We Need To Talk About Ben Bennett: The Beauty Industry's Billion-Dollar Brand Maker

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0:44Ben Bennett:You can head to the link in the show notes or just go to OmniSend.com and check out the platform for yourself. Hey, business besties. Welcome back to Female Founder World. I'm Jasmine. I'm the host of the show. Hi, and I'm Paige. I am a contributor here at Female Founder World and one of the co-founders of Benny. Okay, we're in studios together today. We got a comment that people did not like the sound of our group chat episode. So we're in the studio. We listened to the feedback and we act on it, guys. We got you. No, totally. It's so fun, Jasmine. This is like so exciting. Okay, I have a story for you.

1:16Have you heard of Ben Bennett? Jasmine, I'm obsessed with Ben Bennett. We need to have him on the show. I mean, Ben, hey, let's get you on. This guy is like the influencer brand king maker or like queen maker, brain maker. I don't know what the word is, but he has just created hit after hit in the beauty space by partnering with influencers and creators. The reason why I want to talk about him today is because one of his brands is Soltaire, who is co-owned and fronted by Iskra Lawrence, the body positivity advocate, the model, and they have just sold a majority stake in the business. Apparently they're sitting at around $150 million run rate.

1:58And for all intents and purposes, this is a really successful brand. But let's just look at this guy's story. It is hit after hit after hit. So he worked in beauty for a long time. He got, you know, earned his stripes, figured out what makes a successful beauty brand. And then he thought, okay, I want to go and launch a bunch of my own brands. But he's a guy, right? He's not someone who embodies his customer. He's not someone who can speak directly to his customer, he would have had to spend a lot of money in creators, influencers, press to connect with those folks. And it probably wouldn't have hit in the same way as bringing on a creator co-founder.

2:33So what did he do? The first thing he did was go out to Susan Yara. She is this big beauty influencer. She was a YouTuber and she showed like plastic surgery techniques and was very, I guess, like not a natural, not a natural clean beauty kind of influencer, like very much around what is effective and what works and not shying away from that. So he partnered with her and they launched a little brand called Nuturium. Nuturium sold for$355 million to Elf Cosmetics within literally just a few years. Then he went on and he started working with Fleur, which is a fragrance brand. I'm sure you guys have heard of it.

3:12That was owned by Chris L. Lim. She is a massive beauty and fashion influencer. He partnered with her and kind of came I mean, I think the brand had been around for a little while, but he helped really plug in and give it the infrastructure that it needed to win. And she was the kind of voice in the face and the market positioning for the brand. He also did Make Beauty, which is another one that you guys might know. Obviously, Saltair, they've just had this success. And he's just got this formula that is so smart and that you can 100 % take and apply to any industry. If you're someone who has that industry and institutional knowledge, going and finding someone who has audience trust and distribution through whatever the channels are, social, sub stack, I don't care, partnering with them in a really meaningful way where they have equity in the business and they are truly a co-founder is a blueprint that you can take to other industries.

4:08And this guy is just, it's such a fascinating story and case study because no one knows who he is outside of the beauty industry. I've been following his work for a long time. We've had Iskra on the show. She's spoken at our Female Founder World Summit before. And so I've been aware of who Ben Bennett is. And he's got this incubation company called The Center, which is where these brands are created and incubated. But it's just fascinating one. This guy is so interesting.

4:36Ben Bennett:No, I seriously love it. And I feel like as a founder myself, I would have probably thought I and I'm doing this and I love doing this and like speaking about business in this way. But I don't honestly love like building my own personal profile alongside Benny in like a super, super hardcore way. Like I feel like we're pretty in line that you it comes naturally in the ways that you speak what you speak about. But I'm not trying to be an influencer through Benny. And I think had I really been thoughtful when I was starting my business, I would have thought more. maybe about like how do I want to spend my time and is it like being that content machine maybe not and maybe that's when you partner with someone I think that's exactly what he's doing which is so cool um I know we talked about his exits a little bit Jaz and I don't want to derail but I think his exit kind of strategy has been very interesting in the size and when he exits these companies oh because he's exiting I feel like the the talk around it is that he's exiting too soon or like that's the yeah that's the you know what the press angle is it is like poker you don't know when you're going to get the next deal.

