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The Better Way to Beautiful Hair and Skin – with KinKind’s Victoria Coe

This week on Glad Tidings, Ben sat down with Victoria Coe, Founder and CEO of KinKind – the UK’s plastic-free, water-free beauty brand on a mission to prove that sustainability and performance can go hand in hand.

KinKind makes solid shampoo and conditioner bars that deliver salon-quality results without the waste. Each bar replaces half a litre of bottled product, saving plastic, water, and carbon with every wash. But as Victoria explains, the secret to KinKind’s success isn’t just sustainability - it’s putting beauty first. “It’s all about quality products that deliver results people love,” she says. “Eco comes second, but it's important, indeed it’s in our DNA.”

In the episode, Victoria shares what she learned from two decades at Reckitt Benckiser, looking after household names like Vanish, Calgon and Lemsip, and how that experience inspired her to use business as a force for good. She talks candidly about launching a startup in her fifties, navigating funding as a female founder and the long road to achieving B Corp certification.

Her story is one of reinvention, resilience and the belief that business can (and should) drive change.

Transcript:

Welcome to Glad Tidings, your weekly update on the progress we're making towards cleaning up the atmosphere. I'm Ben Wynn and today I'm joined by Victoria Coe Victoria is the founder and CEO of Kinkind. Now Kinkind are a member of the Glad family and today we're going to dive a little bit deeper into the world of Kinkind. It's a UK business that makes, now I'm going to call you a personal care brand, that right? Plastic free beauty. Well I was going to say it's zero waste, zero water and zero plastic. There we go. And doing fantastic things and being extremely generous to you guys. Victoria has given us 20% off for all of you Gladiators. Off individual products and we're going to get to those, but also subscriptions. So fill your boots, get yourself some KinKind and let's learn all about it. Victoria, welcome.

Thank you very much indeed, thank you.

It's brilliant to have you here and thank you for inviting me down. Is this the River Thames we have?

We have the River Thames in Bourne End here. It's my daily dog walk area and it is beautiful. It's a quiet afternoon. Yet we have a lot of rowers because obviously we're in sort of the Marlow Henley area. We might be lucky. We might be, yeah.

Yeah. So tell us about KinKind. Tell us, tell us about the products. Let's Walk us through the product lineup.

So our core products are plastic-free shampoo and conditioner bars. It's about 80 % of our business at the moment. And the core proposition is it's all about actually delivering on beauty benefits. So it's beauty first and eco comes actually second. The fact that we are plastic-free, water-free, zero waste.

is in our part of our DNA. It's written into it, it's what we do, it's embedded. So everything is actually all about the beauty benefits for the consumer. that's what we, that's kind of our key messaging is all about beauty. And we are plastic free and water free just because we are, and that's us. So we are kin kind, 100 % plastic free. And that's sort of yeah.

And our strap line is the better way to beautiful hair and skin. Better because three things, always a one, two, three. One, we're formulated better for hair and skin. Two, we're formulated better for you as a person, so we don't include the nasties like parabens and silicones. And three, we're better for the planet. So it's about being kind to the next of kin, so it's kin kind.

And then just on the better for hair and skin, create formulations that are kinder ingredients to us. So for example, in our shampoo bars, the foaming cleanser is sodium coco sulfate, which it lathers up just like a bottle of shampoo, but it's kinder to the hair and the scalp. So it's that type of approach that we take to everything in what we do.

So something that I perhaps should have been using 20 odd years ago. Because I'm going to say I'm not in market. Just just so we're calling it all out there and I can happily say it. But you do have other pros which maybe I will be in market for. But yes. So OK, so we've got, let's do it.

Some people may not know. So for example this is our Make Me Shine shampoo bar. It has a gloss complex and this one has glycolic acid and a seaweed complex. So glycolic acid is a really trending ingredient at the moment. L'Oreal have made it really big. It's very big in skincare and there's a big trend all about the skinification of hair. So it's actually about sort of the skin benefits on hair as well.

