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No Ads: Seven Figures Without Meta Or Amazon | Kate Assaraf
Her store locator tells you to go buy from a shop she does not own. If that shop is out of stock, you email her the store's name and she sends you a free shipping code as a thank you for trying. She built a seven-figure haircare brand on that instinct and never bought an ad to do it.
Kate Assaraf founded Dip in 2021 — plastic-free shampoo and conditioner bars, now in a little more than 500 independent stores. She spent the first year not building but watching: standing in drugstores, supermarkets, salons and Sephora, quietly observing what people actually do when they pick up a bottle. What she saw decided the product.
Her argument in this episode is that sustainability is the third reason someone buys from her, behind "it works" and "it's worth the money" — and she has a Warby Parker survey to explain why leading with the mission loses. She built the brand so the plastic-free part never had to do the selling.
One thing the intro does not say: she is running paid ads now. She hired an agency and fired them two weeks later, and she tells that story here for the first time, at 29:31.
This one is for operators whose brand has a mission — clean ingredients, sustainability, ethics, a founder story — and who are currently leading with it.
In this episode:
• The first thing a shopper does with a bottle, at every price point in every store
• What men actually do on the women's shelf, which is not what she expected
• Where the mission ranks among the reasons people buy, and the survey behind it
• One distribution channel, picked deliberately, and the line she used to open it
• The page on her own site that routes buyers to a shop she does not own
• How the business grows when the product lasts a year and nobody needs to reorder
• The ads agency she hired and fired in two weeks, told here for the first time
• What she would build instead of another ad account
Chapters:
00:00 Seven figures, no ads, no Amazon
01:20 A year spent watching people shop
03:48 Smell decides it before anyone reads
04:40 Men shop the women's shelf the same way
05:16 The sustainable shopper who does not exist
06:48 Sustainability is the third reason to buy
07:08 Warby Parker surveyed, and the mission lost
11:14 The people who care are in refill stores
14:06 Five hundred doors, one did $200,000
15:14 A store locator that costs her the sale
20:56 Revenue is not profit on a marketplace
21:55 The Amazon carrot she calls moldy
24:15 Where AI is an equalizer, and where it is slop
29:31 Hiring an ads agency, firing it in two weeks
33:23 When the repeat purchase is a gift
36:45 Clean beauty and subscriptions, overrated
39:23 Build a community before another ad
Dip:
https://dipalready.com
https://dipalready.com/pages/store-locator
https://www.instagram.com/dipalready
https://www.tiktok.com/@dipalready
Kate on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-assaraf-b25a741a7/
Ecom Growth Insider is hosted by Andrej Tuma. Watch every episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AndrejTuma
Running a DTC brand between $100K and $1M a month and want the profit side looked at properly, not the traffic side? https://hologrowth.com/audit
Transcript
I hired this ads company and I fired them two weeks later.
Speaker:My guest today is Kate Assaraf, founder of Dip.
Speaker:Kate built a seven figure haircare brand in a year and a half.
Speaker:Zero paid ads, zero influencers. No Amazon, no outside money.
Speaker:The complete opposite of every single playbook on this show.
Speaker:In this episode, how quietly watching people shop revealed
Speaker:the one thing that everyone gets wrong in the category, why her website actually
Speaker:sends people away from the checkout and why that built the brand,
Speaker:the Amazon carrot that she calls moldy, and the story that she has never told
Speaker:publicly before about the ads agency that she fired after two weeks.
Speaker:This one will challenge you.
Speaker:Let's get into it.
Speaker:Kate, you hit seven figures in about a year and a half with no paid ads,
Speaker:no influencers, and most operators that are in my audience
Speaker:that are listening to this live and die by their meta meta ad account.
Speaker:What did you do instead?
Speaker:Especially in the beginning
Speaker:and in the first year to get the product into into people's hands?
Speaker:Sure.
Speaker:Well, the the first year of really developing the product,
Speaker:I made sure I understood kind of the psychology
Speaker:of of what it felt like to be someone who wants to
Speaker:switch to something that is plastic free or more eco friendly.
Speaker:So not only did I already live that lifestyle, but
Speaker:I spent a lot of time in that first year observing
Speaker:how other people purchased plastic free or sustainable items, and I also watched
Speaker:very, very diligently the comment sections and all of my competitors space.
Speaker:And so I knew exactly what people,
Speaker:what expectations were not being met by, by my competition.
Speaker:And, and I knew exactly like what emotion I wanted to tap into.
Speaker:And that emotion that, that really, I think is, is the secret sauce by
Speaker:for getting any product to get talked about is understanding. Like
Speaker:what?
Speaker:What has someone purchased that's adjacent to your project
Speaker:or kind of congruent to your to your product?
Speaker:And how have people responded to that purchase?
Speaker:So for me, in sustainability, I could stop 100 people on the street and say, hey,
Speaker:can you name one sustainable thing that you've purchased that did not meet
Speaker:the expectations of the reviews or what the influencer said or any of or the ad?
Speaker:And almost I'd say 100% of the people could name something right away.
Speaker:That was like, I bought something
Speaker:for for the sake of the sustainability, the sake of the earth.
Speaker:It was more expensive
Speaker:than the other thing that I used to buy, and it ended up in the trash,
Speaker:and it ended up not inspiring long term change.
