Yve-Car Momperousse [00:00:25]: Hi, my name is Yve-Car Momperousse and I am CEO and Founder of Kreyol Essence. For me, it’s a matter of poverty alleviation.
Kelly Kovack [00:00:39]: Things are not always as they appear. I’m Kelly Kovack, founder of BeautyMatter. There’s a myth floating around the beauty industry that it’s never been easier to launch a beauty brand. I’ve been building brands for over two decades, and perhaps the barrier to launch has never been lower; sure, you can wrap labels on some private label product, throw up a website, and you’re in business…but, do you really have a business? I would argue that the beauty landscape has never been more complicated, more competitive, and takes far more money than it ever has. Yve-Car Momperousse, the founder and CEO of Kreyol Essence, is a poster child for indie beauty. They ticked all of the boxes of success: a commitment of a million-dollars in seed funding, a slew of press coverage and editorial awards, they were a part of the Sephora accelerator program, and retailers were lining up; yet, they were close to going out of business, until they secured a deal with Mr. Wonderful on Shark Tank.
Alright, well, thank you so much for joining us. You know, we’ve met before, sort of at various events, and we’ve interviewed you on the website, but when I saw the Shark Tank episode, and your husband bringing me to tears, I’m like, “I have to have her on the podcast,” and I literally like, immediately sent you an email.
Yve-Car Momperousse [00:02:10]: Thank you, I appreciated it.
Kelly Kovack [00:02:12]: So, you know, I think I want to approach kind of our conversation a little differently, because I think you have an amazing story, and kind of it ties to sort of your heritage and background, but your brand has a much bigger mission than just sort of an ingredient story, and you describe it as a for-profit, social impact company. So, can you explain what that is, how it ties into the story, like sort of how that all connects, both sort of from the DNA and the story, but from a business perspective?
Yve-Car Momperousse [00:02:48]: Yeah. So, Kreyol Essence, as you stated, is not just about the products that we provide to our tribe, and our tribe is our customer base, right, because we are a big family, and I think when I started the company, it was always important to me that I do something that has purpose beyond myself. I think growing up with immigrant parents, I always saw my father helping others; he was born here in Brooklyn, and I saw him teaching GED classes, there was always someone calling us asking us for advice, my mom was a pillar of the community as well, and traveled a lot to Haiti, and I think from a young age, it was instilled in me that I needed to make sure that life wasn’t just about my needs, but I needed to give to others. So, in starting Kreyol Essence, you know, I had a hair catastrophe. I was having a personal problem where my hair fell out, and there’s nothing more devastating for a woman; it’s different to get a haircut, but it’s another thing when your hair falls out, and that devastation that I felt, that I wasn’t beautiful, or, you know, that I wouldn’t be seen as attractive to others, that impacted my self-confidence, thus what I can do in the world, because you need to take bold action confidently. So, my first thing was, there are other women who feel like this, who can’t go out into the world and be their best selves if they’re dealing with hair loss, whether because of a bad style job, a hair dresser that added too much heat, like I went through, or if it’s because of an autoimmune disease, it’s because of cancer, and they need a natural product that’s actually efficacious and works for them. So, that’s the first part in making sure that other women, and men who might be suffering from hair loss, can get what they need so that they feel good and can go out into the world and be amazing; but, the other aspect of that is well, who makes the product, right? Who is behind it, and who wins when the brand grows? And, for us at Kreyol Essence, we work right now with over 300 farmers and women to make our products. So, I can’t say that I’m smart enough to have, you know, planned this all out, we were going to create this supply chain that impacts hundreds of people, but as we started going through this journey of me trying to find this amazing oil, which is Haitian Black Castor Oil, that my mom used when I was growing up, when I couldn’t find it on shelves, that began the journey to go to Haiti and to see, how do you make this oil? And to see that I had to work with farmers in order to get the seeds, because you need castor seeds, and to see that in order to make it, women are actually the ones who are more meticulous and patient in order to cultivate it and create it, and that we would have to export the product out of the country, seeing all of the social benefits there, that was really when the light bulb hit, that what better way to make a beautiful world than making sure people feel good, but that you’re creating work for a country where it’s considered one of the poorest countries in the western hemisphere, and I’m like, “If we can create work in Haiti, then guess what? We can create a blueprint for poverty alleviation around the world.”
Kelly Kovack [00:06:01]: So, was it an export, or what was happening, sort of, with the product they were – the oil they were creating?
