Tribe Skincare founder on five things she’ll do differently as she reveals plans to launch a sister brand

It’s been five years since Kayla Houlihan invested her life savings of $40,000 (that she had initially saved for a house deposit) and founded her $8 million brand Tribe Skincare from her spare bedroom, despite having no experience running a beauty brand or no business or marketing plans in the works.

Now Houlihan has announced that she will be launching a new sister brand from the ground up towards the end of 2023. 

Before she founded Tribe Skincare, Houlihan ran her own skin clinic in the heart of Geelong, in regional Victoria, before noticing that there was a huge gap in the market for skincare for sensitive skin that was both gentle and results-driven.

“With a hunger for success, a genuine knack for creating incredible skincare and a bit of luck, I managed to somehow grow the business from my spare bedroom to a recognised and respected brand with close to $8 million turnover to date. As you can imagine, this has all led to lots of lessons,” Houlihan said.

“Towards the end of 2023, the team and I are launching a sister brand. This is to allow us to create new beauty products that don’t logically fit in the Tribe Skincare brand category which specialises in ‘skincare for sensitive skin’. It also allows us to explore a new price point, target demographic and business model. 

“It’s a lot more fun building a brand this second time around. I have a team of people to assist and the journey so far has felt exciting and interesting rather than lonely and daunting. 

“I’m not entirely sure how I will go about splitting my time and focus across the two brands, but it feels like the logical next chapter for my career and I am ready for the challenge.”

 Houlihan sat down with SmartCompany to reveal the five things she is doing differently this time when it comes to launching her brand. 

Heavily investing in brand identity 

Houlihan said when she created Tribe Skincare, she didn’t understand the importance of branding or know a single thing about it. 

“I got a graphic designer I found online to create a logo and packaging concept and thought to myself “Oh yeah, that looks cool” without any thought for the target customer, brand positioning, or what message the branding conveyed. This led to me having to invest over $100,000 down the track to completely rebrand,” she said.

 “This time around, I’m going straight to the professionals. Before even beginning product development, I am exploring different brand identity concepts with multiple designers and branding experts (that work on big brands like Mecca, Frank Body, Adidas and Country Road) to get varied interpretations of the brief. 

“Even though I am still not clear on exactly what the brand is going to look like, I know the branding needs to be on point from the beginning and appeal to the target demographic.”

Securing all intellectual property from the beginning

Houlihan said this includes relevant trademarks in multiple countries and all formulas for the products. 

“The rebrand I did for Tribe Skincare to improve the brand’s visual identity was actually the second rebrand I had gone through,” she said.

“When I first launched the brand, I purchased the business name but not the trademark, which led to me receiving an intimidating legal letter and having to change the brand name after just three months on the market. Truth is, I didn’t even know what a trademark was five years ago, but with the new brand, trademarking was my first step. 

 “As for the formulas, I love the flexibility of being able to work with multiple manufacturers and move my contracts between them. 

“I have been restricted at times from doing this with the Tribe Skincare manufacturers because, in the beauty world, manufacturers often own (or co-own) the IP to your custom formulas. If you want to own it yourself, it is very costly. I am happy to wear the high costs this time because I am in a better position to fund the brand.”

Sustainability is a core focus

 Houlihan said sustainability is no longer considered a ‘trend’ in the industry. 

“It’s an essential requirement. When you have a warehouse full of packaging and an entire product range, it’s hugely challenging and costly to make changes. But when I am ‘starting fresh’ I have the opportunity to create an eco-friendly focused brand,” she said.

 “Consumers no longer care about fancy ‘unboxing experiences’ with excess packaging. 

“At Tribe Skincare, we send the products in recyclable cardboard boxes that are far from aesthetic, but the customers love that they are the more eco-friendly option. With the sister brand, every single product is going to be refillable and one of them is going to be a ‘world first’ refillable version of this type of product.”

Focusing on Tiktok over Instagram

“Five years ago, Instagram was a great tool for new customer acquisition with people discovering and following new accounts,” Houlihan said.

“If the biggest accounts on the platform are anything to go by, people are now unfollowing accounts more often than following them. 

 “With Tiktok’s ability to send a brand ‘viral’, this will be the platform we focus the most time and marketing budget on. It’s easy to grow an audience there (we have grown to 236K followers in less than 3 years) and offers a great balance of reaching both new and existing customers.”

‘Retail focused’ rather than e-commerce

 “Tribe Skincare started as an e-commerce brand (B2C) and we have slowly transitioned into wholesale (B2B),” Houlihan said.

“We now stock to skin clinics and retailers around Australia and New Zealand, so the range had to go through quite a few changes to make that possible. We have also been focused on in-person events and activations to grow the brand as more people are going back to shopping in stores in 2023.”

 Houlihan said with the new brand, the team is creating B2B at the forefront and the direct-to-consumer website will just be to complement that. 

“This means we think of the brand differently. Rather than thinking ‘how would the brand look in digital ads?’ we are considering ‘how would the brand look on the shelves of a Mecca store?’ Knowing where and how we want consumers to access the range helps us with all the decision-making process,” she said.