I Built A 6-Figure Skincare Brand While Raising Two Kids
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
My name is Ditti, and I’m the Founder and CEO of Kerala Botanics, a luxury skincare brand. Our flagship product is the Ayurvedic Vitamin C Face Oil.
Last year we made about $2k/mo and we’re on track to having a 6-figure business by the end of this year.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
I discovered Ayurveda in my early 20’s when I was struggling with PCOS & fertility issues.
Multiple doctors told me I wouldn’t be able to have kids. I refused to accept that and looked for other ways to heal myself.
After 5 years of struggling to get pregnant, I discovered Ayurveda, the sister science of Yoga, and one of the world’s oldest holistic healing systems developed more than 3000 years ago in India. In just 3 weeks, my symptoms went away, and I finally had regular cycles after 6 years of irregularity. One year later, my son was born. You can read more details about my healing journey here.
I became obsessed with Ayurveda which is based on the belief that health and wellness depend on a delicate balance between mind, body, and spirit. Its knowledge was preserved in ancient Sanksrit textbooks. It turned out to be also big on beauty & longevity. According to Ayurveda beauty is just the side effect of health.
I also got certified as an Ayurvedic Coach.
When I was pregnant with our daughter I felt immense creativity. I wanted to do something that I’m passionate about but also had business potential. After a few weeks of research with my business-nerd husband, we thought of Ayurvedic skincare.
When I turned 30 I got into skincare. I didn’t want to look old. But I struggled to find good products. Especially having 2 kids running around all the time - I wanted a simple, yet effective skincare routine. Since I couldn't find one, I thought - I’ll make it myself.
The other criteria I had was: I wanted to run the business, instead of letting the business run me.
My priorities were family first, and business second. In my case, that meant I wanted to be a stay-at-home mother, but still have a creative outlet. Build something impactful, in a way that it wouldn’t consume me.
Take us through the process of building the first version of your product.
It started with research. Months of research.
I read everything that was out there, including the latest scientific papers and 3000-year-old Sanskrit textbooks.
That’s the blessing and the curse of building a product for yourself. Good enough was not good enough.
The next big hurdle was finding a manufacturing partner who shared the same values.
This was unknown territory for me. I had been selling online for years, but it was mostly my artwork on Etsy. I didn’t know anything about negotiating with manufacturers, MOQs, inspections, shipping delays, customs, and 3PLs.
I remember so vividly when I received the sample in our mail. Interestingly, it was the same day we brought our daughter home from the hospital. I literally birthed our daughter and my very first product of this Ayurvedic business at the same time. What a beautiful coincidence after all those years of struggling with infertility and finding my purpose.
Then we went step by step until we finally had our first batch. We finalized the design and ingredients list and sent everything into production. We had to wait for raw ingredients for a long time. Once the products are done it needs to go through quality testing.
In an e-commerce business, the biggest upfront cost is the inventory. It was no different for us. Since we are bootstrapping this business we tried our best to get good deals whenever we could. In total, it still costs us ~$14k to get the first batch of products in our hands.
We were planning to launch in the 2022 Christmas season. Instead, we launched in 2023 Spring. The shipping took 4+ months and was more expensive than the initial estimates which was very frustrating.
Finally, on a sunny day in April 2023, the forklift arrived at our house. (Yes, we didn’t have a warehouse and my husband had to build special shelves in the garage to store all the products.) What a day! So much work goes into creating your product especially if it’s one of a kind. It was an epic feeling to hold something in my hand that I created from scratch.
Describe the process of launching the business.
Before we could launch we also inspected the products. The texture, smell and design all came out amazing.
But there was one problem.
The manufacturer forgot to add a security seal - which is a requirement by Amazon for beauty products.
So we had to heat shrink 2,000 pieces by hand. That was a long night.
We honestly didn’t have much of a launch strategy in mind. We set up our Amazon storefront and the website with Shopify, took some product photos and just hoped for the best. (Since I’m a creative person, the photography and website building part was one of my favorites.)
On Amazon, we knew we had to get reviews, so we entered into Amazon’s Vine program for new brands. We sent out 30 products and the reviews were amazing. This helped kickstart our listing.
On Shopify, we struggled. We didn’t know much about marketing, and let me tell you - posting nice images on Instagram doesn’t cut it anymore.
Since we were able to do the photography, web-design and development all in-house (my husband is a UX-designer) we were able to cut down the costs quite a bit. We did have to incorporate and file for a trademark (required by Amazon), so our legal fees were ~$1,500.
Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
Our biggest channel is Amazon. Here are the steps that worked for us:
Step 0:
You need to get “Brand Registered” and sell on FBA to even stand a chance. This is a long process and it’s probably a good idea to get started while your products are being manufactured. That way when the product is ready, your listing will be ready too.
