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Growth by focusing on Smaller Resellers – a conversation with Kate Assaraf
9 Plays2 hours ago
Kate Assaraf explains how she has grown DIP Sustainable by focusing on small shops and avoiding the costs of big channels
Kate Assaraf is the founder of Dip Sustainable which aims to playfully educate people about the environment while encouraging them to buy better beauty care products, which means that can buy less of them, but to do their buying from small retailers.
Offering great products got Kate noticed by the beauty media with features in Allure, Cosmopolitan Magazine, BYRDIE. Going against the conventional business model of the cosmetics industry resulted in Kate being named in 2020 a “Woman Of Courage” in Insigniam Quarterly’s issue celebrating female leaders who “think big, confront challenges head-on and never, ever take the well-worn path”.
In this episode of The Independent Minds, Kate explains to host Michael Millward what inspired her to set-up DIP Sustainable and how she makes working with small retailers work for her business.
More information about Kate Assaraf and Michael Millward is available at abeceder.
Audience Offers – listings include links that may create a small commission for The Independent Minds
Visit DIP Sustainable and use offer code FITFORMYAGE at the checkout for a 15% discount.
Buy Company of One by Paul Jarvis on Amazon, Or take inspiration from Kate and support a local book shop at Bookshop.org
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If you would like to try podcasting using Zencastr visit zencastr.com/pricing.
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Transcript
00:00:05
Speaker
Made on Zencastr.
Introduction and Podcast Overview
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello and welcome to The Independent Minds, a series of conversations between Abysseedah and the people who think outside the box about how work works, with the aim of creating better workplace experiences for everyone.
00:00:23
Speaker
I am your host, Michael Millward, Managing Director of Abysseedah.
Business Growth with Small Resellers
00:00:28
Speaker
In this episode of The Independent Minds, Kate Assaraf the founder of Dip Sustainable, a personal care company, is going to explain how to grow a business by focusing on small resellers.
00:00:43
Speaker
As the jingle at the start of this podcast says, The Independent Minds is made on Zencastr because Zencastr is the all-in-one podcasting platform that really does make every stage of the podcast production and distribution process so easy.
00:01:00
Speaker
Regardless of whether you are an experienced podcaster or just starting out, I recommend that you use the link in the description to visit Zencastr.com and take advantage of the built-in discount on their subscription fees.
00:01:13
Speaker
Now that I have told you how wonderful Zencastr is for making podcasts, we should make one. One that will be well worth listening to, liking, downloading and subscribing to, and probably good enough to share with friends, family and work colleagues as well.
00:01:30
Speaker
As with every episode of the Independent Minds, we will not be telling you what to think, but we are hoping to make you think.
Entrepreneurial Journey and Motivation
00:01:39
Speaker
<unk> Today's Independent Mind is Kate Asaraf, the founder of DIP Sustainable, which Kate describes as an environmental awareness company parading around as a damn good personal care company.
00:01:53
Speaker
Kate is something of a serial entrepreneur, having developed a series of businesses Kate is based in New Jersey in the United States. It's not one of the states that i have visited, but if I do get the opportunity to visit, I will make use of my membership of the Ultimate Travel Club to make my travel arrangements.
00:02:11
Speaker
That is because membership of the Ultimate Travel Club gives me access to trade prices on flights, hotels, trains, holidays, and all sorts of other travel-related purchases.
00:02:22
Speaker
In the spirit of sharing, I have added a link with a built-in discount to the description so that you can become a member of the Ultimate Travel Club and travel just like me at trade prices.
00:02:34
Speaker
Now that I have paid some bills, it is time to make an episode of The Independent Minds and say, hello, Kate. Hello, Michael. Thank you for having me here. I am really pleased that you're here because I love what I've seen on your website about DIP Sustainable.