Speaker:So I think what you have to do is kind of really listen to your customer,
Speaker:your intended customer, and find out why they purchased
Speaker:something in the first place
Speaker:and what happened with what happened when they purchased a competitor's product.
Speaker:And that gets people talking about it.
Speaker:When you go kind of above and beyond in performance for,
Speaker:for example, for Dip, I wanted to make sure the hair care
Speaker:was so good that the plastic free part wasn't part of the conversation anymore.
Speaker:And how did you observe the customers sorts of ways?
Speaker:I mean, not only was it in the comment sections, but I would go into stores
Speaker:because my my line is shampoo and conditioner bars.
Speaker:But I also watched how people purchased bottled shampoo and conditioner.
Speaker:I watched at every level.
Speaker:I watched it drugstore level or pharmacy level.
Speaker:I watched at the supermarket level.
Speaker:I watched at salon level. I watched in Sephora level.
Speaker:I just quietly observed and watched the behavior.
Speaker:I watched the way people engaged with the branding and the bottles.
Speaker:So, for example, across it didn't matter how much money
Speaker:someone was spending on shampoo conditioner,
Speaker:the first thing that that person would engage with would be the smell.
Speaker:So they'd before they even read the bottle, they take the bottle off
Speaker:the shelf, they'd open it, they'd smell it, and then they'd read it.
Speaker:So I knew right away that the smell was the most important thing.
Speaker:It's kind of like you wouldn't know that.
Speaker:You'd actually maybe think that, you know, silkiness
Speaker:would be the first, most important thing or like,
Speaker:you know, lather for shampoo to be the most important thing.
Speaker:The actual, most important thing for my category was smell.
Speaker:And so I made sure that that was at
Speaker:the very front part of decision making for the product.
Speaker:And was there anything that really surprised you or that you didn't expect?
Speaker:I mean, the smell is obviously obviously like one thing was was said,
Speaker:was that the thing? Yeah, the smell was one.
Speaker:But it surprised me because I thought that was a behavior
Speaker:only I did where I picked up the bottle, smelled it and then read it.
Speaker:The the other thing was how many men I actually observed
Speaker:engaging in the same practice for,
Speaker:for shampoo and conditioner that looked like it was made for women.
Speaker:So what I discovered was that men, it didn't matter.
Speaker:They didn't just go straight to like the men's shampoo.
Speaker:They engaged with all of them also looking for the best scent for them.
Speaker:And that surprised me because I just thought men would
Speaker:buy what was whatever was on sale.
Speaker:But that is not the case.
Speaker:They they also engaged with shampoo and conditioner in an unexpected way.
Speaker:Oh, interesting.
Speaker:And you mentioned that you then, like, you didn't want to make sustainability
Speaker:as, like the core aspect of the of the product of the brand.
Speaker:Why is that?
Speaker:Because so many people had a negative experience with sustainable products.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well, most people I know at the forefront of their personality
Speaker:is not sustainability.
Speaker:It's like fun.
Speaker:It's like they want, you know, really great things.
Speaker:They want to they want, you know, they have values for sure.
Speaker:But what they want is not the same as, like the way I saw the avatar
Speaker:of a sustainable person,
Speaker:like the avatar in the United States of a sustainable person is someone who,
Speaker:you know, like grows their own food, only shops
Speaker:at farmers markets, you know, doesn't engage in any kind of consumerism.
Speaker:That is not a real person.
Speaker:Most people just want the best of what they can afford.
Speaker:They want to do well by the earth, and then they want something that's,
Speaker:you know, going to make them feel good.
Speaker:And so or save them money long term, which is what Dip does.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And I think there's a great lesson for like a lot of brands
Speaker:that have a big mission because oftentimes
Speaker:the mission is not will not be the reason why people buy.
Speaker:Is this like maybe the reason why the brand exists or why the founder,
Speaker:like, launched the brand, but it's not what makes people buy.
Speaker:And it shouldn't be like what you position
Speaker:your whole brand around and put out in your marketing.
Speaker:And that is,
Speaker:I think, the case with you, with the with the sustainable side of things.
Speaker:Right? Yeah.
Speaker:And you see that with like so
Speaker:I think sustainability is probably the tertiary reason someone purchases Dip.
Speaker:But you know, more people want something that's great value for their money
Speaker:and that works. Those are the top two.
Speaker:And the fact that it's plastic free is really comes in a little bit
Speaker:later as a third.
Speaker:But I saw once, I guess maybe a long time ago, maybe
Speaker:20 years ago, when there's a company here in the United States called Warby Parker.
Speaker:I don't know whether they're international,
Speaker:but I went to go see the founders speak about that company,
Speaker:and they sell glasses, affordable glasses, because in the United States
Speaker:the glasses are so expensive.
Speaker:Sometimes they're like seven, $800.
Speaker:But Warby Parker had a business model where I think they were like $99.
Speaker:They were very affordable glasses.
Speaker:And then I guess they also,
Speaker:for every glasses that were sold, they also gave them to a pair of glasses
Speaker:to someone in another country who couldn't afford eye care.
Speaker:And so they found out, they thought that people
Speaker:were actually buying their glasses because of the mission.