So this is our Make Me Shine shampoo bar. That is a shampoo bar. You're gonna have a sniff. It smells fantastic. This one's really peachy. And that is, it's a dry pressed bar. So it's dry pressed ingredients. It's not soap. Fundamentally, it's not soap. It lathers up just like a shampoo, like shampoo does. And you literally use about one gram per wash. So that is 50 grams. That is the equivalent of half a litre of shampoo. Really? Yeah. So instead of 500 ml of shampoo that's 80% water in a plastic bottle being driven around on trucks, here you have a solid version, which is 50 grams instead. And that will last up to 50 washes, as long as it's stored on a rack, on a metal rack or a wooden rack, sort of out of the flow of water.

But yeah, literally just, you just rub it in your hands and it just lathers up and you can circle it on your head. So that is a shampoo bar. Obviously, we are on a mission to help everybody switch to those in their bathrooms at home. But obviously they're also ideal for travel because you're taking 50 washes in a solid format. they can, if you're flying, obviously they can go through customers really easily. And it's just handy, doesn't leak.

Is that a part of your, do you promote that travel piece? I've not really connected it, it's obvious really.

In the summer time we do. So I didn't actually bring any with me here, but we have little travel tins. And so every single bar of KinKind fits into our travel tin. So we have these little travel tins, have travel sets that we promote in summer or coming up to the summer months in particular.

It's the engineer in me. How is it made? It looks like it's in a press.

It is a press, it's so I dishwasher tablets. Okay. And my background is quite a bit into dish washing tablets and stuff like that. but if you think dishwasher tablets, are made in a press. And literally this is pressed. So it's basically virtually dry ingredients. So it's like the core ingredients mixed with oils, natural oils, like coconut oil and other oils. And they're literally just pressed. they are actually handmade.

in the UK and so yes there is a handmade element to it. They're made in a factory but they are handmade in this press. So that's a shampoo bar and we've got some funny dogs behind us. You did say it was the dog I know it is a dog walkers path And then this is a conditioner bar. This is the gloss complex, Make Me Shine conditioner bar as well.

And so the conditioner bar comes in a paper glassine bag because it's so high in oils and waxes, so natural oils and waxes. So if you feel that, it feels much smoother and much softer than the shampoo bar. And so that's made with what we call a melt and pour method. it's oils and waxes heated up, all the goodies put in, and then they're poured into a mold and set. So that's the melt and pour method.

To use a conditioner bar, if I just hold it a minute. So with wet hair, obviously you shampoo, you rinse it all out. When the hairs are really wet, actually you stroke it down the hair. So you don't try to rub it onto the hair, you stroke it down the hair and it just coats onto the hair and the hair instantly goes soft and smooth. And then this one also contains the glycolic acid and seaweed complex basically.

So yeah, so that is a conditioner. And that again, that is half a litre of conditioner. So no water, no plastic, and no nasties. Just goodies, just goodness in a bar. that's, yeah. So that is a shampoo and conditioner bar. Our biggest seller, I actually didn't bring it with me here. Our biggest seller is actually one called Give Me Strength. And in the Give Me Strength bars, we have rice protein.

which again is another big trend in hair care. It was a huge TikTok trend during COVID and people were encouraged to rinse their hair in the rice starch basically. It's all about hair thickening and hair volumising. When you think about starch and things like that, it does make sense. But anyway, so we use a hydrolysed rice protein. It's clinically proven to increase hair volume by 32 % over five washes. this is where I kind of go.

It's all about the beauty benefits and actually the hair needs that people want that are being delivered by the big guys in the big brands. But actually we can do it too. And it's not just shampoo in a bar and is sort of really eco. And then people think that they don't work if they're really eco. And sometimes they don't. And there are quite a lot of products out there that don't work. So it's very much about the high performance ingredients that are good for you, good for the hair. And yeah, so I was saying, Give Me Strength is our biggest seller. It has the rice protein, it has wheat germ oil, which is for hair shaft strength. And then it also has rosemary oil for skin or scalp cell stimulation. that's, and rosemary oil is also a big trend in hair care. So we're picking up on trends, bringing in those trends into products that really work.

And of course, they're plastic free and water free and doing better for the environment.

