roisin | Health, Wealth & Wisdom for Women (formerly Female Startup Club Podcast)

• 0:00
  This is Kendra Cole Butler for Female Startup Club. Hey everyone, it's Dune here, your host and hype girl. Today I'm joined by Kendra Cole Butler, the founder of Alpen Beauty.
• 0:21
  Alpen Beauty is the first and only skincare line to sustainably harvest wild-crafted ingredients straight from the mountains of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. The plants they harvest are some of the hardest-working and most resilient botanicals that are conditioned to survive in an unforgiving climate, which is high altitude, low humidity, little oxygen, intense sun, harsh wind, and heavy snowfall.
• 0:46
  When applied to skin, these plants perform just like they do in the wild, preserving, protecting and strengthening your skin for increased resiliency, which results in skin that looks, feels and behaves more youthfully.
• 1:00
  We're chatting about creating a unique offering and how you can approach the retail piece before you even place an order with your manufacturer and how to get your brand stocked in the likes of Sephora. If you love this episode and you're wondering how to support us, it's by sharing this with a woman in your network who would benefit from hearing this inspiring founder story or by posting on social media.
• 1:22
  And by the way, I would also love to meet you. You can find me on Instagram at Doon Roisin, D-O-O-N-E-R-O-I-S-I-N, and slide into my DMs anytime. I'd love to know what you're up to and what you're working on right now. Let's jump into this episode. This is Kendra for Female Startup Club.
• 1:43
  Kendra, hi, hello, and welcome to the Female Startup Club podcast. I am so happy to be here. Thank you for having me today. Thank you so much for being here. Can you start by introducing yourself and tell us about what your business is?
• 1:58
  Yes. My name is Kendra Cole Butler. I am the founder of Alpen Beauty. We are a sustainable plant-based skincare line that uses wild plants. We call them our wild crafted actives that we harvest in my home of Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which is where I'm talking to you from today. Sounds like a little piece of heaven over there, if I must say.
• 2:26
  Where does your entrepreneurial story start? It starts in 2015. I was a beauty executive in Manhattan, and I had worked for a lot of the big beauty brands, Clarence, Givenchy, Dr. Dennis Gross. And I loved all the experience that I gained working in Manhattan, and I loved my job. But I felt a little burnt out. And this is, again, around 2015.
• 2:56
  felt the need to do something different with my life and my career. And that is where I began this journey.
• 3:05
  So you quit your job and moved to Wyoming to do what? I quit my job. I quit my job. It was very scary. My partner and I made the decision together. My husband at the time, he was in the same place. We just felt like kind of Groundhog's Day. Like we got up every morning. We went to our corporate job. We sat in front of our computer all day long. We worked really hard. We came home and we just hit repeat the next day.
• 3:33
  And we just were seeking something more out of life. We wanted a little bit more adventure and we wanted to take a chance. And we made a pact that we were going to do it. And we chose a day and we both went into work. We left our corporate jobs on that day. And...
• 3:50
  One week later, we put everything that we owned in a U-Haul, which was not much, like a couch and a kitchen table or something. And we drove west and we landed in the beautiful mountains of Jackson Hole, Wyoming. And how do you then go from, you know, taking some time off to being like, hey, I'm going to actually start my own business and I have an idea?
• 4:15
  It was kind of a need that I felt internally. I was very excited to leave my corporate job. I had a four-month-old baby at the time, and I couldn't wait to just not have to check emails and do conference calls. I just wanted that life where it was just spontaneous, and I was just enjoying every moment. And I did that for about seven days, and I thought, I need a job.
• 4:43
  And not that raising kids is not a job. It is the hardest job. And I have so much respect for anybody out there who's raising children because it is a full-time job and it is a lot of hard work. But for me personally, I wanted to do something in addition to that. So I decided to dip my toe in the water and...
• 5:06
  I opened a few beauty stores in my local hometown because I thought this is a way for me to stay in the beauty industry, but I can still manage my own schedule. So I'm there for my children, you know, my child when he needs me. And that was my first kind of segue into this whole wild adventure that I'm on right now. But I started with just opening some stores to service my local community.
• 5:35
  I love that. You dipped your toe in the Wyoming water. You stayed in the beauty industry. What was it about that experience or that time that got you thinking like, hey, I'm going to get into wildcrafting now?