5:37Ben Bennett:And I think these exits are obviously insane. Three, nine figure exits in the last six years. But exactly what you said, Jasmine, so many people I think are out there watching like this could be the next unicorn, but does everything like need to be a unicorn? I know there's an Emma Greedy quote that I love that it's like often your first offer is the best offer, which is interesting. I think that's like contrary to so much of what you hear of kind of like keep growing, keep growing. But then you see these brands like Olipop, I know has been getting kind of compared to Poppy with their acquisition that Poppy sold right at like the highest they ever could.

6:10Ben Bennett:Where Ollipop now, maybe are they too big for an acquisition? I don't know. It's really interesting. Another brand actually. Do you know the brand Cycler? Do you follow them? That's Claudia Saluski. Claudia Saluski. Yeah. She's an original YouTuber. Yeah. That's another brand from him. It's yeah. It's so interesting. Ben Bennett obviously has built this playbook. And I think what's cool to see these playbooks be built in real time is that you can see there is almost like a formula that you can copy and paste and maybe you're not a Ben Bennett and maybe you're not partnering with an Iskra Lawrence with 4 million followers but maybe you're partnering with someone with 40 ,000 followers you know where like you're just taking the bits that are like a bit more achievable and scalable for you I think that these stories can sometimes feel very unrelatable and like very LA and Hollywood and like I've seen the center for years now and I'm like oh could never be me but like there are bits and pieces that you could take.

7:04Ben Bennett:Like I think finding great advisors, that's something that anyone can do. And I think finding the partners that make sense for your brand. And like from Benny speaking now, we have so many, we've built so many great influencer relationships. And I know that so many of them are excited to partner with brands in this way and be like the face of a brand because they can like take from some of the work that you've done. So I think send those, send those messages. You can do it too. I also think that if you're someone who has any, like I said before, like any knowledge in, I don't care if it's like how to build an agency, how to do like any skill set.

7:37If you can take that to somebody who has an audience is trying to find a way to directly monetize that audience. You can take this model of pairing your expertise with somebody who has an audience and you can replicate that again and again and again for different like micro niches within that category. So like whether it's a certain kind of agency that you build that's B2B, whether it's something in the wellness category, like I do think that this is a really interesting model and kind of like breaks your frame a little bit I think that the way that we're kind of socialized and told to think about entrepreneurship is like if you're building a business it's you that's the face of it particularly as women like it's you that's the face on it you're you're making all the content blah blah blah but sometimes actually thinking a little bit bigger and having that strategic partner who can do that piece for you and allow you to be honest with yourself about what you're actually good at and focus on that I think it is um a really smart way of doing it and like this guy is just so impressive I um yeah love love his story what do you think is missing in

8:32Ben Bennett:Ben Bennett's like beauty catalog is there one category that you think is missing I think there's something like really Gen Z I was kind of thinking who would he partner with next when I was driving to the studio today and I thought I mean she's a busy gal but like a Nadia Okamoto yeah beauty you know like that vibe so she if you don't know Nadia she started August the period care company um she's got you know millions of followers and she was an activist in this space she has a run club now randomly and she's the now the i think her title is co-founder she's an equity partner in pi which is a basically they're trying to build i think like the tagline is what like the irl infrastructure for no the infrastructure for irl social media or something anyway it's basically like you meet up with people in real life it's meetup.com for gen z which is also a really cool concept and she's come in as like a partner on that but I could see him partnering with someone like that like a little bit younger skewed but I have to say like I think based on the price point of his brands and the distribution strategy there's a lot of like Target in there Walmart support you know I do actually think it is quite young but I think that the brand idea and persona like he doesn't have that like star face kind of Gen Z vibe going on so I think something like that could be missing I also think that it's interesting hair hair he's got like body he's got no color but I don't think that seems like his thing I feel like to me I'm like this is so obvious hair like I literally have the creator in mind and I'm like I have this brand hair founder who's a creator are you keeping it up your sleeve so I know I won't say her name I don't want to out her but I know a hair I know a big creator that started a hair or like was working on a hair care brand and ended up getting like a trademark kind of like slam and she was scared to start it whatever so she just like kind of backed out and she has the most amazing hair such an engaged community if anyone seriously dm me and i will try and connect you because she has the best hair and she needs to start a hair care brand and he needs a hair care brand we're gonna make this happen i will take a 0.5 brokerage okay let's talk about the ref ipo did you see this news yes Oh my gosh, Jasmine, we I can't get over this rough IPO.