Yve-Car Momperousse [00:06:09]: So, it was never exported, actually. So, the way that we would – well, it’s not formal export. The way we exchanged, if you will, on an informal economy from those from Haiti, I always joke that when my mom, when I begged her to send me some from her immigrant stash, or if you’re a Haiti family, when you go away and you know that you can’t find something in the states, you really hold on tight to it. So, when I got the bottle from my mom, it was in a rum bottle with tape all over it, and it was really secured, and essentially what people would do is try to sneak it into the country, pray TSA doesn’t get ahold of it, and people would just do anything possible to just save a few ounces of the oil, and that’s really how it was exchanged: you waited until a family member was coming in, and you begged them to get you some, and please don’t forget, you wired them the money to get it in. So, it was pretty difficult to find.
Kelly Kovack [00:07:05]: So, how difficult was it to sort of, I guess, operationalize the whole process? I can’t even imagine.
Yve-Car Momperousse [00:07:11]: It was extremely difficult, and I like to say naivety is a beautiful thing.
Kelly Kovack [00:07:16]: I would agree with that. Ignorance is bliss sometimes.
Yve-Car Momperousse [00:07:21]: Ignorance is bliss. If we knew what we had actually signed up for, we probably wouldn’t have done it, so it was great that we didn’t know. We thought, “Okay, really, how hard can this be? Alright, we just need to get a few women to make the oil in larger batches, we’ll buy it from them, and start to bring it into the country.” Well, I had no realization that there was no supply chain, meaning no one did more, or created more, than maybe a gallon at a time of the product. So, imagine now, I mean, we produce thousands of gallons, but we were the first ones to do this. So, A, we had to go there and win trust – that’s not the first thing I thought I was going to have to do. We had to establish a rapport, because I had no idea how to make Haitian castor oil. I had to get the women to understand, even if you teach me and you show me, I’m not going to cut you out, right? I can’t sit here and make all of this oil, but I do want to learn so I can make the process easier and start to add machines. So, for example, it would take maybe ten women about a week to make five gallons before. We are not going to produce enough for others, if that’s what it takes. So, I really had to sit, and I say part of earning trust is often when you go to a developing country, you think you know best, but this was a time where I had to sit at their feet and humbly learn, ask questions, and really be respectful in order to understand the process, and once we did that, then we had to start thinking about issues like, “Well, I can’t find seeds.” Alright, now, that means I have to work with farmers, and then if the farmer says, “Well, I need to find a way to make sure I increase my yield,” well, now I need to get into agriculture, and I have to start to understand what helps with production, irrigation, what tools can be used. So, it really became a much larger endeavor than we initially anticipated.
Kelly Kovack [00:09:16]: And were you doing this sort of before you launched, or I guess, at what point in sort of the launch or the lifecycle of the brand was all of this happening? And, I would imagine it continues as you scale.
Yve-Car Momperousse [00:09:29]: Absolutely, and that’s a great question. I mean, I think like many entrepreneurs, and the best way to go about it, is you need your MBP: your minimum buyable product. So, when we first went to Haiti, we started to gain trust, and I brought back a gallon, to be quite frank. I put it in my suitcase, prayed, and then came back here. Stephane, my partner, life partner and business partner, he created labels, he created bottles, we poured the oil in there.
Kelly Kovack [00:09:56]: So, you were always doing this together, from the beginning.
Yve-Car Momperousse [00:09:59]: Yes, from the beginning. And, the first thing was, do people want the product? So, it started initially that way. When we first launched our website and we started to notice it was more than mom and dad buying, you know, that there were others who were interested in the product, we said, “Okay, we have to scale.” So, at each point demand grew, there was another lesson, and as demand continues today, each time demand grows, we learn another lesson.
Kelly Kovack [00:10:27]: I would imagine. So, you know, you…when did you launch? You launched in 2014?
Yve-Car Momperousse [00:10:31]: Exactly. So, we launch front-facing in 2014, but I had my hair catastrophe, actually, in 2009, and did my first trip to Haiti with my mom in 2009, and then in 2010, two days before we were going to take our next trip to Haiti, the devastating earthquake happened on January 12th. So, that’s why the Shark Tank episode was actually extremely significant for us, because it marked the 10-year anniversary of the Haiti earthquake. So, I immediately went into relief mode, like most did, you know, I raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, medical supplies, it was about immediate need. But, my mom, sage as she is, but let’s not have her hear that, she said to me, “It’s really great that you are doing all of this, but what Haiti needs, and when Anderson Cooper, and no one else has a camera on Haiti, they need work; they need dignity; they need to be able to take care of their kids and their families,” and that’s when we decided to focus again on the business.
