787 Shan Berries: CEO of Shades By Shan

0:00Kara Goldin:I am unwilling to give up, but I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. You just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don't get knocked out. So your only choice should be, go focus on what you can control. Hi everyone and welcome to the Kara Goldin show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world's greatest leaders. We'll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can't wait to get started. Let's go. This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs.

0:46Kara Goldin:When you're building a business, having the right people in the right roles changes everything. And as you look ahead to 2026, whether you're growing your team or tightening it, hiring with intention matters more than ever. That's where LinkedIn Jobs comes in. LinkedIn Jobs AI assistant helps you identify qualified candidates faster and with greater confidence. So you're not just filling seats, you're building a team that sticks. In fact, LinkedIn hires are 30 % more likely to stay at least a year compared to the leading competitor. And that kind of retention makes a real difference. And finding the right hire doesn't have to feel overwhelming.

1:30Kara Goldin:With LinkedIn Jobs' AI Assistant, you can skip the guesswork and jargon. It filters candidates based on your roles, specific criteria, and highlights top matches. So you're not wasting time digging through endless resumes. When you're running a business, you need a hiring process that's fast and focused. LinkedIn's AI assistant delivers 25 strong candidate suggestions each day, giving you the chance to invite the right people to apply and keep the process moving. It's a smarter, faster way to hire, and it's why I rely on LinkedIn jobs. Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden.

2:14Kara Goldin:Then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find top candidates. That's linkedin.com slash Kara Golden to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. Hi, everyone, and welcome back to the Kara Golden Show. Today, I'm so excited to be joined by a fellow Bay Area entrepreneur. Shan Berries is the founder and CEO of Shades by Shan. And if you have not heard of this incredible incredible beauty brand, you're going to be just blown away. So an inclusive, high-quality makeup brand built on purpose, representation, and real impact. After spending more than a decade in TV and radio, Shan made a bold pivot in 2018, stepping out of media, I guess for a moment, and into entrepreneurship.

3:14Alongside her sister, Erica, she launched Shades by Shan,

3:19Kara Goldin:not just to create standout beauty products, but to build a brand with heart. And boy, has she ever. So inspired by growing up with a single mom, Shan embedded giving directly into the business model. We'll talk a little bit more about what she has done with Mama Berry's Foundation, which is oh so cool. And Shades by Shan has since grown into a nationally recognized brand with viral bestsellers, strong retail partnerships, and a loyal community. So I cannot wait to hear a lot more from Shan all about how she's fueled this growth and exactly what she's seeing as she launches this beautiful brand in a crowded market.

4:06Kara Goldin:So Shan, welcome to the Kara Golden Show. Super excited to have you. Thank you so much. I'm so excited. I have to start by Bay Area because, you know, Bay Area girlies, we're far and few between nowadays, you know? I love it. And Shan actually is on a local station as well. So you may hear her in the afternoon. Yeah, 106.5 on Mix and I'm on from 3 to 7. So on your drive home from work or picking up the babies from school, I'll be on there. So make sure to tune in. That's awesome. Well, okay. So for listeners just hearing about Shades by Shan, how do you describe the brand and what does it stand for today?

4:50So we are an impact-driven social enterprise, how I like to call it. We're not just beauty, we are giving back. And anytime you shop Shades by Shanna Cosmetics, a portion of proceeds goes to help single parents in need. Because my sister Erica and I were both raised by a single mom here in San Francisco, first generation immigrants. And we saw how hard she had to struggle sometimes, you know, being by herself, English not being her first language, and us not having that support and that family here because she came with nobody. Um, so when we were starting Shades by Shan, because I, I was that everyday girl, you know, going to these big box retailers and spending my whole paycheck on makeup, um, and just to be, go home and kind of be disappointed sometimes in the quality and consistency.

5:42Um, I had this idea because also you didn't see representation with Latina brands, like you didn't see Latina brands on shelves. And so I had this idea. I went to my sister and I said, Hey, why don't we start our own because our mom also instilled that in us is someday you have to start your own business because you're never going to make money working for somebody else. And that really stuck with me because being in radio and television, like all I know is how to talk. I don't know this, you know, Excel or Google Drive or all these technical things. And so, but I knew makeup And I knew good and bad.

6:20So when we were looking for charities to donate proceeds to, because that was important for us, we couldn't find any that solely focused on giving back to single parents in need. And so we started our own 501c3 and we named it Mama Berries because I go by Shan Berries. My mom goes by Mama Berries. And we named it in honor of her, the Mama Berries Nonprofit Foundation. So anytime you buy our makeup, it goes to a good cause and it goes to helping single parents. And we didn't realize that it was going to become and snowball into what it is today. But we've been able to help hundreds of single parent families with financial assistance across the United States.

