579: The Strategy That Made NYX a Household Name | Toni Ko (Best of Foundr)

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0:39Just head to omnisend.com forward slash founder without the E to get started. All right, now let's jump back into the show. Hey, founder fam, Nathan Chan here. And today's episode is one that I've been really excited to jump back into. I sit down with the incredible Tony Ko, who's the founder of NYX Cosmetics, who built a global beauty empire from absolutely nothing, literally starting out solo, doing everything herself, to eventually exiting to L 'Oreal for a massive deal of$500 million. And in this episode, we get into the raw truth of building a business from scratch, what it's really like to go through a big exit, and then the unexpected challenges of life after a major sale.

1:23This is a common thread that I hear, right? It's really interesting, really cool to see how she bounces back, but also what happens. You think you've made it after you had this big sale. Plus, she also shares inspiring stories from her journey, how she went from moving boxes in high heels to making millions in her first year. So if you want to start a cosmetic brand, you want to get an incredible exit for your e-com brand, this is incredible. All right, there's so much gold here for you guys. Let's jump straight in. Hear the stories, learn the proven methods, and accelerate your growth and future through entrepreneurship.

1:56Welcome to the Founder Podcast with Nathan Chan.

2:03So really excited to speak with you today. The first question that we ask everyone that comes on is, how did you get your job, aka how did you find yourself doing the work you're doing today? Oh, so when I first started my company, I was 25 going on 26. It was a long, long time ago, age of the dinosaurs um but it was 1998 going on 1999 and I was working in the family business for a very long time um and I decided to leave the family business and start something on my own and uh actually in between that I was actually going to get a job and then I realized that I'm very stubborn and I don't like to take orders and I don't like the box to nine to five style and I would probably make a horrible employee and probably get fired in three days.

2:58So I had to become an entrepreneur. I had no other option but to become an entrepreneur. Okay. And what did those early stages look like, like bringing the company to life? Do you have a background in cosmetics? Well, I have my background as being the consumer, the ultimate consumer, probably. But I worked in the family business, like I said earlier. And our family business was in beauty supply, perfume and cosmetics. So we started as a retailer and then we moved on to become a distributor wholesaler. So I had that experience. But, you know, I'm not like I'm not your HBS, like formally trained business person.

3:40But I could say that I'm a third generation entrepreneur in my family. And so my grandfather was an entrepreneur. He was in textile business. My father was an entrepreneur. My mom's an entrepreneur. So I just grew up in a very entrepreneurial family. And I spent a lot of time growing up with my, like growing up, I spent a lot of time with my grandfather, who is an amazing business person, actually. And I think it's just like this entrepreneurial spirit rubbed off on me. And I learned so much from being around my grandfather and my dad and my mom. My mom's an amazing businesswoman. I learned so much from her.

4:23Yeah, so that's how I got my first start at 25, 26, 23 years ago. And back in 1999, a young female just did not start a business. These days, it's very common to see a lot of young entrepreneurs or female entrepreneurs or young female entrepreneurs but this was very rare in 1999 um but just like you don't know what you don't know I've always seen my mother as an entrepreneur she always worked um and it was just very natural to me yeah I see so can you take us back as well um so when you immigrated to America you were 13 uh like what what was on your vision bored at that time like what did the future look like for younger tiny oh like at 13 oh my goodness at 13 so innocent so I was born and raised in Korea until I was 13 years old and and this is 1986 I'm talking about a long time ago and back then in South Korea there was no such a thing as a sex ad or like anything like that.

