EP237. Rethinking skincare- The slow beauty revolution

The beauty industry operates along the lines of trying to sell you as much stuff as possible. And as we've explored numerous times in different episodes on this podcast, applying too many products to your face can sometimes even damage your skin. So then beauty becomes less about what you actually need and more about what someone just wants to sell you. And this is not a sustainable model because it encourages too much stuff in the world, it empties our wallets needlessly, and ultimately it doesn't help our skin or hair. Now, as we know fast fashion is a problem and so is fast Beauty. My guest today has taken quite a firm stance against that mainstream philosophy of take, make, dispose when it comes to cosmetics. Lia Yu strongly believes that skincare should slow down, which is also why she started Crave Beauty with the intention of challenging the beauty industry's norms. In our interview today, we're going to explore how Lia has created a brand that has a strong community and embraces authenticity and connection over everything else to try and change the narrative. Welcome to Green Beauty Conversations in which I challenge the beauty industry to become more sustainable, champion independent and green beauty, and encourage you to join me in changing the beauty industry for the better. I'm your host, Lorraine Dallmeier. I'm a chartered environmentalist, biologist and the CEO of award winning online organic cosmetic formulation school Formula Botanica. We have tens of thousands of students in over 190 countries around the world who study with us to become organic beauty formulators and entrepreneurs. Visit our website@formulabotanica.com to try our free online formulation course. And if you want to be the first person to know what's happening in green Beauty, make sure you subscribe to this podcast in your favorite podcast app. So in today's episode, I'm joined by Liah Yu, a renowned beauty influencer, skincare expert and entrepreneur. She gained popularity through her YouTube channel where she shares skincare tips that empower her viewers with knowledge. Coupled with the experience that she gained while working at Korea's largest beauty conglomerate, Leah has an international social media reach of over one and a half million followers and built her credibility by helping hundreds of people achieve clearer and healthier skin by sharing her unconventional acne fighting tips. Based on her own skincare journey, Leah founded Krave Beauty in 2017. Known for its intentional, sustainable approach, Krave Beauty's philosophy promotes slowing down the fast fashion like beauty industry. Leah's impact extends beyond digital platforms though, and she continues to empower people worldwide and to develop a positive relationship with their skin. Hi Leah, how are you doing?

I am so good. Thank you so much for having me. As a longtime fan of this podcast, this is such an honor to be not only talking to you, but also just recording an episode with you. It's a huge privilege.

Oh, it's such a privilege to have you on. And thank you so much for listening for all these years as well. That's so incredibly special. So I love that you're here with me. So can you please start by introducing yourself to everyone listening? What do you do?

Yeah, totally. My name is Liah Yu. I'm the founder of Krave Beauty. But before founding my skincare brand, I started as a YouTube content creator and I started documenting my acne skincare journey. And I definitely went down the rabbit hole of applying more and more and more products, especially acne treatments, product that are more harsh and that are there to just basically put a band aid on. And I was basically abusing my skin with drowning and overwhelming my skin with so many products. And after doing that for so many years and not seeing a clear result from applying more, I just went cold turkey on my skincare regime and I just literally simplified my skincare routine into three steps and that was cleanser, moisturizer and SPF sunscreen. And I, I was so shocked by the results. Within like two, three weeks, my skin was starting to, I want to say, like, my skin was starting to breathe and my skin was starting to thank me for not overloading and drowning the skin. And that led me to creating content and sharing what I learned from just battling that acne journey. And I think that really resonated with a lot of people around the globe who are really desperate, who tried everything on the planet, it seems to fix our skin. But a lot of my subscribers and followers have seen great results by just simplifying their routine and just subscribing to that minimalism idea and philosophy. And that really led me to start Krave Beauty, a skincare brand that pretty much aims to not only slow down the skincare industry that's become a lot like fast fashion, but also to kind of empower people to believe in their skin a little bit more. Because oftentimes when we're so exposed to social media, TikTok influencers, YouTube creators like myself, you get literally paralyzed by the amount of information out there and amount of just unsolicited advice that are presented to you when you have acne prone skin or what have you. So we wanted to basically implant the idea of your skin, is already smart and knows how to regulate repair, rejuvenate on its own. All you need to do is to really listen to your skin's craving, which is where the name comes from. And yeah, that's where it all began. And that's what I do.