Step 1:
First of all you need a killer listing. Think about it, there’s plenty of products and you need to stand out. So you’ll need: product photography, a great description, and reviews. If you can do it on your own, that’s great, if not don’t be afraid to invest here. We hired an Amazon specialist copywriter to write the product listing and the A+ content.
As I mentioned before the Vine program is great to get initial reviews. But you must have a good product. The reviews from there can be very harsh, they are not there to serve you, they are there to serve Amazon customers with honest reviews. You can ask friends too, but be careful, Amazon is smart and you don’t want your listing to be banned.
Step 2:
Once you have a decent listing you can start to layer in some PPC. This is advertising right from within Amazon. In the beginning, you just want to launch a few basic product display campaigns and then you can get more sophisticated as you go.
The volume and the competition on Amazon is crazy. There are 100k searches for ‘Vitamin C Serum’ every month. The buying intent is huge, you just need to be able to get in front of your audience and convince them that your product is better than the thousand other alternatives they have.
We started with some keyword research (we used Helium10) and after we had run some campaigns for a couple of months it was time to scale and optimize. That’s when we hired an Amazon PPC specialist who now handles our Amazon Ad account.
We have always played the long-term game, and by creating a truly great product we started to see repeat buyers. In March of this year, Amazon allowed us to place the Subscribe and Save button on our listing. We are currently working on converting more of our traffic to subscriptions.
How are you doing today and what does the future look like?
We are currently profitable, but it is honestly a week over week struggle. At this point we validated that the product works, so it’d be ok for us to lose money on the first-time buyers if we could convert enough of them to subscribers. But it’s a fine line, especially since we’re financing this business with our own money. Honestly, we haven’t cracked the formula yet.
Our next goal is to increase our revenue to $10k / mo. At this scale, we’re going to start opening new doors. We can launch new products and a more sophisticated marketing strategy. We want to build a strong brand outside of Amazon.
Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
We had a trademark issue in January of this year. Trademarks are an area we know nothing about. We followed the process Amazon suggested, came up with a name, bought the domain, and hired a trademark attorney. Our trademark was pending until on Christmas Eve we got an email from the lawyer. It’s a Cease and Desist Letter from Rituals - one of the world’s largest skincare brands.
Our original name was Kerala Rituals - and as it turns out they owned 12 trademarks for the word ‘Rituals’ and they wanted us to shut down. We were able to negotiate a deal with them that gave us some time to sell existing inventory and change our name, but it was a scary couple of weeks.
Lesson is that trademarks are being taken seriously, there are free tools provided by the government to check existing trademarks. So just save yourselves a headache (and $2k) and check the trademark directory before you pick a name.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
Other than the two obvious (Shopify and Amazon), we use a few tools that help scale operations and save time.
ScaleInsights is a great tool once you’re ready to scale your Amazon PPC.
Buffer is great for social media scheduling. It’s a huge productivity boost and time saver.
Klaviyo for email marketing and popups on the website.
What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
We took a course by Foundr on how to sell on Amazon. There are a lot of BS courses out there, but this one was quite helpful especially for beginners like us.
Books: Profit first, Sell like crazy
Podcasts: My First Million, Limited Supply
Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Play the long-term game and build great products. Do not try to get-rich-quick. It almost never works, and even if it does it never lasts.
Don’t be afraid to charge more for your product. If you’ve truly built something great, people will pay the price.
It is possible to prioritize your family and have a business at the same time. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. I spend on average 10-15 hours a week on this business, while my kids sleep. They are my priority, and it’s great to have this business as a creative outlet.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
Yes!
We are looking for a Growth Marketer who can help us establish a strong marketing strategy and sell through our current inventory quickly.
Position: Growth Marketer, Part-time
Description: Kerala Botanics (https://keralabotanics.com) specializes in offering Ayurvedic skincare products designed for the modern age. Founded by Ditti, the company merges ancient Ayurvedic principles with modern skincare practices to promote holistic beauty and wellness.
Kerala Botanics is seeking a part-time Growth Marketer to establish a strong brand presence and achieve $10K/month in profitable revenue. The immediate goal is to sell through the inventory of their Vitamin C Face Oil within 2 months. You will be responsible for creating and executing a comprehensive marketing strategy from scratch, focusing on paid social, SEO, and content marketing. E-commerce experience is a must, and a background in beauty and skincare is a plus.
As a growth marketer, you will be experienced with data analytics, website CRO, channel CRO, customer segmentation, and full-funnel testing across each channel. These initiatives will drive product validation and revenue growth for the brand.
Paid:
We are looking for someone willing to put skin in the game. We are open to offering salary + result-based compensation.
If this sounds interesting, apply here: [email protected]
Where can we go to learn more?
- Website
- Amazon store
- How I went from infertility to 2 beautiful kids and an Ayurvedic Skincare business
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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