7:08because as you know, single parents, you know, you're on one income and it's tough. You hit tough times and not having that support and that resource. We are that resource for single parents and we help with, you know, when times get tough, like daycare, car payments. Oh, you're at PG &E bill. We are that scrappy brand. We are not scared of getting our hands dirty and being in the trenches. And that's what we do. And we started with two products. Now we have over 200 products and it's been such a crazy journey.

7:45Kara Goldin:This episode of the Kara Golden Show is brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs. When you're building a business, having the right people in the right roles changes everything. And as you look ahead to 2026, whether you're growing your team or tightening it, hiring with intention matters more than ever. That's where LinkedIn Jobs comes in. LinkedIn Jobs AI assistant helps you identify qualified candidates faster and with greater confidence. So you're not just filling seats, you're building a team that sticks. In fact, LinkedIn hires are 30 % more likely to stay at least a year compared to the leading competitor.

8:26Kara Goldin:And that kind of retention makes a real difference. And finding the right hire doesn't have to feel overwhelming. With LinkedIn Jobs AI Assistant, you can skip the guesswork and jargon. It filters candidates based on your roles, specific criteria, and highlights top matches. So you're not wasting time digging through endless resumes. When you're running a business, you need a hiring process that's fast and focused. LinkedIn's AI assistant delivers 25 strong candidate suggestions each day, giving you the chance to invite the right people to apply and keep the process moving. It's a smarter, faster way to hire, and it's why I rely on LinkedIn jobs.

9:12Kara Goldin:Hire right the first time. Post your job for free at linkedin.com slash Kara Golden, then promote it to use LinkedIn Jobs' new AI assistant, making it easier and faster to find top candidates. That's linkedin.com slash Kara Golden to post your job for free. Terms and conditions apply. I love it. So you spent over a decade in TV and radio. How do you think that that career helped you to launch the career that you're in now? Totally. So it's funny because my mom also instilled like, how they see you is how they treat you. And she said, you always have to go to work looking your best. And it was hard because I was doing morning show radio for 12 years.

10:02And I had to wake up at 330 in the morning to do my makeup and my hair and put on a cute outfit. And like, and it would be those days where I'm like, I'm just gonna go in a hoodie and some Uggs and just a beanie. And those days would be like, oh, well, Pitbull's here and you're going to interview him. And Selena Gomez is passing by. And you, yeah, like Flo Rida's here. Are you ready to interview him? And I'm like, oh my gosh, why is it always the days that I don't do, I don't do my makeup, you know? And so I really needed to figure out a way to look my best, do my makeup in a quick, fast way so that I looked ready when I needed to be ready.

10:46And I didn't want to spend hours and hours because I didn't have that. I needed to sleep. I needed to wake up so super early. And so I kind of mastered this little way of doing my makeup in under 10 minutes because I learned my lesson those times where it's like, okay, you look like crap and you have these huge opportunities. Well, there, that's your lesson. So that really got me into, you know, I've always loved makeup. And, and it kind of just got me into just find trying to find like the latest and greatest every and I'm I was obsessed with going into these big box retailers and being like, Okay, what's on?

11:23What's out there? What can I buy? Oh, what's what's a new innovation that they have? and then also buying stuff that I was like oh let me buy this lipstick that I've been wearing for the past five years just to go back home and be like what they changed the formula like this isn't even in the right shade like what's going on here so I think that all kind of gave me this little this little base but I also saw this was right when the big influencers were coming out with their makeup lines. And I was that girl with 17 computer screens open being like, hey, did you log in? Like getting all my co-workers to try to help me get these these lip kits and palettes and just to finally get them and be like, but this shit sucks.

12:10Like, what are we doing here? You know, and I just can't imagine that. Like what, you know, people are excited to receive this product and it's not good. So that's kind of when I was like, well, you know, I don't have a huge following. I'm not in the millions. I think maybe at that point I had maybe 5 ,000 followers. But to me, I go, you know, I have a little bit of a following here in the Bay. And I know good makeup from, you know, why can't I come out with something like that? You know, I'm over here judging them. why can't I do it? And so that's when I kind of had this idea. And it was just supposed to be a side hustle.

12:48It was just to like make money. And I never thought in a million years it would get to this point. But it kind of coincided with my sister, Erica, she was living abroad in Asia for 12 years. And she I told her my idea. And she is the you know, she is very alpha data driven, an analytical, business-y person. And I told her my idea. She's like, listen, I think this is great. I'm getting burnt out here. I want to move back home. I want to set roots down. If you're serious about your idea, I will help you start your business. And in six months, I'll leave you to it and I'll let you take it from there.

13:28And it's been almost eight years and she's still by my side. and we do everything together.