That's amazing. And I'm sure many people listening will resonate with your story. I've certainly heard this from many people over the years that they just, they kept overloading their skin and then they just suddenly detoxed and cut it all out and realized that actually their skin didn't need all that stuff in the beginning. Just to paint a picture here because you alluded to the fact you have subscribers, you have a YouTube channel. Just tell people a little bit about your YouTube channel as well, because it's quite sizable.

Yeah, so over time I built a following of over 1.2 million subscribers on YouTube. And it was definitely a very gradual process. I'm sure, Lorraine, like yourself too, by one episode at a time. You're gaining new followers, more downloads, and it definitely wasn't a hockey stick growth for me when building the YouTube platform. But I think what really helped the growth of the channel was just being authentically myself and also not being afraid to put myself out there because it is sometimes vulnerable to also share what I'm going through with my skin when I don't really have a lot of answers myself. And I think just the pure documentation and sharing that journey definitely attracted a lot of people who are in the same similar, you know, journey as well for trying to fix their skin, clear their skin. And I just definitely felt like I grew up with my followers and subscribers over time. And over time also by experimenting a lot of different skincare tips and tricks, I definitely found, I guess, what works for my skin and what works for people. And the way that I was preaching or I was making content about acne was so far different from any dermatologist what they would tell you and mine was all about less is more. Actually apply facial oil that are high in linoleic acid. So these are the skincare tips that acne prone skin are not really used to hearing. And I think that definitely piqued a lot of people's interest. And also you have nothing to lose when you're trying a minimalistic skincare routine to going from like 14 step. So I think, you know, one by another that slowly changed people's skin. And I think the power of testimonial really just got the message out there. And a lot of people who are struggling with acne started just coming to my channel for Advice and tips.

Well, congratulations on your success and also congratulations for putting such an important message out into the world because of course platforms such as YouTube are typically used by influencers to show off their beauty hauls. It's more, it's more about, you know, more is more, not less is more. So I think what you're doing is absolutely incredible. Let's talk little bit more about Krave Beauty then. So you've created this lovely brand. What sort of products do you make and sell?

Yeah, so all of our products, I would love to say that those products are designed to work with the skin and not against it. And first and foremost, the fundamental belief that we do have is that your skin knows how to do everything. Products cannot outsmart your skin. So our skin, our skincare products are super gentle and much more focused on skin barrier health and hydration focused. And our bestseller product is definitely Great Barrier Relief, which has been, which has come out in 2018. And that was when I started talking about Skin barrier health online on YouTube. And not a lot of people, at least in the stateside, were really aware of what the skin barrier is. That was a time where the ordinary of the world were coming out with like high percentage of acids. Literally teenagers just burning their skin left and right and inflaming their skin by overdoing a lot of skincare products over applying a lot of skincare products. So Great Berry Relief was definitely what really I would say picked up the brand and put us, put us on the map. And then next we started just focusing on acne prone skin. So the most recent launch is called Oilala and that is an oil serum that's designed for acne prone skin. And a lot of the times, you know, you would think that oil on top of oily acne prone skin would just further aggravate or further clog the pores, leading to more breakouts. But we also found out that oily acne prone skin actually is deficient in linoleic acid topically in their sebum composition. And that what, that's what leads to your sebum becoming a lot more thicker and gloopier and waxier and even comedogenic. So it's more prone to lipid peroxidation, which also is a culprit to, you know, getting more inflammatory breakouts. So when you add linoleic acid high oils on topically, it can actually balance out your sebum composition and then it will really help your sebum to become more lubricative and more nourishing instead of it becoming like another pore clogger. So the Oilala has, it has launched in last November and it has been gaining so much traction online because the testimonials are so real. It doesn't really have any active ingredients like benzoyl peroxide or bha, but it's a really, really gentle oil based serum that people started applying and seeing results. And I fundamentally believe that your skin knows how to do its job and your skin care products are there to really support it.

