Opening a shop in the desert? That’s exactly what it felt like to launch a new e-commerce business in 2016. A challenging experience. I learned a lot from those early days, and if I could go back, of course I would approach things differently. One element would be a deliberately thought-through digital marketing funnel, established and executed from the beginning

When I first launched my co-founded brand BINU Beauty, we used our faces to create trust and credibility. Like many new brands, I knew that showing the founder’s face helps build initial trust. It makes the brand feel personal, tangible, and human. And it worked! People trusted the brand because they could see who was behind the product. But not every brand wants to follow that path. Some founders prefer to stay out of the limelight, and some brands want to be about something bigger than just one person. Also, if you plan on selling the brand again (what we initially did not plan to do, but then change happened), it can be much easier to sell it not with a founder attached to it.

Beauty and the wonderful power of plants - Belladonna Naturkosmetik, Germany's first natural cosmetics speciality shop, has been focusing on both for almost 40 years. Belladonna can be translated as ‘beautiful woman’ in Italian and also be associated with the medicinal plant Atropa belladonna. When you enter the bright, bustling shop in the heart of Berlin-Kreuzberg today, you are enveloped by the scent of soap and essential oils that started it all at Belladonna.

BINU Beauty was created by marrying top-grade organic ingredients from Korea with the global sustainability trend of waterless and plastic-free cosmetics. The growth of BINU Beauty was achieved without investors. We successfully sold the brand in 2021. Here are the five crucial steps for our success in the highly competitive cosmetics market, viewed through the lens of brand strategy and marketing: …