• 5:51
  the natural landscape. Okay, that was like the furthest. This is like, that was the furthest thing from my mind. I think that necessity is the mother of invention. And I, when I opened the stores and when I was in Wyoming, I started to notice a trend that everybody's skin in this community was suffering from the extreme climate. Yeah.
• 6:19
  So women would come into my beauty stores. I did not have my own skincare line at that time. I was selling other skincare lines, like the best in the business. And they would say to me, Kendra, my skin is so dry, or I can't get rid of these sunspots. This hyperpigmentation is really bothering me.
• 6:37
  And at the same time, I realized that my own skin had changed when I moved from New York City to the mountains. You know, you're at 6,200 feet elevation right now. You're really close to the sun. There's little to no humidity. So I started to see these changes not only in my own skin, but I was seeing the clients and the women in my community very unhappy with the way that their skin looked. And it's...
• 7:05
  It actually was an accident how I stumbled across these wild plants. I was getting a lot of returns in the store for the skincare lines that I was selling. I would sell a moisturizer and they would come back and say, this didn't work. What else do you have?
• 7:23
  And I was sitting in my backyard one day thinking that the stores are going to go out of business because I was having such a high rate of returns. And I started to look at the plants because I'm like pondering this problem. And like, I always find nature to be very problem solution. Like I always find my answers when I'm in nature, whether it's taking a walk, sitting in my backyard. So I'm sitting in my backyard looking at these plants and...
• 7:49
  And Jackson Hole looks like a painting. I mean, there are just so many species of flora and gorgeous grasses and flowers, and it's just bright and colorful. And I thought, what is growing here? And how have these plants found a way to adapt and grow?
• 8:10
  and flourish in this environment that is so abrasive to my skin and my client's skin. And that started the whole wild plants. It was just a mistake. I was just sitting in my backyard slash forest looking around thinking, we're dry, we're suffering, these plants are hydrated, they found a way. How can I put these two things together here?
• 8:38
  And so like as a beauty expert to paint the picture, were you kind of like, oh, I'm just going to pick this flower, this wild flower and do what with it? Like what actually what actually happens? Like how do you pick a flower and then see if it does something to your skin? What a great question.
• 9:00
  I'm not there, I don't get it. There's a lot of points in between there. There's a lot of things happening, yeah, between those two things. So I was looking at the flowers. My first thing was, what's growing here? I just have to understand that first. So it all started with research.
• 9:16
  So my skin looks horrible. My client's skin looks horrible. The plants are beautiful. The plants look great. What's growing here? Do I recognize anything that I'm looking at? So I started to research, quickly found that what was growing in my backyard as I'm sitting trying to solve this problem is ingredients like arnica, borage, sage, calendula, orange,
• 9:39
  Light bulb. These are skincare ingredients. I had recognized them as skincare ingredients from my time working in the beauty industry because I had used products with all of these ingredients. The difference being that I was sitting in a forest of them growing wild in their own natural environment. And.
• 9:59
  And I thought, now this is interesting because when something grows wild, it has to condition itself to the elements in order to survive. And could there be something more potent and powerful about these wild plants?
• 10:16
  than something that's farmed or comes in a powder form, you know, from a lab. So I started to become obsessed with wild, the fact that they were in skincare ingredients, and has anyone ever put wild plants into a product? So then it just, like, I started off just, like, Googling a few things, like, a little bit of research. And then I found this concept called wildcrafting.
• 10:42
  Wild crafting is when you harvest a plant from its natural growth environment sustainably and respectfully. We don't kill the plants. It's kind of like you prune them. But the difference is you allow the plant to grow uninterrupted. Like we want the plant to have to learn how to hold its rain for two months. We don't feed these plants. We don't feed them.
• 11:05
  We don't shade them from the sun. We want them to bake. We want them to go through that natural process of figuring it out. We don't put wire fences around them so the animals don't eat them. We want them constantly getting nibbled on by the local wildlife. We want them to have all these challenges because we believe that yields a very resilient and potent plant.
• 11:28
  And then the question was, what's that going to do when you put it topically on your skin? Are we going to see results pushed a little bit further? And are we going to be able to innovate here? So that's how it all came about is first finding the plants, then trying to figure out what their properties were. And then I had to figure out how to put them into skincare, which was the biggest challenge that I faced at the time. And how do you put them into skincare in simple terms?