13:36Kara Goldin:That's so great. So you launched, so you're online, D2C. You also launched in Amazon and then you made the decision to launch with JCPenney. So how did that all come about with the partnership with JCPenney? And what have you learned about, I guess, the differences between retail and D2C? Totally. So with D2C, it's funny because, again, we didn't know anything. Like we didn't know, we had our whole shop set up on GoDaddy. And the night before we were going to launch, our cousin who had like a small t-shirt brand, he was like, no, you need to be on Shopify. Like that's where you see all your analytics, you see all your data, like you need to be on Shopify.

14:26And we're like, oh my gosh. So that night we stayed up till three o 'clock in the morning, shifting everything you know not everything we had two products but like you know trying to make it look cute over and figuring out how to even use shopify um not even knowing how to use a label printer not knowing that you needed to even have a po box like we it was like we learned everything from scratch in our mom's garage that was where we had our that's where we started um so really learning D2C. I remember when we started shipping out products in, you know, little bubble mailers, our return address was our mom's house.

15:10And one of our one of the people that bought it, they're like, hey, I just Google Google this address. And it looks like it might be your mom's house. You might want to think about changing that. So literally, when I tell you, we started from nothing and making all the mistakes. And that's how we learned along the way. And so when, and again, shipping out of our mom's house, like we, we, and even my sister was like, don't tell anybody, like we work from her garage and like we ship out from garage and we house the makeup here. Like people might get grossed out and like, don't say it. And I'm like, oh, okay.

15:46yeah, we won't, we, I won't, we won't say it, but like, I'm sure everybody knew, but they just didn't care. They just wanted to support. Um, and that was a huge pivotal point for us because when we did launch shades by Shan officially and the mama berries nonprofit foundation, the day we launched, we sold out of our inventory that we thought we would last us six months. And that's amazing what just happened like what just happened here and how did the jc penny partnership come about well so yeah so we just started growing very slowly but surely and someone from jc penny bought our stuff and they sent an email to the head buyer of jc penny and said hey i discovered this brand and their nonprofit organization.

16:41And if you don't hop on them, some other retailer will and you're forever going to regret it. And when I saw this email, I go, I called my sister because I was having the crummiest day. I just had had a baby that was also sprung on me, which was a surprise and was going through a lot of postpartum depression as well. And I was just having a really bad day, but I get this email from this person from JCPenney. And I called my sister. I go, Erica, I think we're going to get into JCPenney. And she's like, what? What are you talking about? And so we set up the meetings. It's crazy. And it's just, yeah.

17:25So when we got the new one, what's also crazy too, is that we thought that we were just going to be kind of piloted into some of the local stores here in the Bay, you know, maybe the San Bruno location and Hayward and San Jose, maybe, you know, some local stores. And we were super excited even to just have a chance and maybe three or four stores. But when we when we finished our last meeting, they go, No, we actually want every single one of your products. And we want to bring them into every single store we have in the nation into 610 stores. and I'm rejoicing with our CMO, Juan, who has also been by our side.

18:05Me and Juan are just like rejoicing, like, oh my gosh, yes, we made it. And I remember closing the computer and my sister being like, yeah, but how the fuck are we going to do that? Like, that takes money, which we don't have. So it's just, you know, and because again, she's the like data analytical one. She's like, oh no, this is just never going to work. and we went and I'm telling you, we went to every single bank, every single loan shark. We went to every single place we could think of to loan us the money. And everybody said no. Everybody said they're like, you don't have anything to show.

18:44You don't have any collateral. You don't have anything. You guys just started like, who are you? You know, no one wanted to take the chance because it was, you know, going to be a very hefty loan for some for people that had just started had just started a couple years ago. So we actually had to go back to JCPenney and have and we we're going to have to gracefully decline because we just we can't do it. And like as much as we want to, like we've tried everything and we can't do it. And JCPenney came back and they said, we believe in Shades by Shan so much. We believe that you're going to be the next big thing and we're going to front you the money.

19:30And they fronted us the money to get in.

19:35Kara Goldin:Wow, that's amazing. That is such a great story. Yay for JCPenney. I mean, that's incredible. Incredible. Well, and what's the lesson learned there? I mean, there's always a way. If you don't ask, you don't receive, right? I mean, there's got to be, I think so much of the time you think this isn't going to happen and oh well, but those people that actually go and figure it out like you did are the ones that actually make it happen. yeah and you know it's so funny because we didn't know that you could do that like we didn't know that was a thing and and the more we talk to people in retail they're like shan but that is not a thing like that does not happen you are like that's that does that's not a thing and i'm like wow like i we just we feel so blessed and jc penny has been such an incredible partner but there were so many other people, they're like, you don't want to go into big box retailers.

20:38They're going to eat you alive. They're going to drain you. They're going to eat you up. And it's been nothing short than amazing. So if we would have listened to that noise as well, we would have never taken the opportunity or the chance. And they've changed our life. So yeah, a lot of lessons learned there.

20:59Kara Goldin:that's awesome so how do you um so do you ship directly to them and then do you need a lot of staff to make sure that it's stocked and things like that that's another funny um story is that when jc penny was finally like okay well let's talk logistics um do you have a loading dock where we can send our jc penny trucks and me erica and juan were like we have a loading ramp it's our mom's driveway. You know, like we didn't have that infrastructure set in place for Shades by Shand. We were still packaging orders out of our mom's garage. And they go, yeah, that's not gonna work. We need a, you know, a 3PL warehouse situation.

21:46And we're like, oh my gosh, like, how do we even do that? And, and learning logistics and transportation and import, export, and And like all of that is a whole other language that we also had to learn ourselves quickly and swiftly because we didn't want to miss out on this opportunity. So we went out and we have a warehouse at 3PL that JCPenney Trucks go to. But we also recently got one on the East Coast as well. So we have two warehouses where we house our makeup. um so it's it's kind of a pinch me moment where it's like oh my gosh there's it's there's so much of it and and and we have to we had to kind of make some moves and and get that warehouse so um so that was a whole other lesson you mentioned some of the uh products

22:39Kara Goldin:that you launched with so you launched with two now you have over 200 the mission is a fan favorite shade how do you decide which products and shades to bring to market but also the names i love them so yeah so great so um some of you'll see um for people shopping on our site or at jc penny or or on amazon a lot of the names are people that helped raise us so in our highlighter palette There's Dora, Luchi, Irma, and Marjorie. And those were our aunts or like my mom's friends that, you know, were are like our aunts. And we wanted to pay honor. We wanted to honor them because they were our village and helped us tremendously when my mom when my mom like needed help.

23:28So that's in our highlighter palette. And then some of our lip glosses like Gabriela is our cousin. Luna is Juan's last name. And so everything has a meaning for us and a special place in our heart. And whenever we're launching products, we go straight to our customers. Believe it or not, like we have relationships. They are our community. And when we are looking to launch and make new innovation, we essentially create focus groups with our followers and our customers. And we're like, what do you guys want? What is missing from the assortment? What is on your wish list from Shades by Shan? And they will tell us and we're like noted, boom.

24:11All right, we're on it. And we will take whatever they want because they are our P1s. They are the ones that are that rally for us. And believe it or not, like we've never had something go mega viral. We've never had that aha sellout moment from an influencer standpoint. We never had an influencer, you know, talk about us and we sell out. Everything has been through word of mouth. Everything has been organic through our community. people spreading the word people talking about us and that to me makes me feel prouder you know honestly because yeah it would have been it's it would be freaking awesome if an influencer would just post about us organically and like we have all this growth but it's been slow incremental and it's been the our community that's really exploded us and little by little by little and And so for us, we're just so grateful for that.

25:11We're so grateful to them. And that's why we do a lot of community events. We do parties for them. We don't do these big, lavish influencer parties. We're like, hey, we're going to do a pop-up at our local Mints and Honey coffee shop in Burlingame. Like, come through. Get color matched. Let's take some cute pictures together. And like, let's, you know, how are your kids? How was the baby shower? Like, you know, where's your registry? I want to send your baby something like that is how we build. That's how the relationship we have with our community. And I think a lot of brands don't have that.

25:48And it's probably why Shades by Shan is where it is because our community just goes hard for us. And we're so appreciative.

25:55Kara Goldin:Where have the majority of people found you in terms of, you know, social media? I know you you're the gel eyeliner went viral on TikTok and no magazine. and yeah, like where is there one platform in particular? I would say Ipsy. Ipsy has been a huge marketing channel for us. And we've done over 10 million boxes with them. And people all over the United States and now in Mexico are getting these boxes. And then they're like, oh, what is this brand? And they're like, wait, this is awesome. I want more of this. And then they go to JCPenney to replenish or they come to our DTC. And that's how we've gotten a lot of growth through our products being in the Ipsy boxes.

26:46And another crazy story about Ipsy is that they actually came knocking before JCPenney. and I remember being at Las Pencas Taqueria here in South City with my sister and Juan and we get this email from Ipsy and they said, hey, we'd like to have a conversation with you. They wanted to put 100 ,000 of our units in their boxes and we were ecstatic, right? And then again, we're looking for a loan. How do we get money? Because 100 ,000 units, that's like$100 ,000, right? You know, that takes money. So we try to get loans. My mom was like, do I need to refinance my house? Do I sell my house? And we're like, no, mom, like, if anything, we need to help pay off this house, you know, like, no, no, we don't, we're not going to refinance, we're not doing anything.