Speaker:And when they really did the surveys, people bought their glasses
Speaker:because they were affordable. And that was number one.
Speaker:Like this is the, you know, the philanthropic side of it didn't come in.
Speaker:It didn't even rank.
Speaker:So I think that that's that's something that opened my eyes very, very early.
Speaker:It's like, okay, people,
Speaker:they're not as altruistic as they want to be, really.
Speaker:They're self-motivated when it comes to the purchase.
Speaker:And I think what sustainability gets wrong is kind of
Speaker:being a little bit pretentious and preaching about all of these things
Speaker:with without really, really heavily focusing on the primary
Speaker:and secondary reasons why people buy something.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker:And we see that on a day to day basis
Speaker:in the in marketing and in advertising as well.
Speaker:Like people always say that they care a lot about sustainability,
Speaker:but it's almost never the reason why someone buys.
Speaker:They buy because of another reason.
Speaker:But then they may like argue that that was one of the reasons, or it makes the
Speaker:the purchase feel less bad for them, or they feel less bad spending the money
Speaker:because they can argue that it's also because of the sustainability,
Speaker:but it's not the number one reason why they saying it is so easy living.
Speaker:It is a very different thing.
Speaker:So people can say whatever that makes them feel good.
Speaker:And you know, there's a verbal pat on the shoulder.
Speaker:But to be honest, like I watch it all the time,
Speaker:if given a choice, someone's going to buy the two,
Speaker:two things that were, you know, out there if one was sustainable and not as good
Speaker:and one was bottled in plastic, but way better,
Speaker:they're going to go for the better one.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And then after you did the observation, you had all of those insights,
Speaker:all of that information, and integrated that into the product.
Speaker:Like what did you do then and how did you go to the market and start
Speaker:distributing the products?
Speaker:So I, I first I had to did the grueling thing of writing a website.
Speaker:I did most of the copy on the website is written by me.
Speaker:It's written from the perspective of I'm with you like you're frustrated.
Speaker:You're frustrated with sustainability, so am I.
Speaker:And that's the voice of the website like that.
Speaker:And that is very different
Speaker:than what existed because we I built the website in 2021,
Speaker:but that's very different than what was existing at the time.
Speaker:What was existing at
Speaker:the time was kind of
Speaker:like this guilt and shame marketing like, you better save the planet, or else we're
Speaker:going to have no fish left in the ocean.
Speaker:You know, we're going to have no, you know,
Speaker:your landfills are going to kill everybody.
Speaker:And that is not
Speaker:tire of that kind of marketing.
Speaker:So I, I told the story of the brand as an insider and
Speaker:as someone who is trying to link arms with someone and being like, come with me.
Speaker:I know you're mad at sustainability.
Speaker:I feel the same way.
Speaker:And that is why I started this company, because in all
Speaker:honesty, it's very it's much easier to go through life without a company.
Speaker:Like starting a company is not that fun.
Speaker:But if you have this like unscratchable itch of like,
Speaker:I have to solve this problem because I'm so fed up with what's out there,
Speaker:that's when you know, you really, like, have something.
Speaker:So there was, there was that.
Speaker:And then I knew from just being in the beauty industry for a long time,
Speaker:like people in beauty do not care about plastic.
Speaker:They can.
Speaker:It's again, another one of those performances
Speaker:where they say they care about plastic, that people that actually care
Speaker:about plastic and reducing waste are in refill stores,
Speaker:which is like a very, very specific channel.
Speaker:And I think they have them in Europe to.
Speaker:But it's basically where you go in and they're plastic free stores.
Speaker:So I knew my customers were walking through that door.
Speaker:They're not walking into a Sephora.
Speaker:Like, it's just that's just the harsh truth of the beauty world.
Speaker:Like the people that really want
Speaker:plastic free items are going specifically to these stores.
Speaker:And so I focused on that one
Speaker:singular distribution channel for retail, and that is actually how I grew up,
Speaker:because I already knew
Speaker:that the frustration was so specific to the sustainable people, you know?
Speaker:And so I've just put the product where the actual people that would want
Speaker:it would be.
Speaker:It's very obvious, but a lot of people don't build their businesses that way.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Yeah, that that makes total sense.
Speaker:And like, how did you get the products into the stores?
Speaker:Like did you just call every store up like one, like one by one, one by one,
Speaker:one by one I called. And how's the reply rate?
Speaker:It was great because all I had to say was, if this is not the best
Speaker:bar haircare you've ever tried, then you don't need to contact me again.
Speaker:But sometimes I would have people call me from their towel.
Speaker:It'd be in their towel after the shower and say, I cannot believe
Speaker:that this conditioner bar works like I've missed really good hair care.
Speaker:Or, you know, in my shower is the one place where plastic
Speaker:bottles still exist because I haven't been able to find a set at works.
Speaker:And so I knew that that frustration I felt as a sustainable consumer
Speaker:would absolutely be felt by those store owners because,
Speaker:you know, they're selling something that they didn't really believe in before
Speaker:Dip came around.
Speaker:And now they had like an actual
Speaker:like problem solving set of bars that could they could get excited
Speaker:about behind the counter talking to their the people that come in the store.
Speaker:Oh yeah.