• 11:57
  In simple terms, you need a really good manufacturing partner. I knew the only thing I was cooking on my stove at the present moment, at that moment, was mac and cheese and maybe like a soup or two. So I had no idea how to make a skincare cream. Like I just, you need a lab. You need a pristine environment. You need, everything has to be done extremely professionally because you're dealing with skin and that people are putting this stuff on their face.
• 12:25
  So I wasn't about to like, I wish I had the talent to figure out how to do it on my own. I did not. So I started calling around to some contract manufacturers who I know were in the cosmetic space. And I said, hey, look, like I have this idea. I want to write a skincare formula and I want to bring you my own plants to put inside of it. So about 19 of them hung up on me.
• 12:52
  They told me that not possible. I heard no a lot. And, you know, I was working in the stores. So I was doing it like while the stores were dead. I was making all these calls. So I just kept going because I had time. I heard 19 no's. And on about my 20th call, I just got a lucky break.
• 13:15
  One of the manufacturers, like the owner, was walking by the phone. And I called at the moment. He picked up the phone, and he never picks up the phone. But I said, look, I have this really interesting idea. I want to mix some of these wild plants into a formula. And he said, this isn't the way we do it, but I'm interested. Bring me your plants. I want to see what they can do. Oh, my gosh. And that's how it happened. Yeah.
• 13:42
  And so did you go out and like pick some plants and take them into his office and be like, hey, I picked this from my backyard. I did. You know what this actually reminds me of? It sounds a lot like how you make gin. You go and you like pick the botanicals like in the like truest, most simple form, not obviously like whatever a big gin brand is doing, but like the small boutique gin brands is what they do, right? They harvest their juniper berries and things from the ground and make a potion out of it, a happy potion.
• 14:12
  It's not dissimilar. I mean, that's exactly what I did. I remember the first time I did it, I found a few local experts. There are some farmers, botanists, some people here that I worked with because it was a new concept to me. The concept, wild crafting has been around forever, but to me it was new and I needed somebody to teach me how to do it. So I found some local resources that taught me how to do it. And I remember I...
• 14:36
  took a pillowcase. I had a pillowcase from my kid's bed. It was just a white pillowcase. And it went into my property and I started to harvest some of these plants and I filled up a pillowcase. And that's how we made our first product. I'm wondering about, because it's a sustainable product where you are harvesting by hand, yet on the flip side of the coin, the beauty industry requires a certain amount of minimums and all that kind of stuff.
• 15:04
  How were you able to get enough of the botanicals to actually create like a batch that they would allow? Or did they kind of lower their minimums to allow you to kind of do a smaller batch at that time? That's a good question. So the answer to that is as follows. The wild crafted plants that we use, that's kind of our proprietary secret sauce. You don't need a lot of them. They are very concentrated. They are very potent. So the first point I'd like to make is a little bit goes a long way.
• 15:32
  The second point I would like to make is that these products are made up of everything else that's in the skincare industry. So in a bottle of our cream, our melt moisturizer, for example, we have squalanes, vitamin C, ceramides. The base of the formula, the majority of the formula is made up of great, beautiful, natural ingredients that are very, very effective. Wow.
• 15:59
  After we mix all of those together, the plants are like our secret sauce. It's like our barbecue sauce. So it's like, you know, I don't want vegetarians out there. Let's not talk about meat. But, you know, it's just like it's kind of like our seasoning. It's our special seasoning that we put on at the end of the formulation process to push the results of the products just a little bit further than they might go with everything else. But we're using all of the same ingredients that everyone's using. I mean, I can't grow like...
• 16:28
  AHAs and BHAs in my backyard in Jackson Hole. They don't grow naturally. I love papaya and pomegranate as very effective fruit enzymes for exfoliation. Try growing papaya in Jackson Hole, Wyoming. It's just not going to happen. So I do source ingredients from my manufacturers and suppliers that I believe in and I love. And then the plants are kind of just our special...
• 16:55
  That's stamp, you know, at the end. It's like our final signature touch to everything that we come out. That just sounds so divine. I love it. I always love to ask about the capital piece of the puzzle. Obviously, you already had your store, but just focusing specifically on the beauty stuff, how much capital did you have to put in in the beginning to place that first order and kind of get yourself set up to build the beauty brand? That's another question.