5:37So I was 13 and I was so innocent. Like now I look back when I was 13 and like looking at the kids who are 13 these days and I can't believe what they know now. And I can't believe what I didn't know back then. But vision board, wow. At 13, all I wanted to do was go to Disneyland. That was my vision board. So do you think that you had, because of your family and and the generational uh experiences as entrepreneurs uh what what do you think that you were born to to be an entrepreneur and and yeah I'd love to hear do you think people are born to be entrepreneurs yeah you know of course there's the um entrepreneurs by training later on the year but I think like being an entrepreneur is kind of a talent like education-born talent as well because at first first of all you know you have to have a personality that is okay taking a lot of risk and without any reward for a very long time because just because you start a business doesn't mean that you're gonna turn profit immediately so you get yourself into this situation where you're working 80 90 100 120 hours like you hear about these stories right and you put your capital in while you're not producing any income it may be all investment in the beginning and you have to wake up every day and be okay with it so there's that personality I think there's that inherent personality quality to be an entrepreneur and I happen to be an eternal optimist I just and I come up with business ideas all the time like I walk around on the street and I start like just pulling ideas out of my head it's like oh my god like this would do great like just in a conversation or like I don't know just like random every day everything I am a very solution driven person so if I'm eating something and I don't like how a salt shaker shakes or like like just I try to fix every little thing and then like everything is like oh my god it's like I just go into like this mode of oh my god like if somebody launched this it's gonna be do amazing like i'm just born an optimist i it's very hard for me to look for reasons not to or look for reasons why it cannot work uh maybe it's a quality that i lack that benefited me but everything i look at i i tend to just jump immediately into why it's going to work is that why it's not going to work.

8:27I love it. So when you first started, Nick, you guys made$4 million in your first year, which is pretty impressive. Like what was the initial offering and how did you kind of get that kind of traction so quickly? Yeah, that was$4 million in retail value. so that was net a full sale revenue of two million dollars uh 1999 I was 26 years old and I was a the first year I started the business I was I made myself a self-made millionaire that's crazy but but I I was a one-woman company um it was me myself and I I say I had three employees, me, myself, and I. Three of us, everything. And I had a small showroom in downtown Los Angeles.

9:23It was 600 square feet. I think my rent was$1 ,200 or something. It was inside California Mart. And then I was renting without paying rent. A little bit of a warehouse space at my mom's business. that was on the second floor, walk up, no elevator. And these boxes were 38 pounds each. I would never forget. And I was in my mid-20s. And I love makeup. I love fashion. I love beauty. So I used to wear high heels almost every day. I still do almost every day. And I used to carry these 38-pound boxes up and down, up and down, up and down this year all day long. And I was the receptionist, the secretary, the president, the designer, accounting person, customer service.

10:13I did everything myself. And now I look back, actually, it was like one of the best, best, best years of my life. Yeah, it's a little bit like that. I hear that kind of common thread. People love the early days looking back where you don't have a care in the world. You don't have your team members to worry about less responsibility it's scary at the time but you're just kind of having fun and being free oh absolutely and you know um another thing is it's like you have nothing to lose and that just frees you from so much pressure and the responsibility that you have to have right because um so I've accepted out of NYX Cosmetic that was my first company um in 2014 so uh ran the company for 15 years and during that 15 years if you came from like that like three employees me myself and I to be 250 employees at the end um and the thing is like when it was just myself every decision that I made only affected me like it's not going to hurt anybody if anything goes wrong so you know there's that like I didn't I did not have that pressure um but when you have 200 like two three four hundred employees um sometimes like you're supporting not the two three four hundred employees but their extended family members um you know the salary that they take may pay for their children's college tuition but put food on the table so when you have all these variables that goes into your decision making the pressure this is why like the pressure cooker um all entrepreneurs are under cost and pressure cooker that's guaranteed yeah so let's go back i'd love to kind of still explore those early days so what what products did you launch with to to make yeah like two million dollars in sales in one year very simple cosmetic pencils lip liners and eyeliners that's all i had um i had in the layer i had 12 colors in the eyeliner I had six colors.

12:26So combined, it was 18 SKUs of product, but basically one item because they're cosmetic pencils. And I was wholesaling that at 55 cents a piece. So when you do the number, I sold close to 2 million pieces of these cosmetic pencil the first year I had launched. and the reason and like and people go like about how how like how like it doesn't make sense but because um it was revolutionary at that time the product that i was offering not revolutionary in a way where the formula was like nothing nothing like it was out in the market that's not true there have been other uh formulas like great formula like the one that i had um and there have been a liner eyeliner categories that are in the price point that i was in it's just that until i had started nix cosmetics no one had married or merged the affordable pricing with the stylish packaging of a department store product it was as simple as that so uh when you You went to like, think about Chanel.

13:49Simplest packaging ever. It's black and it's got a white logo. That's it. Right? And that's how it was in the department store. And then when you went to the lower tier budget line cosmetics, it was really gaudy. Like, you know, it was really gaudy. um hot pink green gold foil like silver foil and like logos that are like out like out of proportion size logos and i just did not i i wanted my product to look like department store products simple chic and elegant but sell it at a price that was at the mass market price point And once I did that, these products like literally flew off the shelf. I have stories from like a retail, like one store customer who are selling 60 pieces of these pencils each day.