Speaker:So once you kind of get, you know, the first 15 stores like the first five,
Speaker:then the first ten, then the first 15,
Speaker:then it becomes easier to get more because the,
Speaker:the it's like a snowball effect, like it starts to grow on its own
Speaker:and the traction starts to come from the credibility
Speaker:you build within the community that really matters.
Speaker:Like, if I had tried to build the same, same kind of
Speaker:credibility within just beauty or within like the influencer,
Speaker:it would not have happened because they don't care.
Speaker:It's just not something that people care very passionately about.
Speaker:But I knew that the people that did care
Speaker:would be so enthusiastic about finding,
Speaker:like a shampoo and conditioner that really, really worked.
Speaker:Like the professional salon stuff.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And how many shops are you?
Speaker:Are you selling right now?
Speaker:I'm a little more than 500, but the sell-through in the stores
Speaker:is very, very strong.
Speaker:So you know, at the higher end, one of our stores,
Speaker:it's just one single stores, one owner, one store, one door.
Speaker:She has sold over $200,000 worth of Dip just in that one store.
Speaker:And there are many other stores that have sold well,
Speaker:between $100,000 and $200,000 worth of of just Dip.
Speaker:And what's so exciting about that is as a brand now we've
Speaker:we've redirected over $5 million back
Speaker:into local economies, which is the bigger part of sustainability.
Speaker:But beyond the hair care, the hair care was like a one piece of it.
Speaker:But the mission was always getting people into these plastic free stores
Speaker:so they could find actual substitutes for the plastic things in their life
Speaker:that have been vetted by a human instead of the digital pollution of the internet.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:And I think that is that is awesome.
Speaker:And that is also what, what made me really interested in the
Speaker:in the brand when I was looking at the website,
Speaker:is that on the website you have like a store locator that literally tells
Speaker:visitors to go to their local shop first and check it out there.
Speaker:And if the product is not available there, they'll even get
Speaker:like a free shipping code.
Speaker:Yeah, for trying to buy it locally.
Speaker:So you're basically routing your own traffic away from your own checkout.
Speaker:Defend that as a as a business decision
Speaker:and not just as like values values decision.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:It's so, so I'm very much bigger than myself.
Speaker:I want I really want people to make lifestyle changes that help the planet.
Speaker:The only way to do that is not through shampoo and conditioner.
Speaker:It's through like kind of getting getting someone into that store
Speaker:to buy the shampoo and conditioner and then being like,
Speaker:oh, I never have to buy another jug of laundry detergent again.
Speaker:I can just refill it or, oh, I need to, you know, like in my refill store,
Speaker:I can refill spices so I never have to buy even another glass jar of spices.
Speaker:I can actually just refill what I already have.
Speaker:And so those little like an aggregation of those little decisions are
Speaker:what actually moves the needle for making the earth a better place.
Speaker:If I was in a vacuum just selling shampoo and conditioner,
Speaker:it wouldn't have the impact that I'm having now.
Speaker:So I absolutely want that type of store to survive.
Speaker:I want that type of store to thrive, and I want that type of store to know
Speaker:that I'm sending people there that would have never known
Speaker:about them in the first place, and that that's a good feeling,
Speaker:regardless of margins and all those other pieces of the conversation
Speaker:like, yeah, okay, I make far less money when someone shops in store,
Speaker:but actually the impact
Speaker:of someone shopping in store and maybe someone else overhearing
Speaker:someone else physically standing in the store,
Speaker:like the real life conversations that happen around Dip,
Speaker:because someone's in there talking to a store owner
Speaker:and asking questions, and the other people around can hear.
Speaker:That's way more influential than trying to retarget
Speaker:someone to death in a sea of competitors.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker:How big do you think is the the influence from the store owner or
Speaker:like the seller in the store on the sell-through rate of the product in store?
Speaker:That's how think very, very, very high.
Speaker:It's, it's a very high.
Speaker:I have I mean, the fact that one tiny store
Speaker:can sell $200,000 worth of product is insane.
Speaker:When you think of like it's,
Speaker:you know, people are doing that kind of number in 4000 stores in Ulta.
Speaker:Do you know what I mean?
Speaker:Like that's the this is one single
Speaker:one business owner being able to capture that,
Speaker:that kind of attention for one product.
Speaker:And imagine if someone goes in there to buy Dip and is also buying other items,
Speaker:like it's a halo effect for that store owner and is wonderful.
Speaker:And it's the reason that Dip is rarely on sale.
Speaker:It's the reason that Dip is does not on Amazon.
Speaker:I like having that friction
Speaker:of someone leaving their phone, leaving their laptop, going into a store,
Speaker:and having that actual person to person discovery.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker:And I think there's also a great like transferable lesson for a lot of other
Speaker:other brands and operators, and that is that you basically have like a third party
Speaker:trusting partner who's like vouching for the product and talking
Speaker:like can educate the customer about the product and how great it is.
Speaker:And that obviously has a huge impact on the on the purchasing decision.
Speaker:And there are a lot of like even D2C brands that can replicate that,
Speaker:even though obviously not to the extent that you can do it,
Speaker:but by having like authentic people and like affiliates or content creators
Speaker:that talk about their like real experience
Speaker:of using the product and like what they what they like, what they don't like,
Speaker:and just being completely transparent about the products that will obviously,
Speaker:or that can have a huge impact on the sell-through rate or the
Speaker:the purchasing behavior of the people that watch that kind of contact content.