Kelly Kovack [00:11:34]: Gotcha. You know, I think – and we sort of discussed how a lot of small brands sort of paint this very rosy picture, maybe out of even just they have to, they have to believe it’s perfect, and sort of behind the scenes, it’s sort of anything but sometimes, and you know, I think one of the things that kind of surprised me, in complete honesty, with Shark Tanks, was I was like, from the first time I met you, I was like, “Wow, they are killing it,” right? And so, you know, you checked all the boxes: you had this amazing story, you had this amazing purpose, dynamic founder, you had clean formulations, sustainability, you had celebrities, like you literally checked all the boxes, then you were in the Sephora accelerator, like literally…and yet, you know, when you were on Shark Tank, it wasn’t easy, and there were times when you actually thought you couldn’t keep going, which was, I think I would have to guess, other people in the industry probably had no idea either. I think it’s important to share those stories, because I think there’s sort of a perception these days that it’s never been easier to launch a beauty brand.
Yve-Car Momperousse [00:12:57]: Yeah, you’ll just put up a website, have a great story.
Kelly Kovack [00:13:01]: Right, it’s super easy.
Yve-Car Momperousse [00:13:03]: Yeah, you’ll be a unicorn before you know it.
Kelly Kovack [00:13:04]: Exactly, and I think it’s important to actually have real conversations. So, thank you for being willing to have a real conversation about your story.
Yve-Car Momperousse [00:13:14]: Absolutely.
Kelly Kovack [00:13:15]: So, tell us what was really going on.
Yve-Car Momperousse [00:13:16]: Sure. So, one is around the painting rosy stories. I think – I’ll say for me, from a cultural perspective, as a Haitian American, we grew up, not that you hide what’s going on, but you don’t focus on it, right? So, it’s more so, “Okay, this happened, you’re not happy, but okay, move onto the next, and just keep moving.” So, Stephane also says, he’s like, “Honey, you make it look too easy. You don’t take enough time to talk about the challenges,” but for me, if I’m asked, I’ll talk about it willingly, but I think culturally speaking, it’s just that you just keep moving, you just keep trying, and I think our mission is just so important to me that I’ll sulk and cry and do what one will do when things are tough, and then I’m like, “Alright, time to get back up.” If these women can deal with the challenges they do with hunger, with illnesses, and still get up every day and make it to work and continue on with life, for me, it’s like, who am I to sit there and complain? So, that’s kind of like my reasoning, where I think sometimes, the challenge doesn’t come out. But, in 2016, we actually – and some folks don’t know this – we had raised about a million dollars, and we got all of these international development agencies onboard, and we didn’t actually get all one million dollars, but we quickly learned that there was a schism between what it means to run a growing quick business and deal with institutions that are very process-oriented and so it’s like when the order comes in, you need the money now to buy raw materials, to get production going, and then you have to align for shipping, but if the right box is not checked, or someone’s out on vacation…so, a growing business, you need money now, and it could takes months. That was our first lesson in understanding having smart capital, and that means having folks that understand your business, having folks that understand what the supply chain looks like, and who understand that hey, you might get this large PO, but you have to fund it, and you might not get paid for 60 to 90 days, and someone who’s not in the sphere might not know all of those dynamics. So, that was one of our first lessons, and something that was really hard, because it’s like, “If I raised all of this money, why am I still poor? Why can we not pay the bills?” and it’s just that the timing was off. So, that was the first lesson. The second lesson is that we touched upon a bit that we didn’t know that the supply chain wasn’t there, that’s not what we thought we were going to have to do. So, in the early days of Kreyol Essence, we primarily focused on B-to-B, so we were selling the castor oil to other businesses who would add the castor oil to their formulations. Well, guess what? They don’t really care about our story, our mission, all of the great things we want to do in the world, and keeping the quality high. The two things they cared about was the cost, can you make it cheaper, which we cannot, and can I get it faster? We were sole-sourced, because we were growing so much, from one client, and then also trying, at the same time, to build capacity, when the client could not get their product early enough, they said, “We found someone cheaper. It’s not the same quality,” they told us that. They said, “but we have a deadline we have to meet,” and they left. I think in the Shark Tank episode, we started off year one, great, $150,000, that’s great for a new brand, and then we went to $40,000, and everything stopped; it came to a halt. Stephane talks about the fact that working with your partner is also a different dynamic, because that means it’s not as if I had a hard day at the office and then I just got to come home to my husband and say, “My partner is horrible,” or “my boss is