00:02:50
Speaker
The whole way in which it operates is fascinating. especially when you look at the way in which online selling and offline selling is working nowadays. I think it's what you're doing is fascinating. But please, could we start by you just explaining a little little bit about your history, please? Sure. um Well, I'm honored to be here on something called Independent Minds because when I started this business after being in the beauty industry for about 20 years, I received nothing but criticism for my kind of counterculture approach to how to build a business mostly in beauty and in sustainability. I received tons of advice of how to build. I threw everything that i learned that I felt was kind of dirty about sustainability and also and greenwashing and also dirty and about the beauty industry and tried to turn it on its head and see if I could build something really authentic that supported small stores around the country instead of ah competing with them and making it impossible for them to sell my products.
Challenges in Digital Marketing
00:03:57
Speaker
That's really what I set out to do in my 20 years in the beauty industry and and my frustration, 10 years of frustration with the sustainability industry, ah we are just married together in what DIP has become.
00:04:08
Speaker
Was that sort of like one of those light bulb moments or was it something that evolved over time? It evolved over time in the sense that when you're behind the scenes in consumer goods, you see that there's all of these ways to seed to the market that feel a little...
00:04:25
Speaker
icky It's like you in in beauty, especially what they do is, you know, you hire influencers, people who have never paid for your product, right? They've never done the, the, that genuine hunt and search for your product. they're They're literally paid to talk about how great it is, whether it's great or not. And now we have this in the past, I'd say around five years, we have this other thing that's like the subculture, a subset of influencers, which is user generated content, which is UGC. And that is these pretend customers, again, that are out there pretending to be super fans of your product in in order to coerce other people. And so you kind of had this full throttle marketing plan that you saw almost every consumer goods brand take that seems a little bit dishonest in in convincing the consumer that other people are consuming these products. I saw it in sustainability. I saw it very much in beauty. And those those two big frustration points, especially paired with how many times have you purchased something online based on what you thought were real reviews or real excitement only to find out that what you purchased was was not great at all.
00:05:43
Speaker
Didn't live up to the promises or the expectations. And it makes you feel crazy as a consumer. What happened? Like, am i buying something different than all these other people are talking about? And the answer is no. you're You are genuinely parting with your money and other people are not parting with their money and are paid to say how great a something is.
00:06:04
Speaker
Yes, there's something slightly strange about that sort of approach. you Like you say, it's a little bit icky and suspect. but So and I get the feeling that there's more to this than simple i know there's more to this than simply making money because I've read your website and seen you you are very transparent on your website
Role of Small Retailers in Marketing
00:06:26
Speaker
about the whole business and the whole a way in which you want to do business. And where does all of that come from?
00:06:34
Speaker
I'm a serial reader, so it's probably and an aggregation of very many books. But I think ah there's a kind there's a book called a Company of One. For the first 18 months, I ran this book.
00:06:46
Speaker
a brand completely by myself. And I really thought the message in that book was pretty interesting. It's like, why are you we fighting to become huge businesses? like There really is a way to run a business that's small and satisfying and gives you a sense of purpose without having to have this huge global brand.
00:07:09
Speaker
And I took to heart a lot of lessons in that book. What i really see out there is there is sustainability as you see in the consumer goods world. And then there's real sustainability that you see on the ground level in something like a refill store all around the country. So they're there.
00:07:28
Speaker
I know they have them in the UK, in the United States, in every state, there are these, they're called refilleries or zero waste stores or just refill stores where you take your empty jug coffee,
00:07:40
Speaker
um detergent and you can go and refill instead of buying ah another big plastic bottle. Or you can do that with pasta or spices, hand soap. it oh There's ah all different categories. But what I noticed is that these small independent retailers, they, unlike influencers, they have done all of the work. They've tried every version of a sustainable good before they invest in it and put it on their shelves.
00:08:06
Speaker
I see these small store owners as the antidote to dishonest digital marketing, because they are actually at the front lines in communities, educating them about how to reduce plastic and how to be more eco-friendly, but with actual vetted products that really inspire long-term change instead of leaving someone feeling disappointment.
