Cindy Austin

Here’s my go to market plan for a hemp Bev company wanting to scale DTC today - Tech & Brand Foundation - Shopify website; simple theme - Klaviyo for retention - Product photography & 3D renders - Clear voice & tone guidelines; what’s the story. Don’t just say it’s a lemonade to not get a hangover. This matters more than the look & feel at this point - Setup pixels on your website for Meta, Reddit etc - Setup Social Snowball for affiliates & influencers - Google Search Console / Bing Webmaster & SEMRush to track your SEO. - Triple Whale for attribution - Elevar to enhance data to send more flows to new customers. - Recharge for subscriptions - JudgeMe for reviews. - Wholesale Groilla if you want to do B2B as well (without upgrading to Shopify +) Yes Shopify is the death by as thousand apps ($300-400 easy) GTM - Seed 50-100 people with product. Choose 2-4 unique angles / hooks. Generate ton of UGC to test later & get early social proof - Choose 1-2 strategic towns to focus on. Provide drinks to key influencers in these towns; based on your market demo & encourage social sharing etc. - Do popups at venues that allow & align - Win retail in small areas - Begin top of funnel media campaigns focused on driving consumers to store. Offer an incentive. Capture email along funnel. - Call every customer you can, record all the calls, dig into things that matter (flavor, brand, messaging etc) & build a database to help tweak. - create localized category / location pages to help with SEO. - Know your margins & numbers. It’s likely you’ll lose money on first sale; so track LTV closely & really understand who is your VIP customer & why. - Laucnh small campaigns on Meta & Reddit to test the ads you built. Understand how it works & doesn’t work yourself. Media buying isn’t hard anymore; it’s the creative process that is. But it can be hard to pay someone to figure it out bc may take a while & could get expensive. - Install Microsoft Clairty to get user journey data on the site. Take initial conversion rate after 3-6 months of data & find a conversion rate specialist & have them spend a few hours auditing & offering ideas. Then slowly test them. - Segment audience best you can for emailing as list grows. VIP customers get one message. New customers get a different. Etc - Offer a sampler pack for a reduced rate to encourage early adoption. Try and win ever customer back thru email & outreach. Do what doesn’t scale early to scale. Focusing on smaller / specific geographical areas will improve chances of winning & then use it as a case study to go win more local areas.

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The $15 Million Mistake Most Beauty Founders Make (And Don't Even Know It) I'll be the first to tell you... most founders think their biggest problem is competition or cash flow. But after working with dozens of $3M-$30M beauty brands, I've discovered the REAL killer: Your governance is a hot mess. And it's costing you millions in valuation. See, when that potential acquirer walked away from my $12M beauty brand (despite 40% growth), their feedback hit like a punch to the gut: "Too founder-dependent. It's a job, not a business." That stung. But it was worth millions in education. Here's what I learned the hard way... The 5 Governance Mistakes That Are Killing Your Exit Value: ❌ You're still approving Instagram posts at 11pm ❌ Your "CMO" can't run a campaign without your blessing ❌ Three people think they "own" digital marketing ❌ Your team texts you about inventory decisions on weekends ❌ You haven't taken a real vacation in 2+ years Sound familiar? Here's the brutal truth: A founder-dependent business trades at 0.8-1.2x revenue. A properly governed business? That's 2.5-4x revenue. On a $10M business, that's a $15-25 million difference in exit value. The Fix Isn't More "Hustle" - It's Clean Separation: ✅ Operators execute daily (without you) ✅ Advisors guide quarterly (with you) ✅ Founders lead strategically (above the chaos) One client implemented this framework before going to market. Result? They sold for 3.2x revenue instead of the 1.1x their competitor got six months earlier. The difference? The competitor's founder was still approving social media posts. Ready to stop being the bottleneck in your own success? 👉 Download my free Governance-Ready Org Chart Template: {{PLANNER_URL}} It includes the exact role mapping worksheet, meeting rhythm templates, and transition timeline I use with clients. Stop being the hero of your business. Start being the architect of your exit. #ScalingBrands #Governance #FounderLife #InvestorReady