Speaker:But obviously with you, with the stores face to face, it's even even stronger.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I think it's really hard to make a dollar anywhere right now.
Speaker:I think it's a very tough economy, especially in the United States right now.
Speaker:And I think that trying to do something alone,
Speaker:I would say, like siloed as a business owner is very, very difficult
Speaker:also to be at the mercy of meta, which is constantly changing.
Speaker:I'd say the past four years of meta advertising have been kind
Speaker:of a whirlwind for people, but we've been a little bit immune
Speaker:because we've not we have not participated in it,
Speaker:and we've not handed our pixel data over to all of our competitors.
Speaker:And we've not we don't have an ad library for someone else to scrape with
Speaker:AI and take all the magic and the secret sauce, like,
Speaker:because we've built the brand in real life, we are,
Speaker:we're immune to
Speaker:a lot of the the sways and the
Speaker:and the kind of turbulence
Speaker:of being reliant on meta.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:You you mentioned before that
Speaker:you you obviously you're not on Amazon,
Speaker:and I think you would agree with me that you could make a lot of more money
Speaker:fast by going to, to Amazon, but you but you refuse.
Speaker:I think a lot of founders would call that just like leaving a lot of money
Speaker:on the table, walking through
Speaker:through your decision on on. Yeah.
Speaker:Refusing to go to Amazon.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:Well revenue revenue is not the same as profit.
Speaker:Right.
Speaker:So any anyone listening to this knows that very well by looking at your P&L,
Speaker:I think doing ten times the work like or so if you do 10x
Speaker:of sales on Amazon, you're making ten times the product.
Speaker:You might be just like inking out a little tiny bit more.
Speaker:You're definitely going to get less
Speaker:margin for it because of how competitive Amazon is.
Speaker:But you're also handing your customer over to a third party,
Speaker:which is not the same
Speaker:as sharing your customer with a retailer who really has your best interest in mind.
Speaker:When you share your customer
Speaker:with Amazon and Amazon gets the sale, Amazon gets the data,
Speaker:Amazon gets the contact information like how are you really benefiting?
Speaker:I don't know, you're also at the mercy of Amazon's rules.
Speaker:You're at the mercy of, you know, a competitor kind of buying your keywords.
Speaker:And I don't know, it's just a game I don't really want to play.
Speaker:And I think it's a, you know, just talking about a dangling carrot,
Speaker:I call it I think that carrot that Amazon dangles is actually moldy.
Speaker:Like once you get to the carrot, you're like,
Speaker:I don't even want to eat this. This is a mistake.
Speaker:And I know plenty of people that got put their products
Speaker:on Amazon and networked in the entrepreneurial world.
Speaker:They put their products on Amazon and they've regretted it.
Speaker:They've lost the relationship with their customer,
Speaker:and they've actually had to do a lot more,
Speaker:make a lot more products to get the same amount of money.
Speaker:So it I don't know, it's great if you what you like to tell people as I sell you,
Speaker:I've sold $10 million worth of stuff, but I'd rather actually sell less
Speaker:and do less work and not be at the mercy of that engine.
Speaker:Yeah, I agree with that.
Speaker:Amazon is is difficult because like, yeah, you don't own the customer
Speaker:and you're completely reliant on on them even more than with meta
Speaker:because with meta obviously.
Speaker:Also like if they change something
Speaker:you can't advertise anymore or it's twice as expensive.
Speaker:And if that's where all of your customers are coming from, it's not great.
Speaker:But with Amazon, it's even more, yeah, they can do even more
Speaker:because you're selling through the site and they can basically steal,
Speaker:steal your product and do it like offer
Speaker:it cheaper, offer it like showed at the top of the results.
Speaker:They don't protect you from copycats like someone else can just print for me,
Speaker:like someone else can like print my box and put some garbage in there.
Speaker:And you don't.
Speaker:That customer can like they're not getting actual vetted Dip products.
Speaker:They're getting, you know, some dupe, and then they write
Speaker:bad reviews that will ruin our reputation forever.
Speaker:Like, there's those kinds of things that also exists.
Speaker:Like many, there's there's just saying,
Speaker:if you see our products on Amazon, they're not from us.
Speaker:We've had that before. Like
Speaker:we've had to have stuff take them down like we're not selling on Amazon.
Speaker:And sometimes they show up there and it's not us, it's someone printing a box.
Speaker:And so you discover kind of how grimy
Speaker:the underbelly of the, of the digital
Speaker:commerce world is when you start seeing that your your brand get copycat.
Speaker:Copycat it like that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:I think a lot of people also assume that you are completely anti-AI
Speaker:and anti-ads on principle, but
Speaker:I saw you actually mentioned or called AI an equalizer
Speaker:because like there was a real photo shoot that would have cost around 25,000.
Speaker:And with AI it's easier to do those things.
Speaker:So where do you draw the line between AI as a gift specifically?
Speaker:Also for small brands and AI as just like digital slop?
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So to be clear, my customer base does not like AI,
Speaker:so I haven't used it for photos at all, but I do use it.
Speaker:I mean, there, I think, I think
Speaker:for a new brand, starting out,
Speaker:like photography is one of the most expensive things.