10:45Ben Bennett:Well, it's interesting. Okay, so I am no like finance Wall Street girl, you know, I should have probably paid more attention in my business school classes on finance. But I do pay like vague attention to things that are going public. I know Jersey Mike's just went public. I don't know why people keep talking about that to me. But Reformation just went public as well. So for anyone that doesn't know, Reformation is like the original, like cool girl, sustainable clothing, making sustainable, like not crunchy. and granola started in 2009, but everyone's obsessed. Like Taylor Swift wears it all the time, like lively, like the Hadid's Haley Bieber.

11:19Ben Bennett:It's, you know, reformation. So they just went public. They closed flat of their IPO price, which was interesting to me because I feel like there was a lot of buzz around this IPO. They had a really cool marketing around it. If you want to go check it out on their Instagram, I really enjoyed it. But they went low of their like range of what they were like projecting closing their first day public which to me like if you look at their numbers I'm just gonna pull up what we were chatting about like they were crushing it over the last few years I think the thing for me when I look at this story and when I look at ref it's like sure whatever the IPO number slightly you know to the lower end of what people were predicting blah blah blah I don't know like I don't even care what I think is interesting is like the fact that they even got to that point anyway how many people start try to start a sustainable fashion brand and it just doesn't hit and how many you know how many people in the community are out there launching fashion companies and to get to that point of like 17 years I can't no public math I can't count but like 17 years or whatever of of business and getting to the point where you are having an IPO like I think that is actually the interesting story of how do you keep a brand and a business relevant for that long because it is, I don't know, the thing now when I think ref, I think like the slutty wedding guest and like that is me.

12:38I'm pre-kids, like the slutty wedding guest wearing ref and they started as this sustainable fashion movement and I do think that maybe the sustainability focus has shifted and there's definitely like pushback I think on that in the sustainability community about how sustainable is ref now but they what they've done is been able to go super super mass which is I think what's interesting and studying to study

13:07Ben Bennett:totally I think it almost goes back to what we chatted about last week on kind of the the microplastic free like those kind of we're seeing like active we're going this way I feel like maybe that'll be the new like sustainable moment kind of a la ref but where where are the cool women shopping now, Jasmine, you are dressed so well. Aussie brand's always crushing it. But like, do you see, is there any brand that you see like on this trajectory that 10 years from now we're going to see this outcome? I think the thing that Ref did so well is bridging that gap between staying trend-led and relevant and keeping their kind of cool, sustainable messaging and going super, super mass and being able to do that really well, where it's like the, it was wearable.

13:46It was like occasion-led. They started doing Ref wet light bridal. and that's something that's really hard to replicate dish obviously has done this as well when you look at aussie brands that's a brand that has been able to kind of bridge that gap of being wearable trend-led and also having that really distinctive look if you know what you're going to get when you're in there and that's what ref has done really well um as well and they also i think like when ref launched it it was almost like the glossier playbook applied to fashion because they you know you look at the branding you look at the positioning it was it's such a millennial brand in the way that they focused on the way that they did their like branding and DTC presence, the way that the models are shot, like all of it.

