🎫 We're coming to NYC, this 19-year-old sold $400k of lipgloss in 2022, Target Accelerators news

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👇 Today we're covering

• 🎫 Two New York City Female Founder World events are happening in January!

• 📓 Resource roundup

• 🗞️ Skim the headlines

• 🎁 Tell your friends about this weekly email and get access to mentorship, IRL events, business tools, and cute merch that money can't buy!

• 💅 This 19-year-old sold $400,000 of lipgloss this year from her parents' house

• 🤝 Workshop: Learn how to pitch, structure and promote a product collaboration with Deco Miami founder Julianna Dahbura

• 🛒 8 Affordable tools that helped Gymshark get to $1 billion

🗽 New York: Female Founder World Content Camp Presented by Shopify

Join our speakers Nadya Okamoto (cofounder of August), Éva Goicochea (founder of Maude) and one special guest speaker to be announced for a panel and networking night in New York City!

We're hosting a free Content Camp that includes a panel conversation with some of New York's most inspiring female founders, a photo booth pop-up curated with Moodelier (bring your products and we'll shoot 'em on-site—for $FREE.99!), and speed dating sessions with experts in influencer marketing and content marketing.

There will be drinks, snacks, and a dope crowd of entrepreneurial baddies who want to help you and your business win.

Registration is free but space is limited—hit the link below to secure your spot.

🗓️ Friday, 6 January at 6:30PM – 9:00PM

🧘 New York: Female Founder World New Year Reset Presented by Shopify

The holiday rush is almost over and this is your chance to take a beat before diving into the new year. (So, take it!)

Join Female Founder World and Shopify New York for our New Year Reset, a space to rest and refocus that we've created for you, our business besties.

Take a yoga and meditation class hosted by obé Fitness (class starts at 7pm sharp), a vision boarding pop-up by Landing, and a guided goal-setting session led by our friends at Communia to help you get clarity about what's important in 2023. You'll also love the healthy drinks and snacks, and the room full of entrepreneurial New Yorkers waiting to meet you.

Dress code: Athleisure

Registration is free but space is very limited—register now to secure your spot.

🗓️ Thursday, 5 January at 6PM – 8:30PM (yoga class begins at 7pm sharp)

📓 Resource roundup

• A huge number of brands land retail stockists, but then fail. Use this margin calculator to make sure your pricing helps you succeed in retail (and actually make $). 🔗 Tell me more

• 'f*** you pay me' is like Glassdoor for creators and influencers to rate brands. Tap the free database to search your competitors and see what they're paying for influencer collabs—and snoop on what creators are saying about your brand 👀. 🔗 Tell me more

• Businesses who made less than $1 million in annual revenue in 2021 can apply for this $25,000 grant. Applications close January 6. 🔗 Tell me more

• Share a short video or photo on Instagram about how you're "working for the greater good" for an opportunity to land a $10,000 AT&T Dream in Black grant and other prizes. The contest ends on December 31. 🔗 Tell me more

• Ever since beauty brand Kiramoon started selling on live video, their website sales went up by 26%. We asked the brand's founder Lindsey Martin and another live shopping early adopter—Celeste Perez, founder of Droplet—to teach a workshop about how to make money and build loyal customers with live commerce. This 50-minute workshop recording is linked in the 'Workshop Recording' room in the Female Founder World community home. (Available to paid Business Bestie subscribers only.)

• New York besties looking for a fresh workspace in 2023—we found it! When you sign up for a year membership at The Malin (it’s ridic beautiful!), get two months free by just mentioning Female Founder World and the code FFW2022. This offer is for a limited time—get in touch with The Malin team for details. 🔗 Tell me more

🗞️ Skim the headlines

TARGET ACCELERATORS: Target just announced its 2023 accelerator programs will open for applications on 9 January. Programs include 'Forward Founders' for early stage brands to get coaching from a Target buyer, and 'Takeoff' for brands that are a little further along and feel ready to scale into mass retail. Amy Kim, founder of Kindtail and 2022 Target Takeoff grad recommends anyone applying for 2023 is clear about their brand story in the application: "If your brand is organic dog food, what is it about your brand that is memorable? Is it made from sustainably sourced produce? What is so special about your process? Why are you the person to run this company to make sure it will succeed? What is your WHY as the creator of your company? I implore you to have a super specific and personal answer, not just list the benefits of your product," she told Female Founder World.

TRENDS: 'Tis the season for trend reports, and this week food and beverage queen, Andrea from Snaxshot, dropped her 2023 predictions. If she's right, we can expect more curated grocers that spotlight emerging brands (like PopUp Grocer and Monsoon Market), and a boom in non-alc alternatives, legal psychedelics, agave-based spirits, and snacks that promise spiritual benefits.

