Green beauty market sales are expected to reach £339m in the UK this year according to Statista, and one beauty brand is reaping the rewards of this popularity.
KinKind is celebrating five years of offering customers sustainable, plastic-free beauty products, specialising in shampoo and conditioner bars and moisturising bars, gift sets and body scrubs.
In the last 12 months, KinKind has launched its haircare bars on Ocado, secured two rounds of investment and recorded its highest-ever sales on Amazon and Shopify.
Founder Victoria Coe is now focused on carrying out its strapline – “the better way to beautiful hair and skin” – to put beauty at the forefront while still championing sustainability.
She talks to Retail Week about her successes and challenges, launching on Ocado, and the wider issues facing small sustainable businesses.
What are some of the challenges involved in creating your own business?
“As a personal challenge, fundraising with a knowledge gap. Fundraising as a woman – only 2% of venture capital money goes to women-founded businesses – is a challenge. When you don’t know about it, it’s like a whole industry in itself that’s smoke and mirrors.
“For me, it’s been a massive challenge but also great personal growth. When you’re trying to fundraise and run a business, you’re working night and day on top of your day job and it’s tough.”
You recently launched on Ocado. Are there any other retailers that you’re keen to work with?
“With Ocado, they put us on the Ocado Roots accelerator programme, which has been great and it’s already doing really well.
“Another big challenge is getting into other retailers. Taking plastic and taking high water out of beauty products is fundamentally the right thing to do. When Procter & Gamble and L’Oreal came in with shampoo bars, I honestly wasn’t worried because I knew it was just going to be a tick-box exercise to show that they’re doing it for eco reasons.
“And what I thought would happen, has exactly happened. It was all a big noise coming into the market, they didn’t support it properly because they still needed to protect their base business and they are now exiting the market very quietly.
“This has tainted the market as now big retailers say shampoo bars don’t work. Really, these products have not been supported properly or executed properly in bricks-and-mortar retail. So perhaps my biggest challenge is getting someone in bricks-and-mortar retail to give this category a new chance as beauty – not just as an eco-only brand.”
What’s been your biggest achievement over five years?
“We offer a full range of shampoo and conditioner and our products work. Therefore, we have a solid repeat business and a high percentage of customers are through subscriptions.
“Our most recent initiative on just one of our shampoo and conditioner bars, which is called Give Me Strength, with rice protein, is really driving the business forward. That has tapped into the consumer insight around hair strength, hair thinning and particularly the menopausal market. We’re leaning into that and then the eco side of things comes as a happy second.
Would you branch into fragrances or cosmetics?
“We’ve got two big launches coming this year, and while I can’t tell you what they are, they are very exciting.
“We’re delivering a better way to beautiful hair and skin and sticking within our footprint within our brand. I can’t see us ever going into makeup or stuff like that but I guess, never say never.”
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