Speaker:And what people don't realize about product photography, it's
Speaker:not just someone taking a picture.
Speaker:It's not just the camera man, right?
Speaker:That you're paying.
Speaker:You have to pay for the editing.
Speaker:You have to pay for the model.
Speaker:You have to pay for the, you know, I mean, someone usually sets up the lights
Speaker:if it's not the photographer, but also the, the makeup, the
Speaker:all of the, the wardrobe, all these things that come
Speaker:even if you're just selling skincare or hair care,
Speaker:you have to pay for wardrobe, you have to pay for all of these things.
Speaker:And so for someone just starting out, like, yeah, absolutely.
Speaker:I think that that is the equalizer because we can
Speaker:I can pay 25 K for a a photo shoot.
Speaker:But like I, I empathize with someone trying to start something
Speaker:in a land of, of giants and being like, okay, I need to get my products out there.
Speaker:But I think a lot of the,
Speaker:a lot of what people also don't realize about models and photography is that
Speaker:you might only get rights to use those images in one way
Speaker:when you're using a real person.
Speaker:So you might only get rights to,
Speaker:like to use them digitally and on social media.
Speaker:But you can't print anything like I have a picture of a hand.
Speaker:It's just a hand holding a Dip box.
Speaker:I'm never allowed to print that photo.
Speaker:I don't have the rights to print it, even though I paid a ton of money for that
Speaker:hand model.
Speaker:Like, those are things that people like,
Speaker:and a lot of entrepreneurs don't know that either, to be honest.
Speaker:Like, they kind of just they just do.
Speaker:They don't know what they don't know.
Speaker:So they act in a different way, and they get surprised
Speaker:when that those kind of rules come up.
Speaker:But I do think that AI is very useful.
Speaker:And in I don't know, for example,
Speaker:this transcript from this call probably turn it into a blog post.
Speaker:I use AI to metabolize the whole transcript and
Speaker:and make it a blog post that helps drive people back to the podcast.
Speaker:And so I think that there's definitely different use cases.
Speaker:And I'm not anti.
Speaker:I, I think it's actually pretty incredible.
Speaker:I'm, I'm anti using it in
Speaker:such abundance that it becomes gross.
Speaker:But I'm like that for everything.
Speaker:I don't want someone to have so much steak either and I don't want.
Speaker:I'm not anti steak but I think it's gross if someone that's
Speaker:the only thing someone eats because the carbon footprint, you know,
Speaker:and I think that AI, whether we love it or hate it, it's something that is here.
Speaker:And I'm excited to see how it's used in medicine.
Speaker:To be honest, I think I think we can agree as a species
Speaker:that human error happens a lot in medicine,
Speaker:and it would be wonderful if that was minimized.
Speaker:An AI could help with that.
Speaker:Yeah. What do you think about it?
Speaker:Brands creating like user generated content and things like that.
Speaker:With with AI, I just think it's corny.
Speaker:I don't like I just think it's kind of like
Speaker:I don't know, do like poser.
Speaker:Do you know what pose
Speaker:or is it like someone who pretends to be good at like skateboarding or something?
Speaker:Like it's a poser thing, like you're using fake people.
Speaker:It's like the actual definition of poser.
Speaker:It's like someone pretending to be a customer.
Speaker:It's like kind of the lamest kind of marketing there's out there.
Speaker:I guess it's cool because no one has to get paid
Speaker:if that's what you want for your company legacy.
Speaker:No one gets paid and no one has any accountability.
Speaker:It's not what I want for my company, and I don't really like my company
Speaker:having to compete with digital avatars of fake customers.
Speaker:But I think people have a natural, like kind of once.
Speaker:Maybe they might be fooled a few times, but once they kind of start to recognize
Speaker:when someone is like a digital avatar of a person,
Speaker:they don't want anything to do with that company anymore.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:So I real life, I'm always telling people, shop.
Speaker:In real life,
Speaker:if you just shop in real life, you don't have to worry about any of this stuff.
Speaker:Not yet.
Speaker:Maybe in in 5 to 10 years. Who knows?
Speaker:Who knows?
Speaker:It's true.
Speaker:I hope not.
Speaker:But yeah, prove me if I'm wrong.
Speaker:But I think, like, after after years of refusing paid
Speaker:ads, you're now also running paid ads for the first time, but not for yourself.
Speaker:But to help like retailers on who's whose foot traffic collapsed.
Speaker:That was the plan and I.
Speaker:So I hired this ads company and I fired them two weeks later.
Speaker:Well, what happened?
Speaker:So they didn't listen to me.
Speaker:I told them, like, these are our marketing moats, right?
Speaker:This is this is what makes Dip special.
Speaker:And this is what I want to do, and this is how I want to do it.
Speaker:And I want to get people in stores and there's a trust recession.
Speaker:I had all these things, and what they did was they charged me
Speaker:a lot of money to just tell me I should be exactly like my competitors.
Speaker:And then they gave me ads that looked like they could be exactly ads
Speaker:for my competitors, and I fired them.
Speaker:And I have no remorse.
Speaker:I hate them, I hate them for not listening.
Speaker:I hate them for wasting my time and listening to all of the things that
Speaker:made Dip special.
Speaker:The onboarding things.