14:28And I don't know what that looks like in 2026. And to be honest, like, I don't think I can see anyone coming up who is going to have that mass appeal. I think we are so like in our siloed niches right now that you kind of, you have like your brand. This is, this is Helsa. I'm wearing a lot of Helsa right now, which I really love, which is Elsa Hosk's brand. But the pricing and the positioning, I don't think it's going to get to like ref levels.

14:52Ben Bennett:No, I love that. I think ref, their copy was always so amazing. Like that was something that always like stayed relevant to me because I would read their emails and it would like, like I remember their emails, but you're so right on that. I was just thinking while you were talking, like they are the picture of like the millennial, like a girl brand with Glossier that I don't think that we have that anymore because like our feeds and our algorithms are so like specific and there's just so much brand now so also like the millennials are 40 we're not cool anymore you know like what's gen alpha wearing what's gen alpha wearing i think that's the like that's where we're looking what are they wearing oh my god abercrombie like it's all coming back oh that's interesting i don't know yeah i don't know i don't know but speaking of gen alpha gen z i know that there was a founder that you'd shared with me this week that i'd never seen before.

15:43Ben Bennett:I don't know how I'd been missing Butter Girl New York. Yes. We love Butter Girl. Should we talk about her and why this brand is popping up for us? No, I'm obsessed. I think that she's the coolest. So you shared some info on her. I've literally never seen her, but people are calling her the Gen Z Martha Stewart. It's so funny. It goes to like how algorithms are so specific and so deep. Like, yeah, she's all I see. I've never seen her and we I'm so her target audience. I'm like, okay, come to me. Her name is Greer. Greer Hiltabiedle. I don't know how to say that. Something like that. Big hugs, Greer.

16:16Ben Bennett:Yeah. But Jazz, do you want to tell her quick TLDR and why we love her? Yeah. Okay. So she basically, she's like an advertising gal. She worked in advertising and she was hand churning butter as this, I don't know, hobby. And then she turned it into a business, which is actually a very millennial mindset, like turning your hobbies into a business. Like you said, she kind of got that name as being the Gen Z Martha Stewart. And obviously, as it does, it all came through TikTok. She blew up on TikTok for basically showing her butter and hand churning this butter. And it was like super aesthetic. And she converted that virality into, okay, I'm going to actually start a butter brand now.

16:56And she does these small batch like hand compounded butters in different kinds of flavors. So there's like French onion soup and Caesar salad and grilled cheese and all of these flavors for her butter. It's made in Brooklyn. There's a very like nostalgic feel to it, which I think is very of the moment right now. It's so interesting that Gen Z is nostalgic for a time they like literally weren't even alive, but it's a very, you know, nostalgic kind of brand. She got the money through a Kickstarter to kind of bring this to life. I think it was around like 23 grand, like not a huge amount of money and she's had no VC backing but she has been starting to get a lot of like more mainstream attention so she got a she's named an ad week creative 100 for the way that she builds a brand on social media she's got nearly 200 ,000 followers on TikTok like over a million nearly two million likes and the the the whole brand itself I'm looking at what she's doing and what she's created and I just think like she has so much potential with this and I do think that if someone almost like could come in and partner with it like a Ben Bennett kind of vibe in the food space I do think that there she could build this out into something really massive if she is the one who can protect that community that point of view that human element I think that this brand could be absolutely huge there's no reason why this shouldn't be you know have widespread whole foods distribution but you know it looks like she's the creative and she's got that community like point of view and maybe she needs someone to come in with that like that institutional industry knowledge and to like plug into it because there is so much potential with this brand yeah no I totally

18:36Ben Bennett:agree and it goes back I feel like to that like first point on the Ben Bennett conversation that even if you're not like an influencer or creator or have like this virality yet if you enjoy making the content and it's like resonating somehow I don't know I'm curious that you think Jasmine because I truly like I do not love making content. I love the content my team makes, but I do not love making content. And do you think if someone loves it and their content is good, like and they're consistent, do you think that anyone could get this virality? Or is it like, like, I guess that's a billion dollar question if we knew.