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Most DTC brands think they’re ready for retail. They’re not. Here’s the reality: They don’t have the revenue to fund a retail launch. They can’t drive a single shopper to shelf. Their ops team isn’t built for retail timelines or volumes. They don’t understand how the channel actually works. Their pricing falls apart once slotting fees and margins hit. And they’ve never set foot in a category review. Miss any one of these and your product won’t just stall - it’ll get discontinued, fast. The next wave of winning brands won’t be built online first. They’ll be built in retail - from day one. 📷 DTC brand Blueland crushing it in retail execution at Erewhon

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Attention Beauty Professionals: You should absolutely be leveraging product sales to build your long-term wealth. I’ve seen stylists turn product sales into the equivalent of their 401K building a nest egg that carries them beyond the chair. And here’s the best part: it doesn’t take a massive product line to start. 👉🏾 If you’re a barber using mousse on clients…create your own. 👉🏾 If you’re an esthetician…have a moisturizer with your brand name on it going home with every customer. 👉🏾 If you’re a hair stylist…brand just one signature product that you send customers home with to use daily. You don’t need 12 products. You need one intentional product, and a plan to funnel that profit into a retirement or savings account. Stop making money exclusively for other brands. In the next 12 months, make sure you’re building equity in yourself. Your future deserves it. 🚀

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🚨 HUGE NEWS for Beauty & Personal Care Brands on Walmart.com! 🚨 Walmart just announced a major update to its Prohibited Products Policy, and it’s a game-changer for legitimate brands in the Beauty and Personal Care space. In the coming days, Walmart will be restricting product listings in these categories—allowing only brand owners and authorized distributors to sell. 🙌 This is exactly the kind of move the online marketplaces needed to clean up the category and put real brands back in control! 🔥 What This Means for Brands: ✅ Say goodbye to unauthorized resellers in these categories. ✅ Regain pricing, branding, and customer experience control. ✅ Improve the customer shopping experience by dealing only with the Brand or authorized seller. Hopefully this is just the first category to see proactive changes made! Walmart please roll this out across your other categories! Work with brands in a deeper more meaningful way! #walmart #walmartbeauty #walmartpersonalcare Cassandra Craven

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Most DTC brands never make it into retail. Not because their product sucks. Not because they don’t work hard. But because they treat retail like it’s just another DTC channel. It’s not. Retail is its own beast with new rules, new expectations, new buyers. If you don’t have: • Sell-through data • Retail-ready packaging • And a founder-led pitch that makes buyers care… You’ll get ignored. This is the same framework we use with brands doing $1M–$30M in DTC, helping them unlock big-box and specialty retail.

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These "micro trends" generated over $1M in sales. The beauty industry calls them micro trends because they think they're small. Festival makeup. Game day looks. Concert glam. Traditional beauty brands can't move on them because by the time they've planned, manufactured, and distributed a product for a trend, that moment is already over. They're building for what was popular 12 months ago. We built our entire business model around moving faster than that. When we saw people putting loose glitter on their faces at festivals and marathons, we immediately created glitter freckle patches and had them ready for festival season. When Taylor Swift fans started showing up to football games in team colors, we already had products they could wear to express that. Here's the framework for spotting these opportunities: 𝟭. Watch behavior, not buzz. Look for what small groups of people are actually doing repeatedly rather than waiting for the TikTok trend to go viral. If you see the same behavior across multiple communities, that's your signal. 𝟮. Ask what's missing, not what exists. Festival-goers were using loose glitter. It was messy, time-consuming, and required skill. What was missing was instant, clean application. That gap is where we built our product. 𝟯. Build for speed, not perfection. We can develop and manufacture a new product in five days when we need to. Most brands take 12 months. Speed is the competitive advantage when you're chasing cultural moments. 𝟰. The moment is the marketing. We don't need massive ad budgets because we're showing up exactly when people are looking for a solution. Game day is happening now. Festivals are this weekend. The demand already exists. What the industry dismisses as “micro trends” are actually macro opportunities for brands that can move at the speed of culture. Halloween makeup that takes 30 minutes to apply? We made it instant with patches. Team spirit that requires wearing oversized jerseys? We made it elevated and feminine. Concert looks that need makeup artist skills? We made them accessible to everyone. The brands still planning 12 months ahead will keep missing these opportunities. They'll keep calling them micro trends to justify why they can't capitalize on them. We'll keep building for them and calling them what they really are: macro opportunities hiding in plain sight.

