Ep 568: How Kulfi Beauty Grew from a $5K Launch to 720 Sephora Stores with Zero Paid Ads

0:00Priyanka Ganjoo:Community has been such a big part of giving us feedback, but also then giving us the voice and the platform because they speak about our brand to their friends and family and their community. It's about content. You have to create compelling content and investing in that creator community, which we've really scaled this year, has really paid off for us. What makes you different and what works for you and what works for you is going to be very different from what works for someone else. There's best practices, but then there is best practices for your brand. And that's not necessarily a 100 % overlap.

0:34Priyanka Ganjoo:Your story is your superpower and it's special to you. No one can take that away from you.

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1:57If you want that level of visibility heading into 2026, you can create a free account and see the platform for yourself. Visit triplewhale.com slash DTC. That's T-R-I-P-L-E-W-H-A-L-E dot com slash DTC. Priyanka, welcome to the D2C podcast. Very excited to talk to you today about Kofi Beauty. Can you start by telling me why you built it?

2:23Priyanka Ganjoo:Excited to be here, Eric. Why I built Kofi, really never thought myself building a beauty brand. Part of that was because I never saw someone who looked like me in beauty. I never felt welcomed. I never felt comfortable using makeup, using color. and I somehow found myself working on the corporate side of beauty. I worked at Estee Lauder, another beauty startup, and through that journey, discovered beauty on my own terms in my 20s and realized how fun it can be, how expressive it can be. It doesn't have to come with judgment or it doesn't have to be only for a select few. It's really for everyone.

2:59Priyanka Ganjoo:It can be playful. It can be joyful. It can be full of self-expression. And I wanted to create a brand that captured that, captured that essence and also reflected my South Asian heritage. I'm Indian. And I wanted to see brands that had nods to my culture that really had never existed before. And so those were all of the things that I was thinking about all this time I was working in the beauty industry. And finally, in 2019, I was like, let me try to do this myself. What was going on with the existing beauty products that weren't working for you? There are two things, really. One is what I call like a product gap.

3:39Priyanka Ganjoo:And that was, you know, colors that look good on undertones, South Asian undertones. We have a lot of olive, warm pink undertones. And the colors in the market never look good. So you walk in the beauty aisle, you put on a lipstick, and it makes you look ashy. Or the color doesn't show up on you because it's not pigmented enough. And that was something that a lot of people in my community can really resonate with. and have dealt with growing up. And I think it's getting better, but there is still a huge gap in inclusive beauty products that really complemented our skin tones and made you feel like you deserve this just as much as any other girl or person.

4:18Priyanka Ganjoo:And so there was this product gap. And then I think what's even more important to me was this emotional gap of feeling included, feeling like you can have fun with this, feeling like you can be part of a beauty routine or a person who's considered beautiful. I think that to me was an even bigger impetus of what was missing in the market because we've been, since the beginning of time, just kind of been shown a very specific like Eurocentric vision of beauty. And I think that's not just a US thing, it's really a global thing where, you know, faces like mine, features like mine weren't really celebrated.

4:52Priyanka Ganjoo:And so for me, that's just like a really important part of the mission is to be able to showcase all of us in that community and our brand. And talk to me about the opportunity, like the South Asian market opportunity. It's something we actually haven't talked a lot about on this podcast, but it's like a massive growing opportunity in the market. Absolutely. I think, you know, just demographically, right, if you think about the global population, there's more than a billion South Asian people. And then, of course, a lot of them are in South Asia, in India, in all the countries, Pakistan, Bangladesh, which, again, these are markets that are growing exponentially in terms of the beauty industry because as household income is increasing, discretionary income is increasing, one of the things that ends up happening is that people are spending more on beauty and personal care.

5:41Priyanka Ganjoo:And it's one of the fastest growing regions right now in beauty and personal care, overtaking China and, you know, globally, like everyone sort of has their eyes on India and South Asia in general because of the fact that it's so fast growing and such a massive consumer base that is relatively untapped. But then there's also a huge diaspora, me included, in the U.S., in the U.K., in really everywhere around the world that also has felt so neglected in every aspect of, you know, feeling of representation, whether it's in the beauty aisle, whether it's in the media. And so that's a huge consumer group as well with purchasing power that I think like, you know, it's more about just us being able to create a space and product for them to feel included and be part of the beauty conversation, hopefully in a different way than they've felt before.