19:07Ben Bennett:There we go. I do think it's a skill. I think that there is, I don't know, there's like some instinct there that some people have and some people don't. But I think it's a skill, which means it can be taught. it's not like you're born with it I think some people are just maybe more magnetic on camera than others and that's something that's harder to teach and a lot of people will try and teach it but I think that's harder to teach but I do think like the skill of content creation can be learned literally by anyone but it's the authenticity of it right it's like this was genuine like she's a you know Brooklyn Gen Z girl and she started hand turning butter and it's like genuinely her passion and so I think like people resonated with that and that's something that I think is like quite hard to fake but I could see her you know I think uh the CPG line is one thing I would definitely be building out a food brand but there's so much else that she can do as well like she could go rather than going down food I could see her doing like a a hosting homeware brand I could see her doing like a cookbook like there's so many more streams to this if she can protect the like creator energy and the creator identity and then have other people plug into that and she can just focus on the magic of being that creator.

20:18I think that, yeah, there's so much potential there. I don't know if you're someone in this space and you want to partner with a creator that's about to blow up, I would be reaching out to Buttergirl, even though she has her own brand. I think there's like so much more that she can be doing with her community.

20:32Ben Bennett:Yeah, no, I love it. And I love that she started with a Kickstarter or like formalized with a Kickstarter. I think that is so cool and relatable. I think exactly that, Like you said, like it's like her relatability that I think has like really helped her pop off. It reminds me of hot girl pickles almost this like very low fi. Yeah. Very low fi. Like your friend launching a brand and just like seeing how like it goes. I think I have been my co-founder and I have been in the spot where we're like, oh God, like how should we fund XYZ project? And it feels like I think a lot of people and like ourselves included, we're like, oh, if we raised from something like a Kickstarter, what will investors think someday?

21:09Ben Bennett:but it's like you can't like I think what she's doing relates so much because there's no like agenda it's not that like planned I think yeah I think that's why people have resonated so deeply and to me like that's someone that not everyone do I want to watch the founder story build in public but this is one that I want to watch the founder story build in public I want to see her like find a co-manufacturer and like see how she scales it yeah I'm in I'm so bought in right but I love the kickstarter I think like let's get back to that is that a legitimate thing like is it is it something where if you start with the kickstarter investors like aren't into it later on that's what in my head like I don't know where I would have read that or heard that probably a like a bro podcast would have been not a kickstarter but like equity crowdfunding that like investors can kind of like poo-poo that but if to me now at this point if an investor thought that was like not for them then they're not for me like you're building for right you have to do what you have to do.

22:05Ben Bennett:And I think now that is such a cool, scrappy way to do things. And I think that sometimes, I don't know, like we can get too caught up with the perception, but it's like, you need to build the business. My co-founder, I go back to this all the time, build the business for you, build the business for the business and not just for investors. And I think that is really hard to get, yeah, caught up on. And if a Kickstarter gets you to your, you know, MOQ on your butter, let's go. Yeah, I agree. And also like, I don't know, if people are funding your Kickstarter, it means they're born into the brand and that's, I think that's worth more than VC dollars.

22:38All right, let's move on to this week's Build in Public Challenge. If you're following along, this is our partnership with Adobe Express and we're helping you build a brand in public and giving you content prompts every week of exactly what you should be posting. If you're following me on TikTok, I am actually doing this as well. If you need a blueprint of how to actually create this content. The goal is not to send you viral. It is not to turn you into an influencer. It is to attract the people who are going to be shopping from your brand and build out your personal account as an extension of the brand world.