14:51Yeah, it was it was it was revolutionary. So one thing that it had done because the products were selling by itself. Because it looked expensive. the quality was really good and then price was really cheap that's the best combination for any business right value when you sell great product at a great price like you're golden right and that was what's going on and uh so these products were selling so fast and so well one thing i had never had to do was i had to like i really have to sell like i went to trade shows and I get a lot of booth exhibitions, but it was more so the customers were coming, like looking for me and coming to me instead of me going to have to go to a store and open an account or something like that.

15:44And I'm so glad because I am good at a lot of things, but one thing I'm really not good at is sales. Yeah, I'm not a sales-driven business owner or founder or CEO or like whatever you may call it. Yeah, I see. So what were some of the early challenges or biggest early challenges? Like, or was it just all flying? You know, like as ridiculous as it sounds, I really did not have a lot of challenges because the products were selling so well. I mean, I did have a little bit of a capital strain in the beginning because I had to pay my suppliers upfront cash but i was giving credit to my customers so between paying my suppliers upfront and then uh uh issuing credits to my customer and collecting so there was that little bit of a cash strain but besides that um oh um i had to move very frequently uh that was really stressful because we were, but on a good stress level, because we're growing so fast, we had to move like every agent to two years for the first four, five, four moves, I think.

17:02And then ultimately I said, like, I don't want to do it. Like I can't move around anymore. So I ended up buying a warehouse, a really large warehouse. And I actually stayed at that location until the exit of my company. but besides that I I mean hard work but I mean that's part of that's a that's a package deal if you are an entrepreneur if you are a business owner like that is given so I wouldn't even put that under under stress yeah so I'd love to explore something that you said before which is very interesting to me I've never heard this before you said you're not a sales person you You're not very good at sales.

17:45You're not a sales-driven entrepreneur. Can we go a bit deeper there? Because really, sales cue is all, right? And so, yeah, let's talk about that a bit more. Yeah. So when you look at a lot of entrepreneurs, you will see that a lot of the entrepreneurs are actually very sales-driven business owners or entrepreneurs. I'm a creative person. So my specialty is in product design, product packaging, formulation, marketing. That's my specialty. And I cannot for the life of me go to somebody and say, will you buy this? I don't know. I just can't. I just can't. But I think what it is is for a person to become successful and run a successful company, number one important thing is to figure out what you are good at and what you're not good at.

18:50And a lot of the times, a lot of the founding entrepreneurs want to do everything. And of course, in the beginning, you do have to do everything. But as the company grows, the most important is to really figure out, okay, my talent, this is what I'm really good at. This is not what I'm not good at. And hire the right people to take over the job that you're not really good at. And it's an admission. It's an acceptance that you have to give yourself. like some people don't like the acceptance that they're not good at a certain job job categories but you have to accept it and say you have to be able to accept it and you have to be able to let it go so you can find the right people to feel those positions for you so it sounds like very quickly or even when you first started you had that self-awareness you knew like even starting that you weren't gonna yeah like you were just gonna focus on product and marketing and yeah packaging i i did i did sales as well in the beginning of course because it was just one like myself and i think this is where um the luck factor comes in like so i do think sometimes like what if i had started a company and the products were not flying off the shelf immediately and i had to go and sell these products me being not a not an amazing sales person maybe it would have taken longer for the brand to establish or maybe the brand may not have taken off the way it did but these are the luck factors right so uh luckily the products that i that i i was selling were good enough for the products to fly off the shelf thus i did not have to do a job that i was not good i really appreciate your openness and honesty so um the products were flying off the shelf uh like how did you know when to expand the range and what did that scaling piece look like oh um i think the first two years we kept it very simple um i launched a second product category probably about two years later and then a third category about three years into the business.