6:32So you've got this great background in beauty. You've got this great idea, great opportunity. What were your first moves to kind of put your first product together? And then what did you launch as your first product?

6:41Priyanka Ganjoo:First move, I'm not a multitasker. And so I'm not like someone who held on to my job and was working on this in the side, which maybe if you can, I would suggest trying to do that. So I went all in. I left my job. And I really wanted to understand, is it just a me problem or is it something that more people are feeling? So I went to Facebook groups to try to find people. This was back in 2019 and was like, meet me in a coffee shop. I want to know what's in your beauty bag. Tell me about your beauty routine. A lot of South Asian people. There was a Facebook group in like South Asians in New York or something.

7:15Priyanka Ganjoo:And so I met people and people were so helpful. Like, it's crazy what how much people will help you if you just reach out. And, you know, they met me and they would tell me about like their challenges. And one of the products that came out of product ideas that came out of that was the first product we launched, which is Kajal. Kajal is a traditional Indian eyeliner or South Asian eyeliner. We used to traditionally make it by burning almonds and mix it with ki. And at home, you'd use it to line your eyes. And there's a huge cultural practice associated with using kajal to ward off evil eye, which is called nazar.

7:55Priyanka Ganjoo:And so it's not even considered a makeup product. It's sort of integral to the culture. And a lot of people in these conversations were telling me, I use my mom's or I bought it here, but I don't really love it. smudges and you know it had all these things that they just felt like I don't love the experience of using this product and that was my aha moment of being like this would be such a perfect product to launch with because it has that storytelling it has that emotional resonance everyone knows what it is it's in everyone's makeup bag but nobody has sort of reimagined it for our generation so let's do that and so we launched with Kajal Eyeliner as our first product in five shades and immediately kind of grew a cult following of that eyeliner and still continues to be one of the products people recognize from us.

8:41Go back to the brand for a second. What does Kolfi refer to or what does Kolfi mean?

8:45Priyanka Ganjoo:Kolfi is dessert. It's similar to ice cream, I'd say. Very much something we include in all celebrations. And so kind of going back to this idea of joy and play, the reason I named my brand Kolfi was because I was thinking about the times in my life when I had the most fun and was eating kofi on a hot summer day, growing up in Delhi with my friends and, you know, just enjoying ice cream from the ice cream truck. Okay, so you've got your eyeliner. And then what was your go-to-market strategy to begin with? I didn't know anything about marketing. I first started the brand. I just had this idea. I had this passion for bringing this to life.

9:25Priyanka Ganjoo:Through these conversations I was telling you about, I had started to build a community. I know the word community is so overused, but it's really like those personal one-on-one connections with people. Whether it was through these chats I had, we launched a blog because between 2019 and 2021, when I launched the brand, obviously we were all in lockdown. And so I could no longer meet people in coffee shops, but we launched a blog. And the blog was really a lot of up-and-coming South Asian writers who were Gen Z, had never been able to write about the intersection of culture and beauty in any place.

10:02Priyanka Ganjoo:Nobody had kind of given them that platform. And so, you know, we were starting up, they were starting their journeys and careers as writers. And so we built this community of writers who would write about specific things. And we published that. And that built like a readership for us. Again, small, but very engaged, very personal. We launched our Instagram again. And at the beginning, it was like a handful of my friends and family who had been forced to follow us. But eventually it started being people who just organically found us. And I would reach out to them and chat with them on the phone and be like, why did you follow this?

10:37Priyanka Ganjoo:What's interesting to you about what we're building and build those personal connections? So when we launched on day one, we had that organic community. And that was really a true, I would say, go-to-market strategy. In addition, the only other marketing investment probably I made was we hired a PR firm and they did a really good job of taking our story. We had really amazing visuals that we shot. We shot a beautiful campaign that was inspired by like nostalgic Bollywood eyeliner, beautiful images of women, very inclusive campaign, women wearing coal, kajal. and they took that image, they took our storytelling and we were able to get, we were on the front page of Vogue, Allure, all these beauty publications on the day we launched which was absolutely unseen for a brand with, I would say at that point, maybe$5 ,000 in the bank account.