• 17:19
  Great point. We decided, we set aside a budget, and I think we started with like $100,000. That was maybe a little bit over that. You know, whatever we were willing to spend in and invest up front in the formulation process, what I can tell you is I approached this in a unique way. Because I had come from the beauty industry, and I knew it was very difficult for,
• 17:46
  I don't want to say difficult because I don't want to give it a negative connotation, but it was a challenge to get distribution. The way that I started my brand is I actually pitched the concept and the products to some beauty retailers before I went into production. Yeah.
• 18:04
  Because I was nervous that people might not understand or see my vision. And if I spent $100,000 to get it started and then nobody wanted to support it or give me a platform for growth, I would be nowhere. Because the beauty stores were small. Like, they couldn't.
• 18:25
  They couldn't sell, you know, a lot of products. So I actually found two national retailers. So I pitched my concept and my formulas before I produced. And that to me was kind of a safety net financially to know that going into this, I was going to have the support of some very big names in the beauty retail space.
• 18:49
  That is such an interesting approach. And how does it actually work? Did you have to like get them to sign an NDA or how did you approach them kind of thinking, oh, they're not going to take your idea and just do it themselves, for example? Yeah.
• 19:05
  Well, I just trusted them. The first retailer that signed on with the line was Credo Beauty. Somebody had introduced me to Annie Jackson, who is their co-founder. She is an amazing visionary. She just understands where this industry is going. And I think she was quite ahead of her time in that regard. And I flew out to San Francisco and I had a meeting with her and I had a little sample pot that my...
• 19:31
  manufacturer had given to me. And I had a piece of paper with like the concept, the brand logo, you know, the mission statement, what we believed in. And I sat in front of her and I said, this is the future of clean and natural skincare. Like, I think this is how we're going to innovate is finding these wild plants and utilizing these wild crafted ingredients because they have tremendous
• 20:01
  That's how I did it. And everyone could approach things differently. But I knew that Credo in particular was looking to bring good products to their community. And I didn't think that there was any risk of them trying to do this. It's very hard to do. I mean, there's a high barrier to entry to wild craft.
• 20:25
  Yeah, absolutely. That's so interesting. So you were able to get, you know, these, the buy-in essentially from a major, two major retailers and then place your first order, kind of considering what you could start selling D2C and through your beauty store and what they would stock nationwide. Exactly. What were your customers saying during this whole process? Were you telling them about what you were up to? Yeah.
• 20:49
  Oh, yes. They were my testers. They were the people that gave me the confidence to go to a retailer. So I got the little sample pots. I wrote the formula for melt moisturizer. We brought our plants to this lab. They gave me the little sample pots. And my next step was giving them out in the stores because I had to make sure that this worked.
• 21:11
  I was seeing the results on my own skin, but I was like, I have to test this concept far and wide. So I was giving them to all the customers in my stores for free, just dropping them in their shopping bags. And I knew I was onto something, you know, a few days after that because women were just like stopping me in the grocery store and on my yoga mat and my child's playground. They were like grabbing me by the shoulders like Kendra.
• 21:38
  What was in that pot? Like, my skin feels amazing. It looks so good. Like, I'm getting comments from my friends. Like, what was it? And I always just found it ironic that it was literally the plants that people in the local community were like stepping over when they were going on their hikes and like walking their dogs. But once I knew it worked in the mountains, I was like, okay, if this works on people who have skin that has more needs, like what's it gonna do at sea level?
• 22:06
  So then I started sending the pots out to Miami and New York and Los Angeles and people who lived in a more forgiving climate and same results. Like people were just like, this is stuff is amazing. And that gave me the confidence to go to the retailers. So by the time we launched Credo, which was in September of 2018, everybody in my store already knew the line was like coming and they were so excited for it. So yeah.
• 22:33
  I had a lot of support locally, which I'm very grateful for.
• 22:37
  Such a true community feeling, I'm sure. How did the launch go? It went really well, better than I had expected. We launched Credo first, and then a few weeks later, we launched Goop. Both have been fantastic partners of mine from the very, very beginning. But it started off where first you get the PO, and you're like, oh my gosh, they wrote a PO. We're selling products to them. And then...