00:08:29
Speaker
Well, I agree with you. I think that it's very easy to be the place where you can Almost must find absolutely everything. And I remember just to talk about HR things for a moment, being with a client and I said, what book should I read whilst I'm away, Michael? Because when I come back, I really want to start focusing on reinventing the way in which we manage performance. So I said to him, well, how about a book on performance management? Let's go onto the internet and see what what books there are. And there were thousands of them, absolutely thousands of them.
00:09:01
Speaker
And that we were almost in a worse situation because there were so many. We had simply no idea which one would be the one that we should read. i have just been doing some work with a university.
00:09:13
Speaker
I will phone one of the professors and ask them what book it is that we should be looking at. And so I made the phone call, got the call back, presented the situation, the challenge that we were faced with.
00:09:25
Speaker
And he said, I would read these two books. And so that's what we did. And that's what happens with the small store on the high street, the the one that's down the little alley because the high street rent is is so big that you must have to search them out. They curate what is on the shelf. Absolutely. The shelf space is expensive. No supplier is going to pay them to say, I want my product at eye level or anything like you get in the big supermarkets. absolutely Every product has to prove its place, earn its place on the shelf, I think, in the smaller stores. Yeah. And they can talk to you about them.
00:10:05
Speaker
they They know why it's there, what it does and what it doesn't do as well. that's That's one of the important things. Yes. Don't buy that. yeah That won't be any good for you. Absolutely. and And recognizing this and knowing that there's a consumer general consumer frustration out there. People are angry.
00:10:24
Speaker
People are tired of spending really hard-earned money on bad things or disappointing goods and then being stuck trying to return something. is even worse in many cases here in the United States. I don't know what it's like in the UK, but a lot of times in the United States now you're fed into this AI hell loop and it's very difficult to get your money back from a business once they have it. yeah I studied economics and math and I've always been fascinated by consumer behavior and and choice, to be honest. When I see the consumer behavior of really trying hard, doing all the research online, reading
00:11:02
Speaker
All of the reviews, trying to find out what is real, it's so frustrating and time consuming. And no one has that kind of time to look for real, authentic stuff when it's already been digitally polluted by companies. Yeah. There's a bit of a backlash against the the fast fashion. new bitke It's there, buy it. If you don't buy it now, once it's gone, it's gone. You'll never get it again and don't bother trying to wash it because it will disintegrate in the machine. Yeah. But buy less, wear more to read it. There's a whole different way of looking at things, I think. It's not about mass consumerism.
00:11:39
Speaker
and consumption, it's about quality over quantity. It's also more human. i think that was the way commerce was intended to be when commerce started. You you
Supporting Small Retailers
00:11:49
Speaker
see, ah maybe it's the past 10 years where commerce has really shifted online more and that social code of buying something from someone, looking them in the eye, having the transaction, like that that's broken when you shop online and there's tons of digital charlatans everywhere. People crave human to human kind of that code that exists when you buy something from someone that has to really look at you when they're selling it to you being like, this product is great.
00:12:19
Speaker
You have these small stores. They curate their collection of merchandise that they have on their shelves. But life is tough for them. And margins are small. Yes. When you take into a account rent and rent, local taxes and staff costs. It's hard being a small retailer. um But one of the things that you've done with Dip Sustainable is always like treated those people like they are the biggest department store on the planet.
00:12:47
Speaker
Yeah, it's my favorite thing actually about my job and my company. I practice this over the top generosity to the store owners. It is something that gives me a lot of joy and it keeps us connected as humans. And if you imagine store owners are siloed in their stores and they don't really get a chance to interact with each other. And I thought, well, why don't I bring us all together in different ways and celebrate how important they are to my company and to my team. And so the first year we did, we started doing these retreats to get them all together. The first year i took a bunch of our independent store owners to Morocco for two weeks and we did a sustainability tour around all the different areas of Morocco. And we, you know, i took them to go see like how argan oil, how many trees, how many nuts, argan nuts does it take to produce just a small amount of oil? I think that's very important.