Yeah, I love that. I love your product names by the way. Oil La La, Great Barrier Relief. Really clever. I'm sure everyone's sitting there taking notes at home going, oh, see these are good names. How can I take inspiration from this? How would you say that what you've built with Krave Beauty is different to what we're seeing from other beauty brands? Because it sounds to me like you're really listening to what people want. How are you differentiating yourself from the mainstream?

Yeah, it's interesting because I think in modern days in the beauty industry, a lot of the businesses are fundamentally built to sell. And I think that's a really basic difference of Krave Beauty versus others. Because if you are building a business to sell, there's a certain track and there's a certain model where you adopt, where you get outside capital to hyper fuel growth and you need to basically show growth like 300%, 500% year over year to your investors. And the ultimate game is that your businesses are then primed to sell or to get acquired by the big conglomerates in the beauty space. But I think that model has its own flaw where it's not really considering the stakeholders or the customers at all. Sometimes you have to launch products where you don't believe in it and that's often the case where it leads to more just like product proliferation and especially the unnecessary ones, I would have to say, or the products that creates unnecessary demands that weren't even there in the beginning. So I see from a product development perspective or from a business operations perspective that the key difference to creative beauty, to other people or other brands are the way that it's designed to actually serve its stakeholders and shareholders. Last. And that doesn't mean, that doesn't mean that we're not growing or we're not interested in growing. I think Great Beauty or businesses like us who are bootstrapped, who doesn't have investors who are really listening and working with their customers, need to grow big in order to also build a great case study that you can grow without the need of launching new products that you can grow by just listening to, listening more or respecting more of your customers and stakeholders involved in the business. But I think that's definitely the business side of the things. I think product side of the things, in terms of the key differentiator is that most of the times, what I see a lot in the current US and the western market is that a lot of the products are very active driven. And I think that's definitely influenced by the ordinary, the inky list of the world where it is so affordable and so accessible to apply 10% niacinamide or 30%. Aha. And I think that kind of trained the skincare customers to be able to, you know, shop based on Actives, not necessarily really listening to what their skin needs. So our products are not opposed to using Actives, but we use the most lowest effective percentage so that it doesn't basically trigger their skin or, you know, I wanted to make sure that our products are as gentle as possible to work with the skin, not against it. Again, so that's definitely a key differentiator. Most of the times, people who burn their skin through so many Actives almost come to our brand and as almost a last resort. And I feel like they just find peace with the skincare products that we offer.

That's beautiful. And that's so sad to hear about people burning their skin and damaging their skin. I mean, you said it earlier, abuse of your skin almost. I mean, what you've been describing sounds like the opposite of fast beauty. Is this concept of slow beauty something that you really embody in the brand then?