21:24And from that point on, we're just like constant role of launching new products. And then of course the company was growing so fast. We're growing double digits every year. And like my team was growing and everything after that was like the first three years. I call first three years the, what do they call it? The infant mortality years in like the investment world, I guess. so it's the first three years whether you make it or you don't make it a lot of companies that go under go under within three years a lot of the company majority of the companies that make it past three years end up being a stable company brand and then they really start expanding and growing there's like a growth spur like at a three-year mark yeah so after three years that we started growing like really fast and um it was i really saw the growth spur in in three-year mark um another one came at like a five-year mark another one came at like a seven-year mark like they're like like there's like these like like like every couple of couple of years i would see a huge huge skyrocketing of revenue growth and it was pretty steady it was like every couple of years yeah I see so um if you fast forward to now 2022 you know there's a lot of brands out there so many products um what are the biggest mistakes that you see new brands making from all your experience um my god it is uh especially in my industry we are very highly oversaturated but even even with the saturations the brands that do really well do really well brands that don't do well don't do well um but some of the mistakes i see is um too much expense and this is because um i'm a classical uh entrepreneur so to speak i'm more about um like live within your means kind of an entrepreneur um so i see um other brands growing at a such a rapid pace without while sacrificing the profitability of the company And the thing is, sometimes it works.

24:07And then a lot of the unicorn companies that we see have become unicorns with that method. But to every one unicorn we see, there are 10 failures that we never hear about. So I think it's a very risky move. so talk to us about the exit to L 'Oreal on the sale that was 2014 what was that process like how did you know it was the right fit you know you gave up your baby talk talk to us about that um well I was ready it was my uh it was 2014 oh my gosh I can't believe it's been 80 years already oh my gosh um yeah it was 2014 so in 2009 I have brought on a um minority investors and I raised capital for a growth capital uh but um you know the company was my company was doing really well and we're financially completely stable uh because of my my method of uh living within the way the means and not overspending um I took the slower path like slower growth path path um so we were financially okay but the reason I brought in an investor is because I needed the the smart money um I wanted to get into like these large national retail accounts and I was kind of a roadblock.

25:41I just didn't know how to get in front of the buyers and really expand distribution nationwide. And so I wanted to partner with an investor who had that experience. And so I found an investor who had just gotten out of a hair care industry in the same retail account that I wanted to get into so so i sold 20 of my company to uh these investors and when the investors come into your company they all have a timeline um and at short end really short is three year to really long is 10 years but then the average is five to seven years exit for them right so in 2009 when i brought it brought on an investor it was at that moment the fate had been decided almost that there was going to be an exit of this company in the next five to seven years and 2014 uh 20 it was the winter of 2013 um uh we started talking about the idea of possibly exiting the company and we started to um interview the bank investment bankers directors in their company and i think the whole process took about eight to nine months um from the beginning to the to the to the final completion and it was really difficult uh oh my gosh but that eight nine month that we spent oh my god what like it's that acceleration that you get I mean the the highs and the lows and um it is such a adrenaline driven um yeah I mean I had the best time and it was such an amazing experience in the education educational period for me too I learned so much during that time and uh we finally consummated the deal in July 30 of 2014 and actually and what happened was like um I got paid on July 30 of 2014 and you know like most people think that like we would go out and like pop champagne and party all night but it was nothing like that I opened my computer that morning I went so I was still going into office every day um and uh that morning I went into my office opened my computer and then got a call from my attorney to check my bank accounts I go long gone and I counted all the zeros and I'm like okay it's done like okay like like it's really like it's really sold it's not mine anymore and before you sell the company um about 30 like about like 30 days before they ask you that they asked me to make a list of all the items that i wanted to keep personally um so uh like my desk so this desk right here uh it's been refurbished several times along the way but this desk is is um from 1999 actually this desk is a 23 year old desk that i have that i have moved around with me i probably like it's been into like 10 12 different offices with me uh i i will never get rid of this desk i will retire uh with this desk and uh yeah so it's my desk, my chair, like, you know, you make a list.