It's really interesting that you do it that way around because I think it's kind of refreshing. Here's a great product that also does good for the world rather than a product that's not necessarily that good but trying to do the right thing.

We've been on a journey over the last five years since I launched Kinkind and I started the brand with products that really, work but I didn't get the positioning right. So I launched the brand quite eco and then our customers were saying to us, but this is better than my bottled. This is better than my bottled version. And it gradually dawned on me that actually I didn't have the positioning right of the brand itself.

And actually, we are better and I just need to get this message across that people actually do really love the products and that drives me personally to develop more and more products that actually do deliver because I can see that that is what people want and they just want to do their bit as well. They want to do their bit for the environment. Why wouldn't you? We're in a beautiful place.

That's exactly our learning as well. Because obviously what we do with Glad is very different. But when we started, we're much newer than you are, when we started, the whole premise was let's encourage people to chip into a climate pot. We'll use that to remove greenhouse gas out of the atmosphere. And it doesn't work because there's not enough in it for them. That short term, what's my motivation, what's my reward? So we've completely flipped that and said,

This is all about an incentive. Here's your saving on a product, on a service. and by the way, it does some good. And it's the same shift.

And then it becomes a win-win. Exactly. It becomes a win-win for everybody actually, not just for the consumer, not just for the business and the environment. It just becomes a win-win.

So it's obvious from talking to you that there's a lot of knowledge that you've accumulated over time to build this. Does that come from your background? You spent 20 years in Reckitt Benckiser I wasn't going to get it right. RB we're going to call it. I knew I would not get that right. But yeah, so 20 years there and Reckitt Benckiser is probably a business that not everybody knows. It's one of those...FMCG sort of brands, but it's the brand names that you know. So ones I believe you worked on, Vanish, Calgon, Clearasil, brands that everybody knows.

Then there's obviously the healthcare side like Neurofen as well, Lemsip. You know, we all know them and love them or need them, let's put it that way.

And so does a lot of your knowledge of how to do this, I guess, come from working in that environment?

A lot of it does. A lot of it does. I've learned an awful lot over the last five years but the of the primary thinking behind the brand and behind the business comes from my experience and that's exactly what I wanted to do. I realised I have a skill set and for me this was almost like a second career launching this business. It was almost like

I've sold so many millions of pink stain remover bottles called Vanish and polluted so many estuaries or seas or whatever it could be. It's my way of giving back. It really is to use the skill set that I have, but actually to use business as a force for good rather than as a polluter. my experience of having been in a big FMCG company is that things don't move fast. And then the other point is when you're working in innovation, you have a big disruptive idea that you love and that you nurture. And then as you take it to more more senior management meetings, it's a bit like the salami slice. The idea gets sliced away and sliced away until there's pretty much nothing left.

and then the investment needed is huge and you can't get your capex approval and then it just fizzles out. And so it's for me it's just wonderful to be able to use the skills that I have, to be able to be disruptive, to be able to make decisions when I want to and need to. Yes, I have a lot of other challenges in the business, but it enables

us, me, us, to run fast, proactively and actually make a difference. Quite freeing I imagine. It is, it's liberation at its best. Yeah, totally, totally.

So do you think, well I don't know whether they are, but do you think it's even possible for a corporate like that to build a business like this inside it, know, build a brand that is...

It's called focus and Our friends at L'Oreal have proven it's not possible because they launched Garnier shampoo bars a couple of years ago and in fact Unilever launched shampoo bars as well. They launched them under a brand called Love Beauty and Planet and Garnier launched them under Ultimate Blends. and P &G launched as well.

So they launched under Pantene, Head and Shoulders and Aussie. So they've all been and guess what? They've all gone. Why? Because there was no focus on the business. They effectively launched Shampoo in a Bar because it's the trend, right? What they didn't do is provide the right support that is needed behind the business. And if you think about it, and again, this is one of the things I realised going into this business.

They have these huge manufacturing plants with amortised machinery that run millions and millions and millions and millions of plastic bottled filling lines with shampoo that's made of 80 % water, haven't made the point yet. And for them to then change the manufacturing structure to build high volume of shampoo bars or conditioner bars.