Yeah, I think Slow Down Skincare. Slow Down Skincare was definitely a campaign that we initiated in 2020 when there were so much hype and just a lot of talk about skincare brands, skincare products. A lot of the beauty customers were finally opening their eyes to taking care of their skin. But that was also the time where a lot of the beauty brands or skincare brands were launching products every two weeks. It almost feels like, or every week, it seems, and there were new launches after another. And I think when you think about it, the key difference from makeup versus skincare is that makeup I would categorize as a fashion item that you would express in different color of lipsticks or different color of blush colors. But within skincare, skincare is not a fashion item. It's not a trend. It should not be trendy. Your skin biologically, you know, physiologically, doesn't change. Every day doesn't change, doesn't need different products every single day. So that kind of made me rethink of why is the beauty industry launching so many skincare products and why do these brands do feel pressure to launch so many products? And I think when I was asking that question, that led me to think about how the product was developed and what the new product development meetings are like. When I was working for a beauty conglomerate job back in Korea and it always started from shareholders interests, meaning that you really need to maximize the revenue and the top line sales. And if you need to fill the gap, the easiest way to fill the gap in terms of sales is to launch new products. So I definitely feel like the beanie industry is trained to basically sell 10 products to one person instead of selling one product to 10 people. And that's the model that we wanted to change and challenge. And it starts from us. So that's why in 2020 we actually told the entire world and our customers saying that we're not going to launch any new products because we're confident that we can still show growth without needing to launch more products. Because at the end of the day, it's basically about are you selling 10 products to one person versus selling one product to 10 people. I wanted to create another example case study in the industry where we wanted to show growth by expanding our customer base and expanding our reach instead of expanding our product portfolio unnecessarily.

How do you find those 10 other people though? Because that's probably the question a lot of our listeners have as they're listening to you at the moment.

I mean, it always goes back to how visible you are on social media or where your potential customers are, if that's on Amazon or if that's in person or if that's on home shopping like QVC channels. So I think just finding where customers are and then making sure that you're as visible as possible. And for us it was through TikTok and YouTube and just by purely word of mouth from other creators, peer influencers who have really supported the brand. I think as long as you are also transparent about how you make decisions within the business, that's what creators love to talk about because that's also inside information. And also it's refreshing for them instead of just receiving a PR package that doesn't really mean anything, like when they buy into the philosophy and the operation principles of the brand, like you want to be able to talk about it. So I think just fundamentally, if you are a brand that has a lot of story too, that's worthy Enough for these creators and influencers or even your customers to spread to their own network and community. I think that's when the magic really happens.

Because I can imagine some people might unfairly say, you know, because you have this huge YouTube channel, it was really easy for you to find community. But what you're effectively saying is, you know, it wasn't just what you created, it was also about getting your mission out. I mean, how important do you think the big mission is in reaching all of those new people?

I think nowadays with the younger generation, it is extremely important now that a lot of the people are really caring about how they're spending their dollars and also even boycotting the brands that they don't really subscribe in terms of the values and the leadership's principles or their action or misconduct or what have you are now trained to really vote with their dollars. And I think with that customer base, it is important to have a very clearly defined mission. And also telling your story in that way.

Yeah, that makes perfect sense. So you talked about your slowdown skincare initiative. You have another initiative as well called the Waste Me not initiative. Can you tell us a bit about that? What is it?

So Waste Me not campaign was born out of our production mishaps and also excess inventory or the pilot production batches that were failed. So this was a campaign basically opening the, opening the curtains of the production and the manufacturing process. And I think when it comes to sustainability, a lot of the customers in beauty space naturally think about, yeah, packaging footprint. And that is huge, right? That is a huge part of the product. Life cycle and end of life is extremely important for these tangible packaging. But what people do not see and would never imagine is how much waste it gets created in the entire production manufacturing process. And this was during COVID when the global supply chain crisis was happening, meaning that all of the shipments, ocean freight were getting stuck in port for a month and month and months. A lot of the global beauty brands were not getting their inventory in because their shipment is stuck at the port. So you have visibility or predictability on when you would be able to get the next shipment or next batch into your warehouse. So that said, you know, we have our bestseller Matcha hemp hydrating cleanser, which was a steady seller. So meaning that we were able to kind of like predict the demand for a year worth. So we placed a huge, huge, huge, or the biggest order in history to our manufacturer, knowing that, you know, we, we can sell this in about a year. And then we did not anticipate what would happen in that production process. But when our manufacturer produced the big batch, the product turned out to be really different in terms of the texture and the final product and the product itself. The original product Matcha cleanser is really bouncy and jammy and really jiggly. But the final product of that production batch came out to be super flat and very watery and very fluid. So that was a huge, I don't know, a huge quality issue. And of course it's a usable cleanser, but we can't really quite honestly say that this is the regular Matcha cleanser to our customers. And people definitely make their refunds knowing that product formulas change and whatnot. So just imagining all the things that can go wrong if we launch this product. This happens a lot in the beauty and any consumer products. If you're in the food industry, if you're in the fashion industry, you do have production mishaps like this where you need to basically just do a do over. And oftentimes the manufacturer would then ask you to basically dispose the entire batch so that they can just remake it.

