Tope Adubi of Kilali Cosmetics: Five Things You Need To Know To Succeed In The Modern Beauty Industry
An Interview With Jilea Hemmings
Resilience: I can’t stress the power of resilience enough. The industry is so saturated. There is a new product/brand coming up almost every day. If you do not ask yourself how else and what else, you will miss out on a lot of opportunities that can possibly set you on the right track of growth for your business.
As a part of our series about “Five Things You Need To Know To Succeed In The Modern Beauty Industry”, I had the pleasure of interviewing Tope Adubi.
Tope Adubi is Nigerian born and has always been entrepreneurial, with a passion for local products that accentuate natural beauty. Before working on Kilali Cosmetics full-time, she worked in digital marketing in a prestigious organization that provides funding to entrepreneurs across the 54 African countries. During this time, she traveled across the continent, and got the opportunity to discover the hidden gems and the beauty that lies on the continent. Africa has many clean and natural resources with healing properties that are beneficial to our skin. This story is yet to be told, and Tope believes that she is the one to do it.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dive in, our readers would love to learn a bit more about you. Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?
I am Nigerian born and have always been entrepreneurial, with a passion for local products that accentuate our natural beauty. Before working on Kilali Cosmetics full-time, I worked in digital marketing, in a prestigious organization that provides funding to entrepreneurs across the 54 African countries. During this time, I traveled across the continent, and I got the opportunity to discover the hidden gems and the beauty that lie on the continent.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
This is when I launched and immediately tried to go to retail stores. I went to stores, asked to see their managers, and started pitching. What I didn’t realize was that there is a process to it all. Not just a process by industry standard, but a process I needed to experience as a founder. As you can imagine, with the packaging and overall branding I had at that time, those were my first batch of no’s! However, the experience was worth it.
Are you able to identify a “tipping point” in your career when you started to see success? Did you start doing anything different? Are there takeaways or lessons that others can learn from that?
At first there were a lot of no’s. A whole lot. However, I kept at it and found other ways to reposition my brand and products. In doing that, I found out more about the people who need my products and how they wanted me to communicate with them. Looking through it all, I’m not so sure I can place my finger on an exact tipping point, because I still get no’s. However, I will say a key value that has helped me through the ‘yes’ is definitely resilience. It’s helped me think about who else, what else, and how else. If I didn’t have that, I’m not sure where Kilali Cosmetics will be.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person to whom you are grateful who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
This is without a doubt my mum. I got my entrepreneurial spirit from her. Watching her run several businesses and taking care of her family after my dad passed was an experience to behold at such a young age. My first experience with clean beauty came from her as she used a whole lot of shea butter and African black soap in our daily routine. Even at this moment, she works with me to source Kilali Cosmetics’ main ingredients from Africa.
Let’s now shift to the main part of our discussion. The global beauty industry today has grown to more than a half a trillion dollar business. Can you tell us about the innovations that you are bringing to the industry? How do you think that will help people?
Many times, people associate innovation with something completely new, but I beg to differ. Clean beauty started from Africa and this industry is forecasted to reach approximately 1.65 billion by 2025. I always tell people that African beauty rituals have been in existence for years, even practiced by our forefathers and passed down from generation to generation. The world is yet to tap into the healing properties of African beauty. Therefore, Kilali Cosmetics shares these rituals with the world through one product at a time. We tap into the healing properties of the African Black Soap and include this in everyday products that you need for your skin. Some people say the direct soap is a little too harsh for their face. We understand this, so we created a facial product that is gentle enough for your face and has the cleansing properties your skin needs without drying out your skin as a black soap body bar will.
Can you share 3 things that most excite you about the modern beauty industry?
Oh! First, diversity! It’s so beautiful to not only see the industry embracing and creating products for skin tones that have been ignored for so long, but also the increase in products that work for different skin types. It sure has been a long time coming. Secondly, the growth of the industry over the past years, especially with clean beauty, as this creates and amazing opportunity to share my culture and beauty rituals with people around the world. Also, the focus on sustainable packaging. Third, how tech has been infused into the beauty industry since the pandemic. How we can now try beauty products from the comfort of our homes and having the power to make that decision is blissful!
Can you share 3 things that most concern you about the industry? If you had the ability to implement 3 ways to improve the industry, what would you suggest?
Idealized beauty is a major concern because the beauty industry is ever changing, and there’s only so much people can do to keep up with these trends. A few years ago, freckles were not seen as a trend but now they are. I would love to see more on accepting your own beauty. For this, you do not have to keep up with.
You are an expert about beauty. Can you share a few ideas that anyone can use “to feel beautiful”?
First thing is to embrace your own beauty. Beauty trends are ever changing and will always change. There is so much you have to keep up with if you do not embrace your own beauty.
Here is the main question for our discussion. Based on your experience and success, can you please share “Five Things You Need To Know To Succeed In The Modern Beauty Industry”. Please share a story or an example, for each.
Branding: Your branding has to absolutely stand out. With a saturated market, you can’t afford to look like every other brand on the shelf. While this process takes a lot of work, it is worth it in the end. With Kilali Cosmetics, we continuously think of how else to make our packaging beneficial to our customers. All our current product packaging is a different version from what we first launched with, and if you ask me if the current packaging will be the same forever, my answer will be “probably not.”
Events: From my experience, tapping into relevant events will help your business in immense ways. You not only get an opportunity to meet with like minds, but you also get to see how your business can be better positioned for growth and exposure. As a business, we kept saying we were going to be at Essence Festival 2022. We weren’t sure how it’ll happen, but we knew it would and we would be ready for it when it comes. We made it to Essence and are still reaping the fruits from attending this event.
The power of networking: No man is an island. I believe there is a place for hard work but there is an even more important place for luck in every success story and luck does not just fall onto your laps, luck finds you through the people you meet, through your network. Most of the “luck” we have had as a business came from our network/community.
Resilience: I can’t stress the power of resilience enough. The industry is so saturated. There is a new product/brand coming up almost every day. If you do not ask yourself how else and what else, you will miss out on a lot of opportunities that can possibly set you on the right track of growth for your business.
Stay prepared: This can’t be stressed enough. I remember getting into our first retail store. I knew my products were great but was on my 3 packages rebrand because I knew I wanted to stand out on shelves. The retailer had reached out and had tried my products and certified it effective, but the extra deciding factor for the team was the packaging. In retrospect, I know I wouldn’t have made it to their shelf if I wasn’t prepared.
You are a person of great 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?
Self-confidence. I think of beauty as a language. We all don’t speak all the languages on this earth. However, the people who speak the languages we don’t understand are perfectly fluent in it and love it. We all need to be confident in our own beauty, because each person is beautiful in their way, and we need the confidence to express that beauty with the canvas we already have through nature.
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
“Success is walking from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm,” It’s not easy being told ‘no’ a bunch of times. However, I haven’t read or heard of any success story without several no’s. The key is to keep going, to keep being resilient, and know the process is part of the journey.
How can our readers follow you online?
@KilaliCosmetics on all social media channels and http://www.kilalicosmetics.com/
Thank you so much for joining us. This was very inspirational.