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"How did you secure your retail network without massive following?" It's a question I am asked often. When I started, everyone had opinions: "You need a strong DTC strategy" "Retailer won't take you seriously without a big community" "You can't get shelf space if you can't drive traffic" Well, here is the truth: We don't have big social media presence, and we are now stocked in nearly 2000 retailers across the UK, from Harrods to Boots, John Bell & Croyden to Holland & Barrett. I didn't follow the playbook, but if this is of value to anyone, here is what I did do: 1. Start with a product that works. Something you believe in fully. That solves a real problem and delivers real results. Without this, nothing else matters. 2. Do the unscalable thing. I went door to door. Literally, starting with independents, 5 stores, then 10, then 30. It wasn't about the revenue it was about learning. With independents you can have so much more insight and flexibility. I got to see how people shop, where products perform best on shelf, how teams talk about muscle and joint health, what questions customers ask, and what makes someone go from 'not interested' to 'I'll take two." These stores became my live lab. They helped shape our pitch, our messaging, our shelf presence. This became the foundation for all that followed. 3. Translate those insights into bigger wins. When I approached major retailers, I didn't just show up at trade shows. I studied the buyers: Who they were, what they cared about, where they were before their current role. I knew their faces in advance, sent thoughtful samples, connected on LinkedIn. When we finally met, my name rang a bell and I had real data from the field. I could speak to the performance, positioning, repeat purchase, and how we support sell through. This combination helped me secure accounts that would have otherwise been out of reach. 4. Be relentlessly proactive. I didn't assume the job was done after listings were confirmed. I worked closely with the buyers on forecasting, aligned on what success looks like, stayed ahead of timelines and ran activations to support the stores. As a result, we went from 30 to 600 to 1200+ retailers in 6 months. 5. Stay close to the ground, even now. We have built a field team of brand lovers who visit stores, train staff, check visibility and offer demos. Great products don't just need distribution, they need advocacy. As for where we are now, we are in the midst of our biggest brand evolution yet. A new visual identity shaped by the lessons of the past few years. It's not a fast process, because we refuse to compromise, from colour matching to packaging to new SKUs, we are building for long term trust. We are are no longer where we were, but also not quite who we are becoming. This is the in between and I am learning to appreciate that when you build with intention, it is not about quick wins, it's about longevity.

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Figs, a DTC medical apparel co, was offered a ONE BILLION dollar buyout in December by Story3 capital They said no, and everyone thought they were crazy. Just 6mo later, Figs reports earnings & rockets past $1B market cap I've been covering Figs for a bit now; & they're clearly executing. Breaking down this quarter's report & why its so important. If you're a DTC operator, take notes ✍ 1/ Revenue FIGS beat on sales with $152.6M (+5.8% YoY) vs consensus at $134.6M That's great - but what really gets me going is the 3x beat on adj. EBITDA - $19.7M v consensus at $6M I mentioned last qtr that the company is making promising progress, and this qtr it showed up in a big way 2/ Gross Margin Here is where I see Figs really shine - a new distribution center is helping generate leverage on selling expenses, reducing 3pts QoQ as a % of revenue. Last qtr I said gross margin would expand with reductions in discounting and sales expenses, and I WAS RIGHT. This gross margin expansion unlocks a WORLD of opportunity for figs. 3/ Contribution Margin Of those 3 points, 2 fell down to the CM line DESPITE marketing increasing as a percent of sales modestly. This is a very powerful signal! 4/ Net Income All of the above leads to a huge uptick in net income and margin for FIGS - YoY net income growth of 545%. Figs has made a step change in profitability and the fundamentals are all there. The business is founder led with strong surrounding management and the market is LIKE SEVENTY BILLION DOLLARS