BEAUTY: Congrats to beauty founder and former fashion and beauty editor Allison McNamara whose skincare brand Mara is landing on Sephora.com January 3. Five products from the brand will also be available at 252 US Sephora physical stores starting in March. In product news: Briogeo launched a new line for hair growth, Destined for Density, and there's a new beauty brand to watch, too—Dharni Patel, who used to lead influencer marketing at mattress brand Casper, launched Kindia Beauty with two hydrogen face masks.

💅 This 19-year-old sold $400,000 of lipgloss this year from her parents' house

Makena Quesada (Kiki), founder of Kikiz Cosmeticz, is one of our besties in the Female Founder World community who constantly blows our mind. Look at what's she's managed to do in just two years—at 19 years old—with a $600 investment, TikTok, and some savvy Google searching.

Kiki started her handmade cosmetics business with $600 at 16 years old during quarantine, with a focus on lipgloss. Three years later, she’s doing almost half a million in annual sales, sells out of product within 20 minutes, and has grown to 1.4 million TikTok followers—all from her parents' house. In 2020 her lipgloss business made $9,400 in sales, then in 2021 they grew to $128,000 2022. So far this year, she's sold over $411,000 of product. 👏

Feeling inspired by small business videos she’d seen online, Kiki took a stab at making her own lip gloss. After a few misses, she taught herself how to make a beautiful lip gloss and finally had a hit. Kikiz Cosmeticz began with Kiki making lip glosses for her friends and family from her parents' house.

Kiki first started an Etsy storefront to sell her lipgloss, but didn’t see much traffic until she started sharing TikToks of herself making the product. She went viral quickly, hitting 9 million views. She kept posting regularly, also going live on TikTok while making product. She's hit over 1.4 million followers by following this behind-the-scenes strategy and optimizing for TikTok SEO.

Kiki searches 'lip gloss business' on TikTok before posting to see what’s trending in her category and get inspiration: "People tend to really enjoy the behind the scenes fails of running a business. It’s entertaining while still being educational. TikTok has become a huge search engine which is why using key words is very important! Some advice I’d give to up and coming brands is to find what’s trending within your niche on TikTok before posting the content."

Besides growing her business through social, Kiki strategically drops limited edition glosses around themes like Halloween and Christmas, which keep her audience excited and consistently sell out. About 50% of customers return to restock each drop.

Kiki’s product launch strategy: 

• One month pre-launch she starts posting teasers of the new products.

• She encourages her community to guess what the new product will be to drive engagement.

• A week before launch, Kiki shows the product and allows customers to ask questions and build hype.

The #1 rule 'round here is NO GATEKEEPING! Become a Business Bestie to connect with more entrepreneurial baddies like Kiki and learn from each other.

🤝 Product Collaborations: How to pitch, structure and execute product partnerships

Julianna Dahbura, founder of nail sticker business Deco Miami, has landed product partnerships with big and buzzy brands like Otherland, Oceanus Swim, and Lele Sadoughi to help hit half a million in sales this year (split 1/3 through the Deco Miami online store and 2/3 wholesale). Obvs, we wanna know how she's doing it. So, in this 40-minute workshop, Julianna will walk you through her process for pitching, structuring, and producing product collaborations—plus when and why to tap this strategy in your own business.

You need to be a paid Business Bestie member to access this class. But don't worry, we've made it super easy and affordable to sign up here.

🛒 8 Affordable tools that helped Gymshark get to $1 billion

Gymshark's valued at over $1 billion—and they got there without taking on any investor money. Starting as true gym-bro attire, Gymshark has become an athleisure fave for guys and gals—Vanessa Hudgens and Kaia Gerber are a couple of fans you'll know.

Scroll on to see what apps Gymshark’s using and what's going on with their online store rn (spoiler—they saw a massive jump in web visits in the last month).

Total website visits in October: 14.6M (up 129% from the previous month)

Bounce Rate: 33.79%

Average visit duration: 6 minutes, 12 seconds

Average pages viewed per site visit: 11.41

Ecommerce tech stack: Mailchimp for email marketing, Pollyfill.io for site updates, Snap Inventory for inventory management, Live Chat for customer live chat help, Attentive for SMS marketing, Foursixty for shoppable Instagram and UGC, Notso for site page building, Riskified for fraud protection

Instagram insights: 5.9M Instagram followers, averages 26,929 likes per post, averages 175 comments per post

TikTok insights: 4.3M TikTok followers, averages 125,961 likes per post, averages 766 comments per post

Homepage evolution: