The Best Global Beauty Expansion Strategy with Rodial's Maria Hatzistefanis

0:00Maria Hatzistefanis:I visit a lot of trade shows globally. For me, this is the quickest way to get access to international markets. At the beginning, I was doing about four shows a year, just going there and meeting and talking to people and following up. So I feel with any business that wants to go global, you just have to be out there talking about your brand to anyone. We haven't done trade shows in about five years. It's just not worth it anymore.

0:26Alex Chisnall:Maria Hatzis-Stefanis, the powerhouse founder of Rodial and Nip and Fab. From landing shelves in Space NK to building a beauty empire backed by Kylie Jenner and Britney Spears, Maria's story is all about grit, reinvention and ignoring the doubters. How soon did you go to Greece, which is, you know, your home country originally?

0:45Maria Hatzistefanis:We actually don't sell in Greece.

0:47Alex Chisnall:Do you not? No way. Welcome to this special bite-sized episode of Screw It, Just Do It, from our back catalogue of over 550 past episodes. If you like what you hear, don't forget to follow the show and grab your free two-day pass to the Festival of Entrepreneurs this October. Just head to festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk to claim yours and don't forget to dive into the back catalogue. Now open for this year's Festival of Entrepreneurs. Join us at the NEC in Birmingham on October the 8th and 9th for two game-changing days with 200-plus speakers and thousands of ambitious founders. Get your free limited two-day pass at festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk or click my personal link in the show notes.

1:26Alex Chisnall:You founded your business in 1999, a few years ago now. And your innovative products are now in 35 countries globally. Simple question, how did you reach such a global presence? what were some of the things that you did initially to go from like one country to two

1:49Maria Hatzistefanis:countries to three countries to four countries um so what i did a lot at the at the beginning of my journey is um i visited a lot of trade shows globally um for me this is the quickest way to get access to international markets so there is this amazing show in italy in bologna It's called Cosmoprof and all the beauty companies are there. They go. We took a booth, invested in making it look amazing. And then we have people from all over the world, Japan, Italy, Germany. And at the beginning, I was doing about four shows a year, just going there and meeting and talking to people and following up.

2:29Maria Hatzistefanis:So I feel with any business that wants to go global, you just have to be out there and talking about your brand to everything and anyone.

2:40Alex Chisnall:And do you still do that?

2:42Maria Hatzistefanis:We haven't done trade shows in about five years now. At the beginning, we're doing a lot of them. I think after a point, we have our distribution that's pretty much set. Right now, we are available in 35 countries. So for me to just go, and it's a big investment, it's also a little bit of a disruption. So to go there to just find one investor, it's just not worth it anymore. But, you know, now we go to LinkedIn a lot. We also get approached by distributors. And there's only a handful of countries that we really want to expand that we're not in. And then the other thing is that there's a lot of big organizations that go across many countries.

3:28Maria Hatzistefanis:So, for example, you have like the Douglas, which is a major European website and it's available in 20 countries. So you kind of have a lot of big distributors that go along the different continents and you don't need to be with so many independent ones. You can go with groups and that gives you a bigger distribution.

3:50Alex Chisnall:okay and um when you when you were starting out was there you know one country that you were like ultimately i want my products to be found in that country and consumed by people from that country i'm thinking america but equally it could be another country uh definitely america and it's uh

4:10Maria Hatzistefanis:It's our second country right now. This is a market that we directly manage. So we don't have a distributor there. We actually have a sales team. We have a sales director. So we've set up a little mini rodeo company in LA, and they manage the whole of North America, including Canada. I find that there's two ways to manage a market. One is to replicate what you have in your home market into the other market or get a distributor. But that would mean that you give them a higher margin. So, you know, there's a couple of ways to do it. But for us, the U.S. is our second biggest market.

4:57Alex Chisnall:Buy in the U.K.?

4:59Maria Hatzistefanis:Yes, yes.

5:02Alex Chisnall:And how soon did you go to Greece, which is, you know, your home country originally?

5:09Maria Hatzistefanis:We actually don't sell in Greece.

5:12Alex Chisnall:Do you not? No way. But that's honoring for your products.

5:17Maria Hatzistefanis:Yeah. I mean, we do have a website that we ship all over the world, and it's actually the biggest part of our business. It's more about which countries have the distribution channel already available for us to go that would fit the brand, rather than, oh, let's just be in this country because, you know, I was born in Greece or let's just set up shop in Maldives because I'd like to go and visit once a year. It's more about what is the country with the infrastructure of the type of stores that we want our products in there. And that's the driving force for expanding in that market.

6:01Alex Chisnall:If you're enjoying this conversation and thinking, I need to be around more people like this, then I've got the perfect solution for you. The Festival of Entrepreneurs is where 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 ambitious entrepreneurs come together to learn from the people who've actually done it. It's on October the 8th and 9th at the NEC in Birmingham, and I'm giving my listeners free two-day passes. Real entrepreneurs, real stories, real strategies, exactly like what you're hearing right now, but live and in person. Go to festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk and get your free two-day pass before they're gone. And how long did it take you to grow from literally those kind of timelines?