Speaker:I had interviewed 100 companies before I hired this one,
Speaker:and I interviewed ten of their clients before I was like, this is the thing.
Speaker:And then after they got my money,
Speaker:they gave me the shoddiest work I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker:And I was like, at least this is like when I was like, at least run
Speaker:what I said from our call through AI and see what that comes up with.
Speaker:Anything would be better than what you just gave me here.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And, you know, they were kind of like like they didn't really know what they were.
Speaker:It was so embarrassing.
Speaker:And I don't know what world they think that presenting
Speaker:like charging the amount of money they charged to present me
Speaker:with a strategy document that was like,
Speaker:be exactly like your competitors.
Speaker:Like, that's none of that is what made us
Speaker:a seven figure brand without advertising.
Speaker:Do you know what I mean?
Speaker:And so, so yeah, I was going to do those things and I did not.
Speaker:I am back back to my gut feeling.
Speaker:And my gut feeling is people don't want that, you know.
Speaker:Well yeah.
Speaker:Sorry. Sorry to hear about that.
Speaker:About that experience.
Speaker:First time I've told the story,
Speaker:they won't give me any of my money back, so I might as well tell the story.
Speaker:Yeah, yeah. Okay. Interesting. Interesting.
Speaker:What is, what is then that now the the strategy.
Speaker:So strategy is just to keep doing what I'm doing.
Speaker:It's been working this whole time.
Speaker:Like I'm not I don't need to own a big company.
Speaker:I just want more people to use it because I know
Speaker:the more people that use it, the more people like it.
Speaker:So, you know, I wanted to.
Speaker:Yeah, exactly what you said before.
Speaker:I wanted to use what we already knew in the four
Speaker:and a half, five years in business and the success of it
Speaker:all around, in every different part of the country.
Speaker:I wanted to amplify that for our stores, so our stores could get more people in
Speaker:and kind of grow the sustainability movement.
Speaker:In a way, to me, that I think
Speaker:is more meaningful than the guilt and shame marketing that you see.
Speaker:But so I guess right now I'm just going to do more of the same.
Speaker:And I would love to find a great ads partner
Speaker:if anyone's listening in there, a great ads partner.
Speaker:But if you're the kind of ads partner who thinks that you don't need to
Speaker:listen to
Speaker:what made Dip special in the first place, I can, you know, skip my, skip my call.
Speaker:Nice.
Speaker:And I'm curious, like your
Speaker:your main product is the conditioner bar, right?
Speaker:My number one thing I tell someone to start with is like,
Speaker:start with the conditioner bar.
Speaker:It actually,
Speaker:for me, it saves me the most money because it lasts for me and my hair.
Speaker:It will last me a year
Speaker:and it performs like very, very expensive, luxurious conditioner.
Speaker:So that's and for me like that saves me
Speaker:over $500 personally a year.
Speaker:That is a big deal
Speaker:because it's like that indulgence of buying the expensive conditioner
Speaker:for long hair anyway is like it's it makes you feel a little bit bad
Speaker:when you're buying that plastic bottle every 3 to 5 weeks.
Speaker:But the Dip conditioner cures that.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And that's exactly what I also wanted to to touch on, because obviously
Speaker:having a product that lasts for such a long time
Speaker:is bad for the repeat customer rate or like people buy it
Speaker:and then they can use it for over a year and don't don't have the need to
Speaker:to reorder.
Speaker:Like how do you build a real like growing business
Speaker:on a on products that are designed around like anti consumption and around
Speaker:like saving people money and being used for such a long time
Speaker:because it's so unusual that that one person
Speaker:is a repeat customer for other people in their lives.
Speaker:So Dip becomes the gift that they give to other people.
Speaker:That becomes a recommendation that they give to their stylist.
Speaker:It becomes like a go to gift for them.
Speaker:So I'll have one person in the same year buy Dip six more times,
Speaker:because they're giving it to other people that don't believe that
Speaker:it's going to be any good.
Speaker:And so that like is very funny to me to see one person and sometimes I'll ask,
Speaker:I'll just reach out to someone who's purchased
Speaker:so many times I'm like, what's what's going on here?
Speaker:Like, you're going through it too fast.
Speaker:And they're like, no, I it's the thing I bring.
Speaker:Anytime someone has like a new baby, a new house, a new whatever.
Speaker:Like I, you know, in the United States, we have these things called favorite
Speaker:things, parties where, you know,
Speaker:you get together
Speaker:with like seven of your friends or eight of your friends,
Speaker:and then you bring one thing that you love.
Speaker:So around holiday time, or there's a Galentine's Day, which is like February,
Speaker:people buy, you know, 7 or 8 of them, and then that's their favorite thing.
Speaker:And so in that way, it just it grows because it's great
Speaker:and because people trust that I'm not trying to bombard them with ads
Speaker:and get them to buy a whole bunch of stuff.
Speaker:Yeah, I love that.
Speaker:Basically having a high quality product that lasts a long time,
Speaker:and that leads to a lot of word of mouth referrals and customers
Speaker:actually liking liking the product.
Speaker:But it all goes back to in the beginning from what I said is
Speaker:people are so used to being disappointed by sustainability.
Speaker:So when some
Speaker:when you deliver something that surprises them,
Speaker:that was the whole point of all that research.
