Juice Beauty
Karen has successfully married her passion for helping people enjoy healthier lifestyles with her skill at building financially successful businesses and conceptualized her third company, Juice Beauty when she developed a keen interest in personal care products upon becoming pregnant with her first child at the age of 40.
Years after her second child was born, Karen bought the name "Juice Beauty" and launched the company in 2005. Today, Juice Beauty's experienced in-house chemistry team and beauty industry executive pros offer high performance, award winning (InStyle, ELLE, Allure, EWG awards) skincare, makeup and hair care products that are authentically organic (products always made with 70-95% USDA certified organic ingredient content). Karen's goal has always been to meet or exceed conventional chemical beauty efficacy. Supported by solid eco-values that include purchasing many ingredients locally from West Coast certified organic farmers, manufacturing strictly in the U.S.A. often with solar power, utilizing sustainable containers and printing with soy ink. Gwyneth Paltrow, recently joined Juice Beauty as Creative Director, Makeup, and with Karen, recently released over 75 makeup products made with organic ingredients. Juice Beauty's major retailers are ULTA Beauty's 800 stores in the U.S.; luxury boutiques and spas such as Credo, Shen and Rancho La Puerta; and the Company is currently launching at Holt Renfrew and Sephora in Canada.
How has your life experience made you the leader you are today?
My life's mission has always been to make the world a healthier place and I've always tried to look at the positive or the opportunity in every situation. During childhood I became one of the rare survivors of a form of leukemia (aplastic anemia). I learned to view this experience as a gift and I have built my personal and professional life around this passion for healthful, fun and active living. Overcoming obstacles and seeing possibilities where others see limitations is the foundation of an entrepreneur and maybe my childhood struggles helped lay this personality foundation.
My consistent goal is to equally marry my passion for helping people enjoy healthier lives while building financially successful businesses that are mission driven. I am probably one of the few beauty founders that came to the industry from the health, wellness and fitness industry allowing me to look at the development of products through a different lens.
How has your previous work experience contributed to your time at your company Juice Beauty?
I've enjoyed a long and successful entrepreneurial career in the Healthy Lifestyles sector of business and one of the key facets in building the 2nd company I founded, The Wellness Company, was conducting studies with major universities on how healthier employees cost corporations less money and filed fewer medical claims. Taking this experience to beauty, one of my early goals was to prove that Juice Beauty's skincare products, made with certified organic ingredients, could certainly surpass the natural brands efficacy but I wanted to meet or exceed conventional chemical efficacy benchmarks. So very early on I hired outside reputable laboratories to conduct studies to show instrument-measured results of our skincare products. At year 5, when I hired an in-house chemist team and our first experienced executive, Juice Beauty's products and clinical results soared followed by greatly escalating sales.
During much of my career, I've been one of the few women in the boardroom or one of the few female executives in a company.
My experiences have taught me the possibilities for driving business from the top team as well as how to avoid middle management logjams. At Juice Beauty, most employees know that our goals are aligned from the board to the field to the management team and that there are no hidden agendas--to make the best and highest performance skincare, makeup and haircare products with certified organic ingredients.
What have the highlights and challenges been during your time at Juice Beauty?
All of the highlights and challenges have surrounded the two most important areas of Juice Beauty: The products and the -people. I'm not sure I initially realized that I was radically transforming the chemistry of beauty but Juice Beauty's revolutionary formulations started with a basic premise: the belief that by formulating with an antioxidant and vitamin-rich organic botanical juice base, rather than the typical petroleum derivatives or added water, and combining it with powerful skin care ingredients, it could yield equal or better results than conventional or natural products. Multiple clinical testing proved this basic premise correct. In the most basic of terms, the original visual picture in my head was for "every drop to feed the skin".
Once we had a professional in-house team, our formulas really started to progress. One can imagine how hard it is to compete with silicones, dimethicones and plastic beads used by conventional chemical brands! Instead Juice Beauty uses organic, resveratrol rich grape seed, jojoba and shea butters but it took years to get our formulas to have the highest performance, yet luxurious feel that customers require. It also took years to experiment getting vibrant makeup colors from phyto-pigments (plant pigments from crushed roses, aubergine, purple carrot, eclipta daisies, argan husks and more); instead of artificial and synthetic dyes. Obviously plants aren't the same exact color every time so color matching is incredibly difficult!! A challenge would be patience. It takes great patience to achieve the highest efficacy yet purest products with years of scientific trials. Entrepreneurs are not known for their patience so I definitely have become frustrated along the way.