6:40Alex Chisnall:So like one country to two countries and two countries to double figures?

6:47Maria Hatzistefanis:Well, at the beginning, while I wanted to expand, it's a little bit more complicated. You do need to have the infrastructure. For example, when it comes to beauty products, there's a lot of registrations that need to be applied from anywhere, from Asia, including Japan, Hong Kong, Thailand, even UAE. There are a lot of countries out there that require extensive registration. and to do that especially when I started my business and I was a one-woman show from the backroom at home I just didn't have the resources to do it but while the business grew and I managed to bring in some more resources for the operational side and I had the resources then the time was right to be able to support those markets properly because it's one thing to say yeah let's expand to markets.

7:43Maria Hatzistefanis:But the bigger question is, do I have the resources? Do I have the infrastructure to support and give a good impression to the people that I work with in those markets? Because you have one chance. If you go there and you look unprofessional, unprepared, you don't know the market, then you're going to lose the chance. And beauty is a small industry. So the reputation is a big deal and you have to do things that reinforce a good reputation in the market so yeah you just have to be ready for it but all in all I probably got most of my distribution the first five years the core of my distributors and then the growth is not as fast so let's say I on the US, a few countries in Europe, then Asia came after.

8:35Maria Hatzistefanis:So you get a lot happening, especially when the business has traction the first five years, and then maybe you're adding one market a year. So it does slow down.

8:45Alex Chisnall:Okay, what's Asia like for you? I could imagine that's pretty busy popular market, would it not be?

8:51Maria Hatzistefanis:We started with Hong Kong, and that was our first market 15 years ago. And it's a great market because people in Hong Kong really think the same way as we think here in the UK. So it's very easy to do business. You speak the same business language. But equally, we have business in Taiwan. Taiwan is one of the most memorable memorable trips I've ever done. Japan is quite interesting as well. Japan is more about TV shopping and that's where people are focusing on.

9:38Maria Hatzistefanis:Asia is a little bit more complicated when it comes to registration. Also, the types of products that people buy are a little bit different. Let's say we have a tanning range that gives you a nice color and a glow and that's what the Europeans want. They want to look tanned and Americans. But then when you go to Asia, it's all about skin lightening and it's a whole different set of products. So what we do is, we do have in mind that we do have that Asian customer. And when we develop new formulas, we just, there's formulas that we specifically develop for that market that are more about skin lightening and and even skin tone um so when you have a um a global audience um you really need to think about the product and make sure that um you don't just target one audience you have to cater to the different needs of your different markets that's the apomisa point um reminds me

10:43Alex Chisnall:when I chatted to the guys from Grey's you know the little boxes that originally were like posted through your letterbox and now you get them all the points and they were saying when they when they launched in the US they found funnily enough that the Americans had a completely different taste when it came to they launched with a full English range and they said luckily you know they'd built the business on the back of the data that they would you know receive from the subscription model that they had so they're able to turn around the new product in like 24 hours but they said they literally had to turn around the entire range of products and nobody had thought that the americans might not might not like the english products to start with but they they still managed to acquire always remember chatting to anthony fletcher the ceo he said he managed to acquire 100 000 customers in 90 days in in america which is sounds pretty phenomenal to me but i know it's quite a low price point for their for their products as well but the other thing

11:41Maria Hatzistefanis:with the Americans is they're used to massive sizes. So when you're a European brand, the UK brand, and you launch, say, a Clemser, which is sort of, you know, maybe smaller than this, you go to an American beauty store, and they're like massive sizes, because everything in the US is oversized. So we've been asked many times to look at the size of our packaging and develop double size and triple size of what we do in the UK to fit that market. So when you go global, these things come up and your operation becomes slightly more complicated. So yes, it's great to expand, but there's all those intricacies that come up that you have to be aware of.

12:26Alex Chisnall:That conversation just proves something. You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. So here's my challenge. Upgrade your network. The Festival of Entrepreneurs is happening October the 8th and 9th, and I'm giving my listeners free two-day passes to get in the room with 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 entrepreneurs who are actually building something. This is where the risk takers, the game changers, and the people who've decided to screw it and just do it come for inspiration, education, and connection. Don't just listen to their success stories. Go meet the people living them. Grab your free pass now because the biggest risk isn't taking a chance.

13:02Alex Chisnall:It's missing the opportunity entirely. So if you're building your brand or scaling your business, here are a few takeaways from Maria's story. So look, rejection isn't failure. It never is. It's just fuel to the fire. Okay. It's learning. That's all it is. If you don't tell your story, then guess what? Nobody really well. Building a brand takes resilience, not perfection. Okay. So you just need to keep going and just keep going at it. Just do not give up. And look, remember, this is just one of the incredible stories from over nearly now 600 entrepreneurs we've featured on Scrooge Stewart. You can also not just follow the show, but you can grab a free two-day pass to the Festival of Entrepreneurs this October the 8th and 9th at the NEC in Birmingham.

13:47Alex Chisnall:Join me and over 200 other speakers you can click the link in the show notes or you can go to festivalofentrepreneurs.co.uk to see the full speaker lineup