Speaker:And in the beginning it was like,
Speaker:you have to make it so good that someone gets excited
Speaker:because no one's excited about about saving plastic.
Speaker:It's not that no one is, it's just that that is not the motivator.
Speaker:And once you make peace with everyone not being as earth friendly as you are,
Speaker:then it's easier to understand consumerism and not feel.
Speaker:Because a lot of my friends who own sustainable brands
Speaker:but get upset about the world, or they get upset about consumer behavior,
Speaker:they get upset about Amazon Prime Day, and it's like it's very, very rational
Speaker:for someone to want to save money and to, you know, buy things on sale
Speaker:or any of these things.
Speaker:But it's also very rational if you talk to them on the other side of it,
Speaker:which is like
Speaker:you want your neighborhood or your town to be robust
Speaker:and have thriving stores, and you want that cute
Speaker:little like place where you refill things and that offers plastic,
Speaker:you know, plastic reducing solutions to you.
Speaker:You want that store to thrive.
Speaker:So you hit them on the other emotion, which is like also positive.
Speaker:You want you want to support the the people who are making changes
Speaker:in in sustainability.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:To as the final section
Speaker:of this of this podcast, I want to do a rapid fire section.
Speaker:So basically I'll say a a term
Speaker:and you have to say whether you think is overrated or underrated
Speaker:with like potentially one line, but keep it short.
Speaker:The first one is clean beauty.
Speaker:Oh it's overrated
Speaker:then selling on Amazon
Speaker:I mean I think it's underrated for me.
Speaker:I yeah, that's a tough one because I know it could be great,
Speaker:but it's just not where my head and heart are.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:What about influencer seeding?
Speaker:I think is overrated.
Speaker:Again,
Speaker:subscriptions
Speaker:for me, they're overrated.
Speaker:I think it only brings people looking for discounts.
Speaker:Essential oils.
Speaker:Overrated.
Speaker:They're full of pesticides.
Speaker:Really?
Speaker:Yeah, a lot of a lot of essential oils are cold pressed with the pesticides
Speaker:on the plant. And people don't know that.
Speaker:Not all essential oils, but many of them are.
Speaker:And the amount of biomass needed to grow the plant and the farming practices
Speaker:and all of these things that people care about, like labor, you know,
Speaker:pesticides, all, you know, just mono crops,
Speaker:all of those things seem to be disregarded for the sake of essential oils.
Speaker:I'm much more of a fan of clean, synthetic fragrances.
Speaker:I didn't know that.
Speaker:Now a lot of people don't.
Speaker:Essential oils are having that time right now.
Speaker:Everyone loves them, but they are often full of allergens as well.
Speaker:It's it's kind of remarkable to see.
Speaker:What about owning the customer relationship?
Speaker:Oh, that's that's like that's the goal.
Speaker:I that is that is what every business owner should want to keep.
Speaker:That customer relationship is so important.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:What is one beauty industry practice that you would outlaw tomorrow.
Speaker:Oh the fake customer.
Speaker:UGC like the
Speaker:both like someone who didn't buy the product using UGC being that
Speaker:spokesperson and also a digital avatar
Speaker:being being UGC
Speaker:it's so it's so corny.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:To what would you say to founder who is addicted
Speaker:to their meta account and terrified to turn it off?
Speaker:Like, what is the first thing that they should build instead?
Speaker:Oh, they should build a community.
Speaker:They should really,
Speaker:really figure out who that person is that loves what they make or what they do.
Speaker:And it doesn't always exist for every category.
Speaker:So it's easy for me to say for haircare, right?
Speaker:But like, you know, I they like if someone's selling hats, like,
Speaker:I don't know what that community is or where the most people like,
Speaker:you have to find that one kind of group of people that talk about
Speaker:hats and love hats all day long.
Speaker:Yeah.
Speaker:And how would you build such a community if there is like,
Speaker:no, no community that exists.
Speaker:So if I'm just going to use hats, I'm going to run in with the hat example.
Speaker:I would find a bunch of people who have to spend a lot of time
Speaker:outside in the sun who need hats right beyond a baseball game,
Speaker:which is like obvious or beyond some of the obvious ones.
Speaker:Maybe it's like gardening clubs, like because people are outside all day
Speaker:long and, you know, maybe there's an opportunity there.
Speaker:I don't there's there's all sorts of things.
Speaker:Maybe there's a hat that's specifically for lifeguards
Speaker:that are out outside in the sun all day long.
Speaker:I would find a very specific
Speaker:group of people who hang out with each other for Dip.
Speaker:It's runners for the shampoo and surfers for the conditioner.
Speaker:That was very intentional because,
Speaker:you know, you need to find people that like, care about what you're doing
Speaker:and the why and talk with other people who have the same issues.
Speaker:Awesome.
Speaker:Kate, thank you very much.
Speaker:Where can people find Dip and and find you?
Speaker:Sure. Yeah, you can find Dip.
Speaker:at dipalready.com.
Speaker:We are also @dipalready on TikTok and Instagram.
Speaker:And if you want to ask me anything, my name is Kate Assaraf,
Speaker:and you can find me on LinkedIn.
Speaker:Awesome. Thank you.
Speaker:Yeah, thanks so much.