29:12And of course, like you can't, I can't take the desk with me. I had to hire a mover to come and take the desk. But I literally walked out with, you know, those what those mailer box, like those, like UPS, like UPS mailer box. I walked out of my office with like that one mailer box. And I just said bye to my team. And I walked out the door, got in my car came home and it was really surreal because I'm just like they're like this is it 15 years of my life and some zeros in my bank account and a box of files that's all I had and uh I actually crashed and I went to sleep as you have like because you're coming off of such a high um I passed out and I think I slept for like 12 13 14 hour non-stop I just slept the full time and the next morning I got up and I actually jumped in shower and started shampooing my hair oh my god I'm late and like in the middle of shampooing my hair I just went holy smokes like I don't have a work to go to wow so was it was it a time of like kind of did you feel lost after that or very very very I got so depressed oh my gosh um it's something that it's you know it is a subject that met a lot of uh entrepreneurs or business world did not talk about but this is actually very common especially amongst uh founding partners uh that a lot of people like me after an exit actually go through an existential crisis because we've very like i our identity like our everything life's purpose mission your identity like your hours like you like like you've baked yourself into the companies that you build and once that gets removed and you like and then you go wait a minute who am I like that's the first question right it starts with who am I and then why am I here um what's my like what's my what like what's my next purpose like um and suddenly you have all these hours because you're so used to working all the time uh and you have like all these like leisurely hours and you don't know what to do with the time like I literally We did not know what to do with my time.

32:01Yeah. So and I actually fell into a deep, deep, deep depression. And it was it was to a point where it was I was clinically depressed and I was going to see a therapist. Nothing worked. And so to save myself, I started as a company. Wow. And that really, that's what worked, just starting something else. I wouldn't say it really, like it worked. It's like there's no magic wand that you could just wave around and, you know, have all your crisis go away. It doesn't work that way. But, you know, it takes your focus off one thing and then you could put your focus in something else. And I think I'm a very different case, too, because majority of people, they would have families, right?

32:58So and the majority of people have families and children. So a lot of people's focus can be reshifted to family life, you know, spending more time with their children. But I did not have that luxury. so um yeah I was I was really I felt very lonely as well that was that was that was huge like feeling lonely yeah I see oh look thank you for sharing and being so vulnerable um so was your next business that you started bespoke beauty brands and well no no no this is my this is my third company um so I had a sunglass company in between that I had for about three three and a half years oh and what happened there complete failure complete and utter failure I had never experienced anything like that in my life um lost a lot of money but it was probably the best thing that had happened to me because it was it was truly experiencing my ego death and I'm very grateful.

34:16Like I would pay, like if I had to do it again, I would actually do it again. So I could learn from that mistake because, because what I learned from the mistake has, has taught me so much. So I am able to start my third business, apply the learnings that I had and make this company a success. We see. So can you tell us, you know, how did you start Bespoke Beauty Brands? Bespoke Beauty Brands, this one is started this. So after I've exited to L 'Oreal, I had a five years non-compete. And within those five years, it was really, really a strict non-compete. So I wasn't able to invest, advise, sit on board, or anything in the beauty space, which included color cosmetics, skincare, and nail care.

35:23So I wasn't able to, like, I was completely locked out of the beauty business. but time passes. Time solves everything. So five years had passed. July 30, 2019, my non-compete expired. So I started a new company on August 1, 2019. I gave it a 24-hour window. but I launched this company in August of 2019 and launched the first brand on October 18th of 2019. Little did I know that we were gonna go into a COVID lockdown. Life, life, you never know what she's gonna throw at you. And what was the idea behind the brand? Can you go? I'd love to know a little more. Yeah. Yeah. So over the five years I've seen I've seen I've seen the market shift.

36:29I've seen the consumers consciousness shift, consumer behavior. This new generation of consumers, they're so brilliant and they're so smart and they're very unique. And they like things that are very unique to themselves as well. So, for instance, like my last company, like our thing was we have something for everybody. We have 1 ,800s cube. And it was, hey, are you a punk rock star? Here's a product for you. Are you a 65-year-old? Here's a product for you. Are you a 18-year-old college kid? Here's a product for you. Like we have something for everybody. Like that was our thing. But what I started to see was a concept like that wasn't as popular as it used to be.

37:23Like people wanted something that is very, that spoke directly to them. Brand narrative, like the authentic brand narrative was so important. So what I decided to do was I wanted to partner with different celebrities, influencers, and launch a beauty products for the influencers and the celebrities. And in a very specifically targeted demographic consumer base and just focus on that only. so the first brand that we launched what is called kimchi chic beauty so she is a korean american drag queen rupaul's drag race season eight has two million follow about two million followers followers on instagram hugely popular like very adorable loved by everybody no controversy nothing everybody loves kimchi this sweet like sweet sweet sweet amazing uh drag queen so we're doing this brand and it's very specific like our colors are are are pink and yellow and green and mint and um it's very colorful it's loud um some of our our um item names can be a little obnoxious some people kind of like eee i don't know like so we have uh the the eyeshadow palette that we had launched with it was the name of the palette is is uh rainbow shards and at first everybody's like are you sure like you want to call an eyeshadow palette shards i'm like yeah let's do it like if we're gonna do if we're gonna use shards of any of the packaging or product like this is it like uh so it's very specific it's like and we have uh Currently, we have close to 300 ,000 followers on our own brand Instagram page.