It's a huge risk for the business. And so it's much easier for them to protect their shelf space as well in the retailers with their bottled shampoos. And then they're now doing refills. And again, they're full of plastic and they're full of water. It's less plastic, but it's not recyclable plastic. It's layered plastic.

The big companies, they can do it, but they won't do it. They won't do it properly. And it was a tick box exercise, which I knew it would be when they came in. It didn't scare me at all when they came in, because I just thought they're not going to do it properly. And it hasn't taken them long to exit. So the time is here for us to keep growing.

So I'd love to know, so you told me before that these were deliberately designed so they fit through your letterbox and you can see that. We're going to get to the deodorant in a moment. But you did that as a conscious decision from day one, to go direct to consumer. So I'd love to know more about that. But also that you're now in retail and how that's changed, what impact that's had on your business, how that works.

So if I go right back, so I designed, I realised from day one that this was never going to get on shelf straight away because it's so tiny relative to a big bottle of shampoo. So you've got the sea of plastic shampoo bar of shampoo bottles going down the shopping aisle. And where would a little shampoo bar pop? It wouldn't, it would get lost. So I realised that the...

the go-to-market model at the beginning of the business would be direct to consumer. And my challenge, my financial challenge was to make the business model work, basically raising awareness on Facebook and Instagram and Google Ads, and then basically the whole cost of acquisition and the cost of acquisition model, whether I could get the financials to pay out. And in the first few years that worked really well. So, and So I knew that I needed to launch the business large letter to go through the letterbox to keep my delivery costs down rather than a parcel. So everything is designed, if you see this, it's all designed to go through the letterbox as a large letter. Which is great in terms of the financials because again, there have been other shampoo bar businesses, people who been trying to do what we do.

over the last few years and they've launched as parcel size and then their P &L hasn't worked basically. So you know we're still here, we're still going, we're still growing because I got the business model right from the beginning in terms of getting it a large letter to go to the letterbox. It absolutely is and I'm slightly obsessive on costs. I'm slightly obsessive about the detail.

Someone taught me retail is detail.

It's funny because you sort of just wouldn't think about that. you wouldn't. But you'd need to.

And that comes back to experience, doesn't it? So with my background, OK, I wasn't doing a lot of digital marketing, but I knew that the cost of delivery would be substantially cheaper through the letterbox than with the parcel.

So how have you found it? Let's talk about that experience. You're a founder in your fifties. And a female. How have you found that? How has it been? What pitfalls, challenges or benefits has that brought?

Female founder in their 50s, there we go.

I mentioned earlier it feels a like my second career. I also feel that with my kids sort of in their late teens it has given me a sense of new purpose as well. It feels a little bit like primary carer job done. Working for a big company and then I was liberated from that big company.

or felt much freer and then also with the kids being that much older, they need you in a different way. But it gave me the license to be able to actually do something creative using my business skills. so, yeah, so having had the kids and then them being that much older, I just felt liberated on that front as well. So it just feels like the right time.

I think if you're starting a business you do it when you have no risk or as minimum risk as possible and that's either literally when you leave school or university because you've got nothing to lose or when you're coming out the other side when you've de-risked pretty much everything else in your life and then you can feel that you can take some more risks and I was at that stage and my husband has been incredibly supportive and you know, so my big salary at Reckitt Benkiser fizzled out overnight, let's be honest. And it's been a very different journey over the last five years or so. So being a founder is, it's not easy. It's not easy at all. I do not switch off. Going into my fifties, obviously going into menopause as well, I'm very happy to talk about it. You know, so going into fifties with the stress of being a founder, with menopause on top.

It's not the easiest time of life, but it's also quite liberating. so that's the upside. definitely. Definitely. Yeah, it is empowering. It is empowering. I have to be careful that it doesn't define me and that I do switch off or I try to switch off and I have different conversations and it's not just about work or the business.