horrible.” He is the partner, he is the one, we’re having fights around, “This should be done. What do we do?” and because I was away so long. So, I was spending months at a time in Haiti, and he was here in the states, so that means, you know, you lose some understanding about what the other party is dealing with both from a personal side and business side while they’re away. I’m in Haiti, dealing with farmers, and sometimes I don’t have any internet, and sometimes I don’t have water, and trying to deal with that dynamic, while he’s here and he’s trying to do marketing, sales, and keep things afloat operationally, so you know, it was a challenge, personally, and then you’re looking at, well, no one’s getting paid, how do we pay the bills? Now, the one thing is, mama always told me, “Have your savings,” so we made sure – literally, we lived on our savings, and budgeted everything. So, to not have that income coming in, not only were we worried about the women, now we were worried about ourselves, like, how do we pay these bills? I actually called my mom during that time, where things seemed like they were just unraveling, and she was just like, “Well, come back to the states, and let’s just have lunch,” and my mom has actually, as an adult, never heard me cry, right, because remember, we’re not criers, we’re doers, we keep going. And, I remember calling her crying, and she was like, “Yep, I’ll buy your ticket, just get back home,” because she’s just like, “This girl never cries,” and she was like, “Have you heard of a place called Whole Foods?” and I’m like, “Yes, mom, I’ve heard of Whole Foods,” she’s very cute, and she’s like, “Let’s have lunch there.” But, my mom didn’t actually know that we had been turned down three times by Whole Foods already. Stephane had gone, I had hired somebody else to go, and as is my custom, I’m a product junkie: if there’s a beauty aisle, I’m walking the beauty aisle and seeing what’s on there, and then I saw an oil that was marked as black castor oil, but really wasn’t black castor oil, I checked. I became so upset, and I was like, “Okay, mom, I’m having lunch with you, but then I need to speak to the buyer,” and I asked to speak to the buyer, and they were like, “Come back later.” I always have product in my car, in my purse. I came back, and she was stocking shelves. I sat on the floor, started stocking shelves with her, started telling her about our story, our mission, having her smell the oil, and she was just like, “This is amazing. This is different than what we have here,” and she’s like, “This mission aligns so well with what we’re looking to do,” and it was from that that we were able to really get our first, “Yes, this is something that fits in here,” and folks were just like, “Oh, it’s amazing that you got into Whole Foods,” but some don’t know that I went to 60 Whole Foods after that, personally in Miami, and then I was like, I’m learning about what does the company need? What are the buyers and the folks on the floor…what’s missing? I really need to know this company for it to be a true partnership, and I was like, I just learned so much by going to a few stores in Miami, let’s do this in New York, let’s do this in Boston.
Kelly Kovack [00:20:21]: Yeah, because so many people outsource that to someone.
Yve-Car Momperousse [00:20:23]: Yes, to someone else, and you know what? In the beginning, I tried to do that; it didn’t work. It wasn’t the same. And, I don’t think it always has to be the founder, but sometimes, that personal connection with the founder, and then if you are going to lead your organization, some things you need to have done first, because even if you’re going to train someone else about how to do it, you have to have done it yourself. So, I kind of kicked myself that I didn’t do it myself the first time, I waited until we were almost about to implode, but doing that really helped.
Kelly Kovack [00:20:54]: So, that was sort of the beginning of getting things on track.
Yve-Car Momperousse [00:20:57]: Right, so from there we went from $40,000 to $230,000 in the next year, and I think the key thing, like if no one takes anything else out of this, also what helped push things along, because you see, even when you have a buyer and you have a retailer who is excited about you, it’s a lot of work to onboard a new brand, to take a chance on a new brand. So, sometimes it’s not that the buyer is being lazy or is not excited about you, but someone has to be willing to go push and make sure that you come on, and because we started to focus on our customer, instead of going B-to-B, but started to talk to her, every day, Instagram, emails, Facebook, all of the sudden, we were learning what she wanted; we had a relationship that wasn’t a one-way conversation, and we could also talk to the buyers about what she wanted and what this fit, and also, we kind of had a little campaign where we had our customers’ email each of their different regions to say they want to buy. Well, afterwards, I remember one of my best regions called me and said, “Please stop. We have had hundreds of customers email asking about the product, and they’re excited. We’re bringing you on, no need, we got the message that you have folks who want this product.” So, all throughout the process, really what keeps us going through hard times are our customers. They are the ones who are fanatic about the brand, the mission, and the product.