• 23:04
  Like you get the next one because they sold out and then you get the next one because they sold out of those. And then you're like, okay, we're like, this is starting to move. I went into it with very low expectations, to be honest, because I just didn't want to be disappointed. I knew what I had was special, but I just didn't know how it would resonate. And the concept of wildcrafting, nobody knows what it is. People don't really need to know.
• 23:31
  It's a lot of education, you know, that we're trying to do. So not only am I trying to break into a saturated space, you know, I'm trying to educate our community on a concept that they don't know about yet, that they might not quite understand until we teach them. So we have a lot of heavy lifting to do, you know, with every product that we put out there. So, yeah.
• 23:57
  That's so interesting. How has your marketing evolved? Like how do you do that education piece and how do you get people on board with what you're doing and to understand and then to actually go through with purchase?
• 24:11
  It's a lot of communication, a lot of storytelling, you know, in the sense that we put a lot of imagery out there. So we always are showing the plants where we're wildcrafting. We're showing pictures of Jackson Hole. We're educating to the different species that we're using.
• 24:28
  We are a very visual brand. So the marketing started with just me. I was doing everything. And then our first full-time hire was a creative director because I knew that I had to show our customer where we were doing this.
• 24:48
  what we were using and how we were doing that. Like, that's the biggest piece of education. Like, I could write it on a piece of paper, but unless they can go to our website and see the wildcrafting process and understand the benefits behind these natural wild plants...
• 25:03
  we weren't going to get anywhere. So we invested upfront in a creative director who could really help guide the window, you know, to Jackson Hole. Like we wanted it to be like this window where they come into the brand and they, we transport them into this like forest in the middle of the mountains and they're wild crafting with us and we're showing them how to do it. So it evolved pretty quickly after that, but I knew that I needed more than just, you know, a piece of paper,
• 25:33
  When you look back over the last few years, since hiring the creative director, for example, what were the key moments of growth driven from?
• 25:45
  The key moments of growth, I think, for us in particular, were really just expanding our retail partnerships and our distribution. You know, we started with Credo and Goop. And then next after that, I believe it was QVC and then Blue Mercury. And, you know, retailers are fantastic because they were giving us a platform to help educate and tell our story and use our voices.
• 26:14
  I did not have the benefit of having a large social media following. I didn't have a built-in community when I started. So those retail partnerships have been very important and meaningful for us in seeing the growth. Because the more people we have the opportunity to touch and educate about these wild plants and what they do to your skin...
• 26:38
  the more sales that you start to see come through and the higher the numbers and then the community just grows and people start talking. And it's been very organic, but I do attribute, you know, some of those retail partnerships to our success up until this point.
• 26:51
  Amazing. I read that you're now stocked also in Sephora. And that's something I wanted to ask you about in terms of a lot of people who are listening to the show who are perhaps building a beauty brand. That's, you know, one of the major retailers on their list, the dream list kind of thing. How do you actually go about getting in Sephora? What's the process?
• 27:12
  So the process is sending them your products, first and foremost, getting your hands into the right merchants. And then I think it's just a waiting game. You have to be really patient with this process. A retailer like Sephora, they have a lot of brands coming to them all of the time. And I would love to say it was this magical story where I sent them my products. And the next day they called and said, we love you. Come.
• 27:41
  but it doesn't, you know, it didn't work out that way. Not for me. It was, it was a long time. You know, there was a lot of back and forth. There was questions, there was communication. Um, as I was creating new things, I was like running ideas by them. Like, I think I'm going to be this. So we had a relationship, um, for a little while before the brand actually launched in there and it just takes time. You know, it's, it's not, it doesn't happen right away and nothing good should happen
• 28:10
  So true. How long are we talking here? I probably, I knew right from the beginning that they would be a great retail partner for me. So maybe we started talking about a year and a half before the brand actually launched, before things really started moving forward with them. But yeah, it was back and forth and just building that relationship and
• 28:33
  you know, telling them about what we're doing and why it's different. I think that's a really important piece of this. It's like, there's a lot of people who, you know, have a product idea and they're just like, you know, I'm going to do this. But I think you have to sit back first and just evaluate what the space looks like and figure out what you're doing that's, you know, that's
• 28:55
  is a little bit different or stands out from the crowd. And for me, you know, it was these wild plants because I just fell in love with them and nobody else was using them. But I don't think I would be down that path if I didn't find these plants. You know, like I found something that...