Sounds like it's very much a thing for you.

even with friends and stuff. I just need to be careful it doesn't define me. The upside of being, so there is a downside and an upside of being a female founder in your 50s. One of the upsides is definitely the networking. And there are some amazing, amazing female led networks or female business led networks now that are just so supportive. And help to open doors, they really do. or offer help, or there's somebody else who's done this who can know you to do this. you know, That's very empowering and it's lovely and just to have that support because being a founder is quite lonely. I'll admit it, and I don't have a co-founder, it was me. And so not having that sense of somebody else is 100 on this journey with me, it can be quite lonely.

So for example, I'm a part of By Women Built. yeah. And the support that they give, they add in everyone, but then the team who run By Women Built, facilitate it. It's just brilliant. It's just brilliant. And sort of just some of the doors that they can open, help open as well. So having those female networks, female led networks is really good because that doesn't really exist or didn't really exist before. And I think for men it's just easier because that's the way that industry has been developed over the years. And I think people have to make a special effort for sort of perhaps minority led businesses, which is, know, and so I can, I lean into that and I use that as well.

I wouldn't be able to quote the stats, but there's a shocking stat about female led businesses and their, I'm going to say ability to raise. It's crazy, but you've been successful. You've done it.

2%.

Yeah, but it's not easy. so yeah, so just to give the context of that. So 2% of VC, venture capital money, goes to women founded businesses. And that's nothing. Absolutely nothing. And that's what sort of a lot of these sort of networks are trying to change. you know, and I feel part of that because I've done a small raise, a small fundraising for the business, and it was hard.

And there is unconscious bias out there. And I came across it. I have a sales director, Paul, who works with me. So for some meetings, presentations, I said, Paul, you need to come with me so that I'm not the female in the room. Just the only person in the room is a female. Yeah, exactly. And I did have one or two presentations to sort of 50.

50 year old white men who were angel investors and thank goodness I had Paul with me to be perfectly honest. So it is an uphill battle with that, it does feel like a battle.

Congratulations for closing. So I'd love to ask you about your recent B Corp certification because you've just just been awarded the badge. So well done. I'd love to know is how was that process? What happened? What did you need to change? Was there operational change in the business? I guess just how did you find the whole certification? And the reason I'm asking is, as I mentioned to you before, we're B Corp pending, so we're going to go through the process.

I'm just really intrigued how.

Okay, yeah, thank you first of all. It was a relief to get it over the line, I'll be honest, but it is an accolade and it is a little bit of a badge of honour to say yes, we've done it and we are B Corp certified. It took me about three years to do, purely because I was trying to run the business, trying to do a funding round.

and then do B Corp on top. And it really was the icing on the cake on top. And it was the thing that fell to the bottom of the list every week, or Friday afternoon. my gosh, I still haven't done the B Corp work that I needed to do. So it took me quite a long time to do it. But we have got there. The process in itself was fine and going through the questionnaire, the detailed questionnaires in itself was fine because we have sustainability totally embedded into the business. What I don't have is like the vegan accreditation and the cruelty free accreditation because I haven't spent the time and the money to get those because those are accreditations in themselves take up a lot of resource. So not having those actually didn't help me get it over the line because B Corp is almost like a tick box on top of all of those, which I didn't really realise at the beginning. However, it's fine, we got there. And the questions that were raised by B Corp and the evidence that I had to put together was very detailed. As a small business, it also helped us in terms of good practice, in terms of putting policies in place, our ethical sourcing policy, environmental or sustainability policy. I hadn't written a sustainability policy because we are a sustainable business. we now have a sustainability policy. is good practice. It's business practice. Sort of a code of ethics and things like that. it's all there. if we need to refer to it, it's there on our shared drive and we can. But more importantly, we're talking with the trade and having B Corp certification just actually makes you feel a little bit more established. Not everybody knows what B Corp is and I don't think consumers really know what B Corp is but once they do understand then it kind of just gives you the accolade.

Do think it helps with retail? Because I'm assuming the retailers know what B Corp is. do know what B Corp Does it make them sit up and listen more?