00:13:38
Speaker
When you talk about sustainability to really understand raw materials, we talk about sustainability in such kind of like a silly, superficial, consumeristic way when you can go to another country or another area of the world and see, oh, my gosh, like sustainability is just part of the necessary practices that they have in different in different areas of the world. Yeah, if you can't turn on a tap right and find drinking water, you're going to value water much more than absolutely do if you if it's just at the end of the tap. And you treat it so differently.
00:14:11
Speaker
That sort of generosity sounds expensive. Where did you get the idea I redirect funds that I would have used for advertising back into the stores instead. I feel compelled to exhibit this kind of generosity to our stores, not only to just show them my gratitude, but also it's part of my DNA. My father and my stepmother, they were both irrationally generous and they're both from Iran and...
00:14:36
Speaker
they both were entrepreneurs. And I just, I just found that, that over the top generosity to be such a warm feeling when it is given to someone, even when you, and when it, when I'm giving it or receiving it, it's just, it is just something that I think has eroded out of business. I love bringing it back and, and making it part of our story. This is almost like the, uh,
00:15:03
Speaker
Middle Eastern, an Iranian culture, Persian culture, I suppose, in many ways of no one is is a stranger. If someone is in need of food, yeah you feed them. No one leaves our home hungry or thirsty. it's We're all in this environment trying to make the best of it and all facing the same challenges. So we absolutely treat everyone as we would like to be treated ourselves. Absolutely. And you know, this year, early in the year, i lost my stepmother. she was my stepmother for about 40 years and we were very close. And my, i lost my father in August. This
00:15:40
Speaker
passing forward the lessons of generosity that I learned from them has kind of taken on a new meaning. it it feels very, very spiritual and it just feels good. And in so many instances, i think in business, you kind of see stinginess come to the surface. And I love going against the grain in that particular department. yeah it's not about the balance sheet very often it's about how you can make people feel right both the people that work for you the people who are your resellers everyone in the value chain i suppose i can imagine it must have been an amazing experience to go to morocco with a brand that was just a year or so old and to actually receive an invitation i'm going to fly you across the atlantic to North Africa for two weeks and we're going to do all of these various different things. must You must have, well, you probably still talk about it. Yeah, it's so fun. And those connections that we we made, they're so deep rooted. And we we often talk to each other as as that group.
00:16:44
Speaker
Another group I took to our top 10 retailers, we I took them to the Dominican Republic. We had a fun experience there where we, were I, we, I got them surf lessons and we, you know, we really talked all about sustainability. I had another sustainable entrepreneur, um the CEO of Byte,
00:17:02
Speaker
ah which are toothpaste tablets, who she was on Shark Tank and she's kind you know kind of a big deal. we brought her on the trip too, so we could all talk about sustainability, not only on this macro level that the CEO of Byte does, but also at the micro level that all of these small stores talk about sustainability. And that was really fun. And then this year we did, I took my biggest group of retailers ever ah to the Catskills in New York to do like a a mock summer camp. And that was really fun just because when you're standing in a store and stressing about bills all the time, that you rarely get a time to sit down and relax and really mingle stress-free. And that was the experience I really wanted to give to them and let them all know that there are other people in the same boat as them. And we're we're here to support them all the best that we can. That's great. And and you're seeing your business flourish as a result.
00:17:58
Speaker
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. The energy I've put in has always come back three, four or five fold. Because one of the issues that I think lots of people face when they're setting up a business is that you're bombarded almost with you can go on to the online marketplaces and it all sounds fantastic.
00:18:18
Speaker
But regardless of which marketplace you talk about, and we don't need to go into the details of the ones that exist, people can research them themselves. But The fees for being on that marketplace are not small.
00:18:34
Speaker
No. And you are competing very often on them simply on price. What you have done is taken all the sorts of money that you would have paid to be listed or paid for newspaper, radio or TV ads and invested that into essentially the people who are doing the selling of your products.