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The 3-Part Margin Formula Every Skincare Founder Must Nail (or Risk Bleeding Cash) Margins aren’t math. They’re survival. 💡 I learned this the hard way. Our biggest sales month once ended in a loss because 40% retail margins + 30% festive discounts wiped out everything. On paper, it looked like growth. On the P&L, it was a bloodbath. Here’s the cheat code no one puts in their investor decks 👇 1️⃣ Base Cost × 3 = Bare Minimum Survival Landed cost = ingredients + packaging + labor + compliance. Multiply ×3 minimum. That’s oxygen, not greed. 2️⃣ Retail Margin = 40–60% Sephora, Nykaa, salons, distributors — they all swing the axe. If your MRP can’t survive this, offline scale will crush you. 3️⃣ D2C Discount Drain = -25–35% Festive offers, coupon codes, influencer links. On average, a third of MRP disappears before you see a rupee. The Formula: Final MRP=(True Landed Cost×3)÷(1−Retail Margin)÷(1−D2C Discount) Example: True landed cost = ₹120 (for a 50ml serum) Step 1: ₹120 × 3 = ₹360 (survival price) Step 2: ₹360 ÷ (1 – 0.5) = ₹720 (after retail cut) Step 3: ₹720 ÷ (1 – 0.3) = ₹1,030 (after discounts) 👉 Final MRP ≈ ₹999–₹1,049 Launch at ₹499 because “it looks attractive,” and every order bleeds. Price it right, and you live to scale. 💭 Founders — did you start with 3×, 5×, or 10×? What margin trap taught you the hardest lesson?

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Walmart’s new policy for Beauty and Personal Care sellers is a strong move in the right direction. They’re introducing stricter vetting requirements. From now on, sellers must provide proof of brand ownership, FDA or MOCRA documentation, or verified claims for every product listed in this category. This change targets one of the biggest problems in marketplace commerce: unauthorized resellers diluting brand value and flooding listings with duplicate, often non-compliant products. Walmart is making a clear statement. If you're not a brand owner or authorized distributor with paperwork in place, you won’t be selling here. For brand owners, this is a major win. It protects pricing, improves customer trust, and puts control back where it belongs. For resellers, it signals a narrowing window. The days of listing without documentation are coming to an end. If you're managing Beauty or Personal Care products on Walmart, get ahead of this. Review your catalog, prep your compliance files, and be ready for the rollout. The platforms are evolving. So should your strategy. Are other marketplaces going to follow this lead, or will they keep tolerating the gray areas?

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In beauty marketing, we’ve all seen the big celebrity endorsements. Glossy, glamorous… but often, distant. At Richelon, we’re taking a different route, one built on trust, relatability, and real conversations. That’s why we’re investing in the micro-influencer movement. Why? Because people trust people not ads. Studies show 69% of consumers trust influencer recommendations, compared to a fraction who trust celebrity endorsements. Micro-influencers? They’re skincare enthusiasts, beauty bloggers, and everyday people who share their lives with a close, engaged community. Engagement is where they shine. While large influencers average 1–3% engagement, micro-influencers can reach 7–20%. This means more genuine comments, more product conversations, and a higher chance of turning interest into sales. It’s also smarter for the long game. Instead of putting all our budget into one celebrity post, we can partner with several passionate creators each deeply connected to their audience. At a reasonable certain amount per post, we can run multiple targeted campaigns, test what works, and scale quickly. This is more than marketing. It’s about building a grassroots community of people who’ve seen, loved, and used Richelon over time. That kind of authenticity can’t be manufactured in a studio. In the beauty world, trust is the most valuable currency. And with micro-influencers, we’re banking on it. #InfluencerMarketing #BeautyCommunity #BrandTrust

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Is off-price beauty just overstock? Is it expired? Is it even real? These are the questions I hear constantly. Here's what's really happening in off-price beauty: The Authentication Problem: A significant portion of beauty products aren't authentic brand formulations. Instead, they're generic products manufactured with licensed logos - essentially private label goods masquerading as prestige brands. The Expiration Issue: Many products are past their prime, but expiration dates are often obscured or removed entirely. That "fresh" skincare might have been sitting in warehouses for years. The Quality Compromise: Even when products are authentic, they're often from batches that didn't meet brand standards - think color variations in makeup, separation in formulas, or packaging defects that brands rejected. The Supply Chain Reality: True brand overstock makes up less than 30% of off-price beauty inventory. The majority comes from manufacturers producing "inspired by" formulations specifically for discount channels. The Safety Concern: Without proper supply chain oversight, these products bypass the rigorous testing and quality controls that legitimate brand products undergo. This creates potential skin reactions and safety issues. Off-price beauty operates in a regulatory gray area where consumer protection is minimal and brand authenticity is rarely guaranteed. The industry needs transparent sourcing practices and clear labeling that distinguishes between authentic brand overstock and private-label alternatives. Consumers deserve to know exactly what they're buying and brands deserve protection from counterfeit damage to their reputation. Until then, maybe pass on that $8 "luxury" serum....

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