39:29And we're already doing multi-million dollars. We just rolled out to 200 CBS stores. We have amazing sales meeting lined up with, I can't say the name right now, but a lot of the other national chain retail accounts as well. It's doing really well. And so the second brand that we launched was with Jason Wu. He's a fashion designer. And so when you look at the two brands, so Jason Wu, we rolled it out with Target. So currently we're in close to 700 Target stores right now. And when you look at these two brands, it's so distinctively different. the look and feel, the color scheme that each brand does not cross over.

40:23The consumer who buys Kimchi Chic is not Jason Wu's consumer. The consumer who buys Jason Wu's product is not Kimchi Chic's consumer. So what we do is we launch a smaller, more boutique-y brands that very specifically has brand narrative to the audience that we want to target. Yeah, it makes sense. That's really smart. So I'd love to tackle a little more on influencer marketing because it sounds like the strategy is, is you're finding influencers, partnering with them and creating, basically you're operationalizing and commercializing their brands, their personal brand. So for any new brand, you know, how important is influencer marketing in 2022?

41:08So I have a lot of mixed thoughts about this too. mixed thoughts mixed emotions uh um so here's the thing the reality is it is not as effective as it used to be three four five six seven eight years ago definitely not it does it still carry some weight yes it does you can start a new company launch something and then open a instagram account and you start with zero followers or you can partner with someone who has millions of followers and because of their platform of having millions of followers already when you launch your the brand and then launch an Instagram account you will at least at least minimum start 10 20 30 thousand followers so with kimchi the day we launched we gained 60 000 followers um with jason woo the day we went live i think we gained like 12 000 followers so on and so forth like it varies right but like that is very powerful for you for a brand with no follower like zero following that nobody knows, you know how much money you have to spend these days to get that follower or to buy customers?

42:39So you bypass that, right? But you cannot build an entire brand or a company just relying on a partnership with your influencer. What you have to do is you have to create products that is so good at an amazing price point that makes sense and the brand the products and the brand has to grow its own legs it has to stand on its own and then the influencer the celebrity like that the glitz and glam of that is just a value add and also it's just a kind of like that extra push in the beginning it'll give you a little bit of that push in the beginning but you it's not going to build an entire company just based on the name yeah i see and what are the biggest mistakes you see people making when it comes to i guess working with influencers whether it's partnering with with an influencer to create a brand or just using influencers in general to promote your brand oh my gosh i don't know what the other brands are doing like by me i i'm i'm not like i can't like i'm not an expert enough to uh answer that answer what other companies are doing wrong um but i think i think what it is is you have to what you have to satisfy like you're like an agent like your company becomes an agent between the consumer and then the influencer right and then um of course you know as a company you have what you want to do because obviously you want to run a profitable company so it's that having like constant conversation and the dialogue with your partner and really treating your influencer partner as your business partner and not just a brand brand name or brand sake like really like like going deep dive and treating them as your your business partner and getting them involved in the business as much as possible.

44:47So it's no answer to your question. It's the answer, no answer to your question. That's all good. That's fine. I respect you. I respect if you don't think you can really articulate anything from your experiences and you're sharing your experiences, then that's fine. I'm being honest. Well, look, we will wrap there. But thank you so much, Tony. Like, this was an incredible interview. you. I really appreciate you just sharing your experiences openly, honestly. Congratulations on all your success. And yeah, thank you so much for your time. Thank you so much. Hey, Founder Fam, thank you so much for tuning in today.

45:27And if you enjoyed this episode, please take the time to leave us a review and let us know what you think. This podcast is 100 % free. We work so hard to go out and find the most successful entrepreneurs and founders in the world. Your feedback helps us grow, improve, and even bring on more incredible guests and insights. So if you have a second, please take a moment, leave us a review. It really makes a difference. Thanks again for listening, and I'll catch you on the next show.