23:11I don't think this content necessarily needs to live on a brand account. For me, it lives on the personal Jasmine Giles, the account, not, you know, female founder world. And I'm applying this to Summit, which is, should I give the date? oh my god is this the exclusive yeah okay it's happening i get text jasmine there you go 15th of november 2026 happening at pierce 60 chelsea piers in york which is the most insanely beautiful space okay i wasn't expecting to drop that today but we'll um you guys if you've made it to the end of the end of the show that's your little gift you add it to calendar add it to your calendar um and tickets will drop soon uh for everyone who's on the wait list and the email list this week we are doing a mood board post and this is something that Nat on the team has been trying to get me to do since the beginning of time um make a mood board post but because it actually involves making a mood board and printing stuff out I was you know like really dragging my feet on it but it was so much fun to do and such a beautiful way to make something that is a online piece of content feel more like tangible and human and considered and I'll play the video for you guys now so you can see a little bit of it and get a feel for what it is.

24:30So that's it. It is such a simple short video and how you're going to create it is very simple. We are creating a mood board. You can do it in Adobe Express. Just jump in, create either a couple of like landscape collage pages and drop in your images into that. You're printing them. I actually had to go to a professional printer because like who has a printer anymore? No one. So I had to go into a professional printer. I printed off a few versions of this and cut these out. We have these like beautiful chrome sheets that we use in the office for mood boarding, but you can also just use a white wall or a pin board, whatever you have.

25:06Set up the camera and I literally just showed myself kind of pinning this. This is our mood board for Summit. I wanted to make it specific to a like a launch or a moment I think rather than the overall brand I think it's more like specific and pointed I think if you're launching something new then this is a really nice little format to show people what the vision is and help get them bought into oh okay I understand like what this broader brand universe looks like it's also just such a simple post to create it took me probably five minutes to actually film the video you don't need to talk to camera and I also saw Cindy Ramirez from Chill House she did exactly this and that gave me like a real like kick to like actually make make this video and her text overlay was something like when you're a creative girl with a very specific point of view or when the the you've got a very specific creative vision or something like that um really simple text overlay and uh that's kind of what the post looks like you can then go in if you're going to do the text overlay if you make this post in Adobe Express just apply your brand book you basically set up your fonts your colors click on the brand book once once you've uploaded your video and it'll adjust any text to be in your style which is just a real hack rather than using the inbuilt for example TikTok or Instagram font just to make it feel more on brand and personal and then I actually went really long in the caption I quite like that with short videos I find that when you have a really long caption partnered with it people let the video run and run and run and that's really great for your views while they're reading a long caption so I spent a very short amount of time doing the video and a very long time explaining what the vision is creatively in the caption and that's what I recommend everyone does this week and I want to I want to see what everyone comes up with.

26:56Ben Bennett:I love it I feel like it's a thesis of what we've been talking about the last few weeks like the AI like the analog like touch and feel with your hands and the world building I find anytime we post a mood board on Benny's accounts like seriously no matter what those are our best performing posts and they're so simple someone else has had a really great series lately about how to build a mood board or build a brand world and part one was the mood board is um Diana Cohen is doing this on her LinkedIn at the moment I don't know if she has like a sub stack or something but she did this uh on LinkedIn.

27:27I'm going to link it. And basically she explained the process of how she creates that mood board. And it was for Take Your Time, which is her new Substack podcast, like little media event, not little media venture. I'm sure it's going to be massive. New media venture that she's doing. And the way that she spoke through how she selects her images, I think this is like mandatory reading for if you're someone who wants to build a brand with longevity in that clear point of view um it's she's the master at it and she's like showing us how to do it in real time at the moment and that's a beautiful thing to study as you're creating this post for this week as well I love it amazing all right I think that's the show guys thanks Paige so fun to see you in a

28:08Ben Bennett:studio yeah no I loved it we have great lighting I can hear you great I hope everyone likes it please give us good feedback this time we took your feedback and also I'm gonna be in LA I'm going to be in LA not not this week but next week and we're going to be filming another series of the interview format of the show but you guys will still hear um from us as well in the group chat format like this because I know that everyone's really enjoying it so this isn't going anywhere but we are bringing back the interview show as well all right thanks Paige I'll see you next week bye everyone bye