People. Another source of frustration in the very beginning was to recruit a world class team or to recruit folks that can thrive in an entrepreneurial environment. It took us about 6 years before we had a team that gelled and could scale and build the company. Our biggest success is that we have a team driven by passion and authenticity.
What advice can you offer to women who want a career in your industry?
Find your passion and your mission and work with a company that you believe in. I think most of Juice Beauty's employees would say that they are doing more than working in beauty. They are building a sustainable, mission driven company that is creating significant meaning to their lives and that they are going for a Win-Win-Win. Winning with results oriented products. Winning with healthy ingredients absorbing into the skin. Winning with helping a sustainable company that supports organic farming and sustainable suppliers.
What is the most important lesson you've learned in your career to date?
Trust your gut and your instincts. Every time I have a strong instinctual feeling and ignore it because I was reticent to take an uncharted course I have regretted it.
How do you maintain a work/life balance?
It is challenging with kids although I am very proud that both our son and daughter can see that I have meaningful work. Since I waited forever to have children (had my babies at 40 and 42), I had already experienced entrepreneurial success upon starting Juice Beauty, so I had the means to open our office geographically between home and our kids school and next door to a Whole Foods. This enabled me to be available in the early years for school functions. Having a close Whole Foods meant that healthful take out dinners were always available. It may have been better for Juice Beauty if I had attended more industry events in the early years but I was home almost every night with our family. I also don't know how anyone separates work and family as it has been more enjoyable for me to combine these two major facets of life. Our kids have spent more than half of their lives around Juice Beauty, the soccer teams have done homework and been fed at our offices before evening games, and my husband has been very involved in conversation with almost every major business challenge over the last 11 years.
Probably the most important habit I have that has kept me sane and balanced and full of energy is that I try to workout for an hour every morning (run, bike or swim) and I eat mostly wild salmon, organic whole grains, organic fruits and vegetables, organic yogurt and chocolate.
What do you think is the biggest issue for women in the workplace?
Sheryl Sandberg's book Lean In, really hit a nerve with me. Women really do have to Lean In and stay in...during the child bearing years, I always recommend to stay in the game part-time (if possible) because what often happens is women drop out temporarily and all of the sudden, 10 years go by and it can be hard to re-enter the workforce for multiple reasons.
Juice Beauty is as women friendly as it gets, in fact right now, we have a crib in our office as our product development leader just had a baby! Her baby gets passed to several trusted co-workers for cuddles throughout the day. Arranging work around kids plays, accommodating babies, and more are all part of Juice Beauty's daily culture.
How has mentorship made a difference in your professional and personal life?
I've been inspired by so many people in my life but most of my drive comes from within, it's just a burning desire to build mission driven, sustainable companies. In my thirties, I did have a business mentor, George Brown through the YPO/EO network and he was incredibly insightful and supportive during a few major business transitions in my life. Today, my largest daily inspiration comes from our amazing executive team and all of the leaders within our organization.
Which other female leaders do you admire and why?
I'm rooting for Hilary Clinton. I admire Mary Dillon, the CEO of ULTA Beauty as it's exciting that we have a female leader at the head of a high growth major beauty company. It's kind of interesting given the beauty customer that so many major beauty companies are run by men.
What do you want your brand to accomplish in the next year?
Juice Beauty just launched over 75 new Phyto-Pigments makeup products and a Goop by Juice Beauty, high-end skincare collection so we have our hands full with so many new products and we are expanding distribution. We're in the wonderful place of having prestigious high-end retailers contact us. Moving forward, it all boils down to the products and the people. I am hyper-focused on our product quality as well as our incredible management and employee team who really amaze me daily. If we can continue to get it right with our products and our people...our customers and our retailers will be happy and we'll continue to grow with our crazy high comp store growth rate we are currently experiencing.