• 29:14
  I thought was pretty groundbreaking. And that's, you know, what motivated me to keep going. Yeah, it sounds like you had that true conviction and you knew the power, you knew the story, you knew why it was so important and what made your product truly different and unique.
• 29:32
  What are the typical orders? Like, what's the first order look like with someone like Sephora or a major retailer? Are we talking like hundreds? Are we talking thousands? Are we talking hundreds of thousands? Like, what does it look like to go into one of those stores? It just depends. You know, I think that with retailers in general, I think when they bring in new lines, they have a very strategic plan, you know, to roll it out in the right way that makes sense not only for them, but also for the brand.
• 30:01
  And then they take a lot of things into consideration, like how big is the brand? Where's the brand awareness at? I think that all of my partnerships have been really great with doing this like slow organic growth versus just out of the gate, you know, writing these huge orders, knowing that I didn't really have the brand awareness or the built-in community to move through them. So for me, in all cases, it's like a starter starting small and then they grow bigger and bigger over time.
• 30:31
  Totally. Are there any learnings or kind of things that you can share if you think about retail distribution in general? What are the kind of frustrations or challenges that you face scaling a beauty brand into retail?
• 30:47
  Scaling a beauty brand into retail. Well, this has been a really interesting year for retail in general. I think that as a society community, we're just all very distracted. So what's been going on in the past 12 months has been a little bit outside of the norms.
• 31:08
  in a sense. So I think we've all had to pivot and find ways to adapt to survive. It's been a wild ride. Pre-pandemic, I think when you are starting a retail partnership, you have to go into it knowing that you're going to have to do a lot of hard work to support that retailer. And what I mean by that is it's a two-way relationship.
• 31:33
  street. It's a dual relationship. It's not dissimilar from the personal relationships that we have in life. To be successful in a relationship, both sides have to work hard at it. And, you know, sometimes I think there is this perception that you go into retailers, like once the retailer says yes, you ship them your products and then they just do everything for you and you're good. And that's not at all the way that it goes. You have to be constantly there
• 32:00
  getting their back, making sure they have the assets that they need, the gratis that they need for their staff, that all the representatives associated with that retailer understand the brand story, have used the products, the education. And there's a lot of money and time that goes into that because if you just ship somebody your products and sit back and wait for the numbers to come in, you're going to be waiting a really, really long time. So, yeah,
• 32:24
  In terms of a challenge, it's just kind of getting organized up front, understanding the retailer, understanding what they need in terms of support before you start that relationship. So you're guaranteed success once you go into it. And it might not be the right time.
• 32:42
  for you. You know, like if there's a big retailer that needs support and that support requires resources, it's better to wait until you can do it right than to rush into something and not be successful at it. So I think for me, it was just like a lot of upfront planning. Like every retailer I opened, I sat down with a budget. What do they need from me? How am I going to deliver it? Is it going to be enough? Is it going to work?
• 33:11
  That's super interesting. Great insight. Thank you so much.
• 33:15
  So if we think about after, you know, this crazy year that we've had, where is the business today and what does the future look like for you? What fun things can you shout about? We're so excited. So we just hired our president, which was a really, really big step for us. Congratulations. Thank you. She is fantastic. She is a team builder, nurturer, and she understands how to grow a brand. So that's going to be...
• 33:44
  Really, really great for us just to have another power player around the table with our already fantastic team to help us grow. We have found some new plants that we're going to be introducing into skincare this year. We have two really exciting launches. One is in two weeks from now, and the other is in September. But I can tell you that some of the active ingredients have never been used for in a skincare formula.
• 34:11
  So we're really excited to be able to innovate in that regard and introduce some of these wild plants that we find so amazing to our customers. But most importantly is the charitable angle that we have committed to since we launched. So we are a member of 1% for the planet, which means that 1% of every product sale is
• 34:35
  Not profit. Every sale goes back to our local national park. So when you join 1%, then you can pick a charity within their umbrella. And we chose the Grand Teton National Park Foundation because it's.
• 34:51
  It is a very important ecosystem to the environment that I live in, in Jackson Hole. And it was damaged many years ago by the settlers. When they came in, they ripped up some of the natural plants to plant smooth broom for their cattle. So the National Park has hundreds of animals.