11:31Priyanka Ganjoo:And it was truly just people seeing that passion being reflected and being able to give us a platform, which I'm really grateful for. So our PR strategy also helped us kind of get that day one exposure. I don't think I can hear community and storytelling enough on the podcast. I think everyone talks about it. And more and more brands that I talk to that are winning started without ads, started by building their product market fit, building their community up without paid. That was a choice that you guys made. I guess with$5 ,000 in your bank account, that was maybe your only choice. But that's how you went.

12:05And it went great.

12:06Priyanka Ganjoo:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, it was my only choice. Partly, we were very cash-strapped. I bootstrapped the brand when we launched. And in addition, to be honest, I didn't know anything about digital marketing and media, which is a far cry from where I am now. I'm like in our meta accounts and in TikTok and looking at all the metrics, which has been an amazing learning curve for me. But it was part necessity, but really, I think, part passion. Because for me, it was more about like, I want to bring this to the world. I want people to enjoy it. I want to serve a gap that hasn't been served before. And people really saw that and connected with it.

12:45Priyanka Ganjoo:And that's why we have people who, you know, when someone writes on our DMs or in our Instagram, like, I love Kofi. I just feel so proud because how many things do you love? How many brands do you love? There's not so many brands and people that you love. And for someone to say that, it makes me feel like really like we've built something special. And do you get a lot of feedback from customers that echo your original founding story, like that there wasn't something in the market for them and that this really spoke to them on that level? Absolutely. I've got DMs from people being like, I could never find a concealer shade match and like I found it with yours or I've never seen someone who looked like me and, you know, I'm excited to be in your campaign.

13:24Priyanka Ganjoo:And it's not a one-time thing. It's really part of our DNA. We source, you know, our models that you see on our website from TikTok, from our community. We have an ambassador program of creators and we will reach out to them and be like, do you want to be, you know, our holiday campaign that just went live on Monday? The three models, I know them personally. They've come for our events and you're like, you know, and now they when they see themselves, they then post organically because they're so proud to see themselves in a social on a beauty media campaign. And so that ecosystem is very much like they have been, the community has been such a big part of giving us feedback, but also then giving us the voice and the platform because they speak about a brand to their friends and family and their community.

14:11And they're echoing the story that you created. And then talk to me about the next big phase of growth by Sephora because you guys got discovered in a great opportunity with Sephora. Talk about that. Yeah, Sephora, I would say is definitely a thought leader in the beauty industry because they had an incubator program called Sephora Accelerate, which they still run it every year.

14:33Priyanka Ganjoo:And we applied for it even before we had launched. So all I had were like my lab samples, my campaign photography and my vision and just this idea of like, I want to do this. And we got selected. There were eight brands that were in my cohort that were selected. they promised to help us launch at Sephora. So we were able to get like mentorship from their merchandising team. It wasn't like a financial sort of relationship, but really much more about mentorship and helping us really think about how to be ready to launch at Sephora, which is arguably like the dream for every beauty brand. And that was a huge opportunity.

15:15Priyanka Ganjoo:and that we launched online at Sephora in 2022, which was a year after we had launched on our D2C and then in store in 2023. And now we are across all Sephora stores in the US and Canada. So about 720 stores in what is called the next big thing shelf. And I think I saw in your packet here that you're selling a casual every five minutes at this point. Yes, definitely. That's like, that's the product we started with and people love it. But more recently, the product we've not been able to keep in stock are our lip oils, the Lassilip lip oils. We've been, those have been insanely popular. And I don't even know what the math is, but it's even faster than one every five minutes for sure.

16:00Talk to me about those early learnings with Sephora. You said they were sort of in those early days, you know, talking to you about what it would be like and how to prepare for a launch on Sephora. What were the key takeaways from that incubation?

16:11Priyanka Ganjoo:I think one thing that they focused a lot on was taking it step by step, because I think, you know, you can get tempted to be like, I want like a whole gondola or like an end cap at Sephora. And there's all these stores. And they were very much like, no, start online. And I was like, no, I want to be in store. Like, you know, but they were really like, no, take it step by step. And I do think it's really important for brands to do that because it takes time for you to find product market fit, to find the right messaging. And if you commit upfront that in like 300 stores even, which is a huge number, that's only less than half of like the Sephora store footprint.