00:18:53
Speaker
That's absolutely correct. that's it I don't know how to explain the joy I feel when I wake up in the morning and get to run my company, but it does contribute a lot to just making even the bad times of entrepreneurship feel so good because um you know we've created ah ah a network, a team, and that is so special in a time where, you know in the United States anyway, the economy is is getting a little gnarly. It's the nicest way to say it.
00:19:22
Speaker
you Oh, it's your politeness as as an American there is coming through and sitting bit gnarly, it's a bit diabolical all over the place, really. But we're talking in November 2025, so hopefully we'll have brighter times ahead. And those brighter times, I think, will involve your community.
Product Introduction and Sustainability
00:19:41
Speaker
But I also want to know, we've talked about DIP Sustainable and so how you've built the business and the whole sort of ethos of it and all those sorts things. But we haven't said anything yet about the products that you actually make.
00:19:54
Speaker
I want to know, what was the first product that you made? ah Tell me all about the things that you do because I know people will want to know. Sure. Yeah, absolutely. And thank you for asking that, by the way. So the they initial products were just bar, shampoo and conditioner. which on the surface sounds like a yawn fest. It sounds very funny. But to be honest, I was so frustrated with the ah the bar shampoo and conditioner that already existed on the market as someone you know who's professional and has to show up in my hair looking nice and just has high standards for my personal care. I ended up,
00:20:31
Speaker
having a graveyard of bad bars in my shower, which were doing the exact opposite of what I was trying to do, which was to reduce waste. So I would go into my shower all the time and just see, you know, tombstones of these bars, just littering it. And i was like, I, this is so frustrating. Like, I don't want to go back to my salon brands. I know with my experience in the beauty industry that I can make really great bars, you know, and and cherry pick science that aligns with my values about the environment and make bars that I know are really performance based and not having the plastic free part even part of the conversation. So so I have a shampoo bar and the problem it really solves is if you're, i I am a runner, so I run in the, I trail run endurance running. So I never wanna choose between my workout and a good hair day, my run and a good hair day. So I made the bars, the shampoo bars gentle enough That if you are not only, you know, an athlete who who needs to shower more often, but if, say, you're you work in a hospital or you work with preschoolers or you know, really anything where you have to shower more often, this will not strip your hair and and make it feel like crunchy and squeaky. And then with the conditioner bar, I i was spending a lot of money and it's it's a little shame shameful, but high end salon conditioner is very, very expensive. Sometimes it's 50 to $70 for a very small tube. So I thought, what if I could make a conditioner bar perform as well as those, but also make it so big that it replaces a year's worth of those things? And so my conditioner bar, ah the dip conditioner bar is dollars, $32, but replaces about $500 worth of conditioner for me and lasts me a full year.
00:22:19
Speaker
So I wanted it to be so much so that whether you cared about the environment or not, at least if you cared about your wallet, the dip conditioner bar was the best move for you. And those those are the those were the first two things. And there really are the the entry level SKUs for my company. I can see economists and retail experts saying, like, you sold a product that lasts a year. Yeah. Why? Why? You want them coming back? you You're not going to see them again for another year. But it all goes back to that part of being sustainable is not just the production process or what happens to the packaging and what happens to the soap after it's gone down the plug hole or that sort of stuff. Right. It is that you buy less and use more.
00:23:03
Speaker
You buy less, use more. and And what is so fun is people do not believe that it's going to be great and they don't believe that it's going to last that long. So, you know, people buy, dip, dip,
00:23:17
Speaker
like they're skeptics, then they come back and I'll see them buy it for every skeptic that they know. if You've got to try it. you know so So even though I sell it to the one person once a year, the conditioner bar, the shampoo bar, you buy a little bit more frequently, maybe two to four times a year, the enthusiasm and the surprise and delight of finding something that actually works, that has exceeded their expectations is what is really the secret sauce there. Yeah. And I'm right to think as well that you you actually made the first products that you were selling.