And you'd have to pay for it as well, of course.

Exactly. So that's when my environmental consciousness kind of kicked in saying that like, I physically flew out to Korea, did all the quarantine during COVID time to see this like huge batch in person. And when I saw it in person, it was literally, I just couldn't dispose this or like put like wash this down the drain because it was just simply a lot. And that's when I had the idea of it's still a cleanser. Maybe this can just cleanse, or people can use it as a body wash and we can just make a limited edition Matcha hemp body wash that people can basically buy it at cost and also know what goes behind the scenes in terms of what can happen. So that was a great storytelling opportunity, but also an education opportunity for people who have clearly no idea on what the waste with, how much waste gets generated behind the scenes. So that's the basically genesis of the Waste Me not campaign, just to understand completely.

So you went to your customers and you said, okay, guys, we ordered this huge batch. I've seen it for myself. I flew out to Korea, I've seen it with my own eyes. We had a mishap, but we don't want to waste it. So now we're turning it into a body wash. Come and buy our limited edition. Those were pretty much the words you used then.

Exactly. And exactly. I think it's interesting because when Your brand behaves more like a human in terms of owning up the mistakes and also being transparent about your mistakes and also solving the or showing that you are solving the problem in a creative way really does resonate with a lot of people more than you might actually think. So we didn't know that this campaign would become such a huge campaign down the road where it went viral. And other brand founders personally reach out to me wanting to do almost like a joint waste me not campaigns with their rejected batches with their excess inventory. So I think it definitely kind of, yeah, started something and really, really proud of that. And then the second kind of pillar to that campaign was all the pilot production batches. So when you develop a new product, and especially if the texture is very unique or it's really hard to create in terms of formulation, you have to run a mini batch of a huge scale up process to see if what you created in the lab setting translates into a huge kind of manufacturing site. So we were developing our makeup Rewind, which is a jelly oil cleanser to remove your makeup. And because it's a jelly oil and oil normally stays very flat and super fluid, we wanted to kind of jellify it or solidify it. And we created that and approved the final formula in the lab setting in a little beaker, however, you have to test the entire scale up process and make sure that it translates when you scale it up in terms of big production. And after running the first pilot production, we noticed that the jelly oil is not a jelly at all, it's just an oil. So that's why our manufacturing and chemical engineers really had to come together, problem solve and see what we can do in terms of the process architecture and the process redesign in order to solidify the jelly. And that required at least five pilot productions. Throughout that process. You obviously generate a lot of product waste that is not bottled. It's just sitting there in the manufacturer. And oftentimes I think innovation definitely comes with a lot of trials and errors. And these were those trials and errors that we're facing and we were generating. And I thought that, you know, this is also a perfectly fine makeup remover on its own. Even though it's more flat, it's just fluid in texture, it still will remove people's makeup. And that was another product that we actually launched at cost or sold at cost to our customers, saying that this is one of the pilot production batches, it's perfectly fine to use it, it's just not the texture or the quality that we expected. And people went Ham for it. First and foremost, it was so cheap. Right. Because we're selling it at cost. And second of all, I think people really enjoyed the story of getting almost like an insider batch or almost like an abnormal, like really original batch that people never really see from other brands. So that really did just spread and spread and spread. And I think with we bottled into a few thousand units and that really did sell out very quickly, I think within a month time. Like the Matcha body wash that was a limited edition. This make everyone pile batch that was a limited edition to. Yeah, it's never to be found anymore. And I'm glad that we don't have any more miss outs. But it just naturally happens, you know. I'm sure you also understand from a formulator perspective.