• 35:13
  more than that, actually thousands that have been destroyed by humans. And we have committed to our restoration effort in that local national park. And to date, we have helped restore nearly 900 acres of land
• 35:31
  Based on our contribution to the park. So for me, like when I think of the future, like as the brand grows, I want to make sure that we're growing what we're doing and giving back to the environment because that ecosystem supports.
• 35:49
  fuels the plants, the wild plants that I wildcraft on my private land. Like it's all connected. So I have to make sure that it stays intact and healthy. And I think that was our biggest accomplishment to date is to be able to know that we're really making a difference in our local community by restoring these national parks. So that's kind of like our thing is national parks.
• 36:12
  That is so cool. I love that. You also just said something that I was curious about. You said private land. Are you just wildcrafting from your property? Yes. And not elsewhere? Oh, my gosh. Yeah, it has to be. No, you can't just, like, go out and just...
• 36:29
  No, it's, yeah, we do it. We do it on private land. And it's interesting as the brand grows, you know, we're getting more land and we're just kind of seeing. But like I said, again, it's not, it doesn't take a lot of these plants. And we're not like clearing forests or anything. It's like, it's almost like pruning. Like if there's any gardeners that are listening, it's like take little tiny pieces and you just continue to move on. So the overall plant is left intact and healthy. And-
• 36:57
  It has the ability to regenerate and regrow. Love it. What is your key piece of advice for women who have a big idea and want to start their own business? My key piece of advice is do not give up. If you believe in it and you know that it is something that makes you happy and makes you feel good, chances are it's going to make others feel good as well.
• 37:25
  They say, solve your own problem. That's like, what is the biggest problem that you have in life if you can find a solution to that? And that is what set me down this path. You know, my skin was falling apart. My customer's skin was falling apart. And it's like, I need to figure out what to do about this. Especially in the beginning, it is...
• 37:44
  You will hear no a lot. I still hear no a lot. I mean, every day I get knocked down and you just have to get back up. If you believe in it and there's passion and there's drive, let that be your motivation and it will happen. It will.
• 38:02
  It really, really will. But that's my biggest piece of advice is just keep going. And when I started, I just did a little bit at a time. You know, I was a mother of two young kids, you know, under two years old at the time. I didn't have a lot of free time, but I just chipped away. Like one day I would call contract manufacturers. The next day I would figure out, you know, what my jars were going to look like. And it just like every day you just have that to-do list and just knock off a little bit at a time. And yeah.
• 38:30
  Be proud of yourself and be kind to yourself. And don't worry when you hear no, because it's actually, you have to hear no a lot before you hear yes. So every no is getting you closer to the yes. Love it. We actually speak a lot on the show about, you know, that 1%, the compound effect of just doing that one tiny thing. Just aim for 1% every day. And in one year's time, two years time, five years time, you're going to look back and be like, yeah, it was just a series of a million tiny 1% steps.
• 39:00
  That is, it's so true. I'm a big believer in it. I cannot imagine starting and saying, I have to do all of this in like four days. Like it would just, it's too much for anybody. So a little bit at a time, I think is the way to go. And, you know, Rome wasn't built in a day, so they say. So just takes a little chipping away. Chipping away, chip, chip.
• 39:22
  At the end of every episode, I ask a series of six quick questions. Some of it we might have covered, but I ask it anyway. You got it. Question number one is, what's your why? Why do you do what you do? I do this because I want to make a better environment for myself, for my children, and because I also believe in the power of really, really good skincare. And I want people to be happy when they look in the mirror and they use a product. I want them to feel that joy.
• 39:52
  Amazing. Question number two is, what do you think has been the number one marketing moment that made the business pop?
• 40:02
  The number one marketing moment was probably when we were featured on the Today Show as a three-month-old brand. We were, our website crashed that same afternoon. Oh, no. And I mean, it was good. But that's when we were kind of off to the races, I think, is getting, you know, a really great platform like that.
• 40:23
  Yeah, for sure. Holy moly. Question number three is where do you hang out to get smarter? What books are you listening to, podcasts, things that you're subscribing to that others would benefit from knowing about?
• 40:35
  Well, yours, of course, number one. Congratulations on 100,000 downloads. What an accomplishment. Thank you. To be honest, to get smarter, I really just go into nature. I just need quiet. That is the most important thing for me because sometimes I feel overstimulated during the day.