00:23:51
Speaker
You were the production department. Well, yes, i i did. um Because I've been in the beauty industry a long time, I did know a chemist who we worked alongside shoulder to shoulder to make sure that these were the best. I didn't do it all by myself. I'll never take all of that credit. But what I think is really ah cool thing is that The problem that I wanted to solve was to make one set of bars for all hair types. So if you had a family or lots of children with different hair types and different curl patterns, or one person has a beard, the other person has hair down to their waist, the bars will work for everybody. That is such a big shocker for consumers that are so used to having two sets of bottles per person that share the same shower. Yeah, it's a complex business taking a shower.
00:24:39
Speaker
How many products are now in the dip sustainable range? So if we if we include the fact that the same products come in different fragrances, there's probably, i think, around 78 of them. Nice. We also have a hair and body dry oil. So that's and a multi-use product that can reduce frizz on hair, but is also can replace lotions for your body. And it dries on your hands instantly. So you don't have to run and find a towel or wash your hands after you apply it. just...
00:25:10
Speaker
s sinks in and you can touch your phone even right away without leaving greasy marks. And then we have a face wash and we have an enzyme spray. kind of The enzyme spray is a little bit niche. It's a shower in a bottle. If you think about if you've ever broken your leg and you can't get in and out of the shower, the enzyme spray helps preserve some dignity for you.
Innovative Products and Future Growth
00:25:30
Speaker
So your hair can get clean right away. It's unlike dry shampoo, which is dry and covers up dirt and grease, the enzyme spray actually cleans it.
00:25:41
Speaker
So we've had people ah with locks and ah braids be able to avoid getting their hair completely wet and just being able to use this instead of showering or people with parents that are in nursing homes where they don't think that they're getting the proper showering that they need. The enzyme spray solves a lot of those kind of unsexy problems that people have. Well, it's part of it, isn't it? It's like,
00:26:07
Speaker
Yeah, you can be perfect and you buy products to make you even more perfect. And then for each one of those, there has to be one that solves a problem as well. And I suppose most beauty products start with, yeah, we need to solve a problem. But it is fascinating that you've achieved so much. What does the future look like for DIP Sustainable? My ideal future is maintaining a business that pays people well, that allows stores to survive, and just increasing how many stores carry our products and increasing that awareness for people that when you spend in where you live, you're actually contributing to the taxes in your town and all of the systems that make your town worth living in. That is true. it's It's very, very important for me to keep projecting out that statement because it is so easy to just click and add to cart on giant marketplaces. This is true. More often than not,
00:27:01
Speaker
people end up being very disappointed by the the digital landscape, commerce landscape. And when you're buying local, buy with cash. Yes. So that the retailer gets 100% of the cash that you are spending. That's so smart. always try and do that when I'm shopping local, pay with cash.
00:27:19
Speaker
It's always the best way. It has been fantastic, Kate. Thank you very much. I've really enjoyed our conversation. I've learned some more. And I will have a good look around your website as well again. But for today, thank you very much. Really do appreciate your time. Thank you, Michael. i This was a really fun one. And I appreciate you sharing your your space with me. It's been a pleasure.
00:27:40
Speaker
I am Michael Millward, the Managing Director of Abbasida. And I have been having a conversation with the independent mind, Kate Assaraf, the founder of DIP Sustainable, which Kate describes as an environmental awareness company parading around as a damn good personal care company.
00:27:58
Speaker
You can find out more information about both of us by using the links in the description. I am sure you will have enjoyed listening to this episode of The Independent Minds as much as Kate and I have enjoyed making it.
00:28:11
Speaker
So please give it a like and download it so you can listen anytime, anywhere. To make sure you don't miss out on future episodes, please subscribe. You will probably also want to share the link with your family, friends and work colleagues as well.
00:28:26
Speaker
Remember, the aim of all the podcasts produced by Abbasida is not to tell you what to think, but we do hope to have made you think. Until the next episode of The Independent Minds, thank you for listening and goodbye.