Yeah. And it may well happen again. But you now have a way of communicating with your, your audience, your community really, and getting them on board with the whole story, which I think is so very clever. And I'm sure, as you said already, other brand owners have reached out to you, but I'm sure this may even pick up steam with other brands in the future. I think what you're doing is incredibly clever, really innovative. I love everything you stand for. So what's your big vision for creative beauty? What do you want to achieve with it?

When I think about running my business, I always look at Patagonia just simply because there's not a lot of great examples out there like Patagonia in terms of holding the company privately for many, many decades. And I think that's really important. Just going back to our earlier conversation about the key difference of how our business operates based on what the customer truly needs versus what the investors need. So I think I want to definitely create an example of a beauty brand just growing steadily over decades and decades under private ownership. And that is really important because I think that also will set a new standard of new founders, new entrepreneurs within the beauty space coming in and thinking a little bit differently other than building another beauty brand to sell to Estee Lauders of the world, l' Oreals of the world. And I think that's what I want to do. And it requires a lot of staminas and it requires a lot of perseverance because oftentimes when you know things get a little difficult, you do want to, you do get distracted by all the big exits by your peers and those like big investments that your peers get. But I think just keeping my eyes really fixed on my North Star in growing this company, setting new standards within the beauty industry. And doing in a way that is as sustainable as possible and as stakeholder focused as possible would be my vision. And I want to keep. Well, we are almost seven years in and I hope we can at least I hope I can still do it in 20 years.

And so do I. I love what you've got, Leah. I think what you've got here is fantastic. I love your messaging. I love everything that you're doing. Your initiatives are clever. They're, they're human and I can understand why people connect so much with them. So congratulations for everything you've built because it's wonderful. And thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. So if people want to come and buy from you, follow you, learn more about you, where can they do that?

Yeah, my personal Instagram, social, YouTube can be found at Liau L I A H Y double O. And then for all the Krave Beauty goodies, you can find them at kravebeauty.com with a K. So that's K R-A-V-Beauty.com amazing.

And we'll include all of those in the show notes, so do go and click on them and follow Leah and go and check out KraveBeauty. Thank you so much for joining me on the podcast today. It's been such a lovely privilege to all talking to you.

Oh my God. Likewise. Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you. I would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. Has Leah's story left you feeling inspired for what's possible for beauty brands? How do you feel about slowing down the beauty industry? Leave us a comment on our social channels as both the Formula Botanica team and I love hearing from you. And if you want to hear more about some of the topics we covered, please do delve back into the podcast archives. Some great Examples include episode 110, in which I shared my thoughts on the way that the beauty industry always encourages brands to launch as many products as possible to stay newsworthy, and why this isn't compatible with a sustainable industry. In fact, this episode was titled Reject Fast Beauty or episode 64, in which Mae Lindstrom came to join me for the episode. And this episode was also recorded as a video, by the way, which is available on our YouTube channel. And she talked to me about the way that she keeps her range small and manageable for exactly the same reasons that Leah and I discussed today. May is a powerhouse, and this was a wonderful interview. Or episode 138 titled does the World Need More Beauty Brands? In which I asked whether indeed the world needs more beauty brands. And spoiler alert. I had a rant about us needing new beauty brands who challenge the way that things have always been. There is a wealth of information in our old episodes and I do encourage you to go back and listen to them. So thank you for joining Leah and I for this latest episode of Green Beauty Conversations. I really hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please do leave us a five star review so that other people can enjoy these conversations too. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever your favorite podcast app is and stay tuned for the next episode. Follow Formula Botanica Formula Botanica on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, Pinterest or LinkedIn. We are everywhere and come and give me a Follow Lorraine Dallmeyer on Instagram and LinkedIn. Visit our website@formulabotanica.com and sign up for our free online Formulation course today.