• 40:55
  Sometimes too much information just sets me off into many different paths. But in addition to listening to your podcast, there are a few others that I support. I've been playing around on Clubhouse a little bit. I'm trying to, like, I jump in and out, you know. So I do think there's definitely a lot of great platforms that have tons of education out there. But for me, I have my best ideas and thought processes when I'm alone in nature.
• 41:24
  Mm, feet in the grass, totally. It's 100% true for me. Or in the sand. Yes. Either. Not in the snow. Well, that's what we have a lot of here. So usually my feet are in the snow, but just that fresh air, I find it to be so mentally stimulating to my brain. Absolutely. Question number four is, how do you win the day? What are your AM or PM rituals and habits that keep you feeling happy and motivated and successful? Yeah.
• 41:54
  I am. I need to do a workout every single morning. I have to work out in the morning. I can just tell my whole mojo is off throughout the day. If I don't work out right now, I'm doing this amazing at home workout. It's called bond. It's like B A N D E. And I'm.
• 42:10
  They have online classes and you can pick yoga or a HIIT class or Pilates and you can just like go to for live instruction. So I love that. I haven't been in a studio since the pandemic, but I feel like that's giving me what I need. The end of the day, my PM ritual besides a glass of wine, which I love my glass of wine, is snuggles with my kids.
• 42:30
  I have a three and five-year-old boys, and no matter how bad the day was or how stressful it was, whatever problems that came up, when I get a chance to just put them in my lap and squeeze them at the end of the day, I feel completely rejuvenated and everything, just all the bad goes away.
• 42:49
  Love a good squeeze. It's important. It is important. Question number five, I usually ask the question, if you only had $1,000 left in your business bank account. But I was talking to a listener the other day named Larissa, and she gave me a really great tip that maybe I should change the question to, what would you do if you received a $10,000 grant? So that is the new question. What would you do if you received a $10,000 grant?
• 43:17
  Well, $10,000 isn't enough to hire a new team member, but I think a really important part of building a business is getting the right people around you for sure. I mean, the people build the brand, not the founder. The founder can only take it so far and then it's getting the right talent. So maybe I would pay, you know, a couple of weeks salary with it, but I would try to get more people to help me educate and tell this story with a $10,000 grant. But yeah,
• 43:46
  Yeah, that's a really good question. And yeah, there's just so many things that you could do. Absolutely. And last question, question number six is how do you deal with failure? What's your mindset when things don't go to plan?
• 44:02
  That happens all the time. I feel constantly that I'm struggling. It's really hard to do this. And how I deal with failure is I go back and I remind myself of how far we've come.
• 44:19
  since the beginning. And I just try to talk myself like off the ledge by saying, look, like this didn't work out the way that you wanted it to. It's not the answer that you wanted to hear, but let's just take a moment to revisit the wins that we've had. And I just remind myself how far we've come from an idea, you know, to a concept, to a product, to actually
• 44:43
  being a player in the space right now. So that's how I deal with it is I think of all the good things and I move on to the next. Get back up. You just have to get back up.
• 44:56
  Amazing. Kendra, thank you so much for taking the time to be on Female Startup Club today and share your journey and what you're creating out in Wyoming. Sounds heavenly. I'm so motivated by what you're doing. And I think it's so great for everybody to have a place where they can work.
• 45:14
  draw inspiration from. And it's a really, really important thing for us all just to support each other and share our stories because it's possible for everybody. So congratulations on what you've built and establishing such a loyal community. I'm a big fan and I can't thank you enough for having me. Oh, wowee. Thank you so much. You're going to make me blush. I love that.
• 45:44
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 46:08
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 46:31
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.
• 46:47
  Hey, it's June here. Thanks for listening to this amazing episode of the Female Startup Club podcast. If you're a fan of the show and want even more of the good stuff, I'd recommend checking out femalestartupclub.com where you can subscribe to our free newsletter. We send it out weekly covering female founder business news, insights and learnings in D2C, and interesting business resources.
• 47:12
  And if you're a founder building an e-commerce brand, you can join our private network of entrepreneurs called Hype Club at femalestartupclub.com forward slash Hype Club. We have guests from the show joining us for intimate Ask Me Anythings, expert workshops, and a group of totally amazing, like-minded women building the future of D2C brands.
• 47:34
  As always, please do subscribe, rate and review the show and post your favorite episodes to Instagram stories. I am beyond grateful when you do that.