16:50Priyanka Ganjoo:You want to invest in a gondola, which costs thousands of dollars, plus the inventory. Like that's like the shortcut to failure, right? Because you haven't really tested anything. So I do think that one of the biggest things that came out of that was like really kind of this incubation approach and mentorship approach of being like, let's test your MVP, refine, and then add on and then add on distribution. And even now we're only in one shelf, right? And so the upside is unlimited in terms of like going to a second shelf, having our own gondola over the next three years. But when we do that, we'll feel more confident and ready to invest because retail can get very expensive very quickly with return to vendor and, you know, testers, damages, etc.

17:33Priyanka Ganjoo:And so you want to be like, make sure you're taking it step by step. I would say the second piece is was definitely kind of making sure you have investment. and I don't mean investment in terms of dollars necessarily, though I do think that might help, but also just in terms of knowing that you have people who will help you in different pieces because a retailer has so many different functions that it's very hard for a single person with like no help to be able to launch. And so I do think that brands may be tempted to be like, I want to go on Sephora like the moment they launch, which I was as well.

18:12Priyanka Ganjoo:But speaking from experience, I think there is value in waiting and maybe letting your brand grow a little bit more before you get into retail, because it requires a lot of time and commitment. And honestly, my day used to be like 90 % Sephora because it's such a huge commitment to do when you're just starting out. So I was not just trying to build a brand, but I was also trying to launch at Sephora, which are like two very hard things to do at the same time. So I would say my takeaway would be like maybe build a brand first and then, you know, when you're ready, take that next step. You talked about retail being expensive and I think that's something that doesn't always get enough play.

18:50Can you talk about an expensive lesson that you learned in the retail space?

18:55Priyanka Ganjoo:One lesson I would say is definitely thinking about velocity in the shelf. Honestly, this is the most important lesson. That's the only thing. If there's one thing you want to know about retail, it's velocity. So it doesn't matter that any retailer wrote you a check and bought, I don't know, a thousand units of inventory and you're like, wait, I'm rich now because, you know, they paid me all this money. If it doesn't sell, if you don't have Velocity, if someone's not walking to the shelf buying it, they're first not going to reorder. And then 12 months later, they'll send you an RTV and then they'll charge you back.

19:30Priyanka Ganjoo:And then if you don't have money, then you're done, right? What you have to really focus on is Velocity. So I would say like knowing that that's your North Star, always trying to be like, okay, how am I going to work on velocity? That's what you should be tracking was just thinking about like, oh, I was able to like ship this much or these are the forecasts. Ultimately, if someone's not going in and buying your product and you're not seeing that like repeat sort of purchase behavior, you're not going to succeed. So how did you, I think you did a lot of the work up front is my guess by creating such product market fit, addressing a need in the market that maybe wasn't there before.

20:05But still, if you're only on one shelf in this massive store, how do you get picked up? How do you get discovered? Was that a combination of your D2C casting a halo on your retail? Or how do you account for your retail success and your velocity?

20:19Priyanka Ganjoo:I would say initially, it was definitely our community that was showing up. Which isn't to say we didn't invest. We did sampling. We invested in store events. We did a lot of things that in a traditional retail playbook you're supposed to do, which are also quite expensive. But I don't necessarily know if at the stage we were at, those were necessarily what were driving growth for us. Because I think sampling, etc. is very low down in the funnel. You know, if you think about it, it's like, oh, you already heard about the brand. And now you're trying something from them and then you'll convert.

20:53Priyanka Ganjoo:But if you've never even heard of the brand, you're like less likely to like engage with it. You don't know what this brand stands for. Who are these people? And so it was really our community who showed up and went to store and supported us in those early days. And as we've now scaled our D2C business, we definitely see a halo where the shades that we're selling on D2C, for example, we definitely see Sephora also see a spike in those shades. So we know that there's a correlation in the marketing efforts we're making on our Shopify and TikTok side that are having a halo effect on Sephora. Talk to me about D2C.

21:28You mentioned I love when founders are still in the ad accounts. I think that I'm occasionally still in my ad accounts for the D2C growth side of things, always sometimes to the detriment of the account, I think that I'm in there. But I'm curious, what's worked really well with the D2C side of the business? Because I think you mentioned in the pre-interview, because you're close to 50-50 now with your retail presence, as well as your D2C, which sounds pretty healthy.