Building a Notable Beauty Brand in Today’s Overly Competitive Online Market with Publicist Kristin Marquet

Original Article on Medium.com 
By Heather Heinzinger

I interviewed the PR and marketing representative of LA-based premium beauty brand, KIMTRUE. Kristin has been in the beauty field for more than 13 years and has been working with KIMTRUE since the beginning of 2021.

KIMTRUE is an emerging beauty brand that sells high quality haircare, facial, and skincare products for female consumers in the U.S., and internationally. The company uses top-notch, cutting-edge active ingredients to formulate non-traditional, results-focused products at affordable prices. KIMTRUE also takes pride in being a socially responsible company and is dedicated to helping and supporting its local community. KIMTRUE has been featured in countless media and endorsed by some of today’s most notable beauty influencers.

Can you share your professional background?

Earlier this year, I started working with KIMTRUE on the PR and influencer marketing sides of the business to help increase its brand awareness, generate website traffic, and build a loyal customer base. So far, we’ve received positive feedback and significant media coverage on the brand.

Aside from working with KIMTRUE, I have a boutique digital marketing and branding consultancy in New York, Marquet Media, and the emerging media company, FemFounder.co. Both of these ventures are dedicated to helping small businesses launch and grow.

Can you share the most interesting story that happened since KIMTRUE began its social responsibility program?

With the COVID-19 pandemic causing significant disruptions and problems throughout the U.S. healthcare system, we recently made a large donation of its hand sanitizer to the local charity, GOA, Guardians of the Angeles Charitable Foundation, to aid healthcare frontline workers throughout the greater Los Angeles area. We plan to contribute more of our products to the local community as well, which we discuss below.

Can you describe how KIMTRUE is making a significant social impact?

We, as a company, are passionate about helping others, and will do so whenever we can to give back. Over the long-term, we plan to give back two percent of our sales to charity and non-profit organizations every year for different initiatives. We are also sponsoring one child monthly through ChildFund.org. We believe in giving back to the community as much as we can.

Can you tell us a story about a particular organization that was impacted or helped by your cause?

In late 2020, we donated a total of 3,168 units of 16-ounce hand sanitizer bottles, with a retail value of $30,000.00 to the local LA community. We made this donation to ensure medical centers and essential healthcare workers had enough PPE to make it through the winter months.

Our hand sanitizer is antibacterial and vegan that eliminates 99.9 percent of germs on contact. It contains 70 percent ethyl alcohol that helps dissolve the lipid membrane of bacterial cells. This potent antibacterial formula has demonstrated effectiveness against bacteria, funguses, and viruses. This disinfectant also moisturizes and protects skin from dryness, flakiness, and cracked skin — making this formulation suitable for medical centers. Our hand sanitizer is also produced in an FDA registered facility in the United States.

How does KIMTRUE define organizational giving? Can you explain what you mean or give an example?

We believe in giving back and supporting the local community as much as we can to help better society. It’s that simple. For example, to support the local community and frontline workers, we plan to give away up to 1,000 bottles of hand sanitizer to frontline workers when they purchase one pack on our site and post a picture of how they use our product at work, at home, or in their vehicle on their social media accounts. Once they do that, we will then issue a refund. We will also provide these shoppers with promo codes to purchase a 3-pack, a 6-pack, a 12-pack at extremely low prices — up to 50 percent off. Ensuring our frontline and essential workers are equipped with PPE is one of our core values.

What are your best pieces of advice that today’s aspiring and new entrepreneurs can follow?

As someone who has worked in the beauty PR field and for more than a decade and has run a number of other successful startups, I have quite a few, but here are the top five things I wish I would have known.

1. Gaining More Experience — I wish I would have gained more corporate experience before going out on my own because it would have shortened my learning curve. But instead, I just dove in, learning the ropes as I navigated challenges. It was rough in the beginning because I didn’t have a support system or the right knowledge, but wisdom comes with experience. I made it through.
2. Getting a Mentor — As an extension of my first point, I wish I would have also had a mentor in the early days to shorten the learning curve, but I decided to learn everything on my own. It was tough so I recommend to others who want to become an entrepreneur to get a mentor. Find someone who understands your industry and is willing to guide you through the process.
3. Hiring the Right Talent — I wish I would have hired the right talent in the beginning instead of trying to learn to do everything by myself. I would have saved a lot of time and resources. Hire the right people when you can so you can focus on growing your business.
4. There is No Such Thing As Perfect — I wish I would have learned that 95 percent is good enough. No one else is going to notice otherwise. When you strive for 100 percent every single time you do something, perfectionism will get in the way and hinder success. It’s important to understand that 95 percent is good enough.
5. Investing in Marketing — I wish I would have invested a portion of my profits in marketing in the early stages of launching my first business. Take a small amount of money and put it into marketing to build awareness and get customers.

KIMTRUE is a company of influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

This is a great question. We, at KIMTRUE, want to bring customers the best overall experience with minimalist packaging because we believe in being environmentally friendly and not overloading our packages with unnecessary paper.

We are also working towards bringing down the overall cost of goods so we can offer affordable prices with better ingredients in our formulas. We believe in providing top-quality products for our customers at reasonable prices.

How can our readers follow KimTrue on social media?

For more information about the company, its social responsibility initiatives, and all of its product lines, please visit KIMTRUE.com.