I think it's probably just about that. It doesn't make them list you, but it makes them take you a little bit more seriously than, you're a start-up. you're actually B Corp certified. Okay, so you've done your homework and you're a little bit more established. So there's little bit more of a... You can get six minutes instead of five minutes with them basically.

Well it all counts. Every little helps as one of those retailers says.

We were in Ocado, yeah, and doing really really well in Ocado. In fact we were, we've had some analysis done and they have told us that we are the best launch that they've done in haircare for the last five years. Amazing. We're doing something right.

I actually prefer that accolade. That's fantastic.

So we know that we can make it work. it's baby steps, it's step by step. It's like a snowball. It is absolutely that. But we had an incredibly supportive buyer who pointed us in the right directions. We put together a business plan with her and it's worked. Brilliant. So we are now obviously trying to have conversations with others on the back of that basically.

Well, good luck with that because that seems to be like a really successful first retailer and let's hope for many more.

Yeah, and we have a strong Amazon business as well. So yeah, yeah, it's all good. All good. good. As well as the website.

Well as you know Victoria, Glad is all about using incentives to drive collective action.

So the question that I'd love to know is if you think about the idea of collective action to create change, which is what we're trying to stimulate, what change would you want to see? So in your industry, in the broader kind of fight against climate change, or you can pick your own cause, what would you want to see as a collective action movement?

I may be wrong in saying this, but I think we actually need regulation to drive this, particularly in our space with plastics. So having worked for a big company, I know, and I still can see, and it drives me insane, that the onus is on the consumer to recycle. I know that only

8 or 9% of plastics actually get recycled in the UK, even though we all put our plastics out for recycling. Actually only 8 or 9 % of plastics actually do get recycled. And it's just the big manufacturers putting the onus on the consumer and actually on our local councils. And then it comes back to the consumer to fund it through our taxes. Right? So I think it needs regulation, certainly in our space, in consumer goods.

to actually force things to happen because I've seen it with the big companies. They've dipped their toe in the water with shampoo bars and then come out quietly in the big green hush, I call it. So until we actually have regulation to drive some of it, nothing's going to happen. I can do my best, you can do your best. And we are working so hard to drive that positive change but I actually think we regulation behind us.

See my view of that, I totally agree. let's place that in the plastic problem the plastic problem.

My headspace is all about the climate cleanup. I agree though. We need regulation changes for that to happen. But the sequence of events for me is that's just not going to happen unless it's the will of the people. And so what I think you're doing, not only building a great business, great products, is you're demonstrating that there's demand there. And when there's demand and when that's what moves the market. And so what we're doing with Glad is we're trying to clean up the atmosphere. We're asking people to contribute,

employers and employee benefit and you get their staff on, the staff get the savings. But what we're really doing is trying to build a community because then with that community we can use that voice to hopefully affect change. And of course we're a very early stage and we're not the millions of people that you need to do that. You've got to start somewhere. It's that snowball.

And I think just to build on that, I think it's about creating business models to actually help make that change. Because even I saw last week, for example, City to Sea, which is one of the biggest change makers over the last few years based in Bristol, Natalie Fee's had to close down City to Sea because of funding, which is such a shame.

So if that funding doesn't come and we can't get the collective action through, call it non-profit organisations, then it has to come through business to drive it if it's not going come through regulation.

Yeah, mean, that's at the absolute core for me. I just don't think we can or should rely on charity to solve these problems. No, we can't. We shouldn't because why should it be a charity problem? It's all of our problems. It is. And I just don't think that they work. I don't think they work at the scale that we need. It needs to be capitalism that solves capitalism's problem. I think that's been one of my kind of founding principles.

I like that. I agree with you.

Great, well thank you very much. What I haven't asked you is what's next? What's coming next? let's talk about your deodorant.

Oh haven't talked about this. So this is our plastic free refillable deodorant. so we have, and the big point of difference here apart from being plastic free is that we give, coming back to the performance story of the products, so we are an antiperspirant. So we give the 48 hour.

dryness or 48-hour performance claim like the big guys like Dove and like Sure. So what I wanted to do was to create a plastic free refillable version of that that gives the performance for people who need it. There are obviously refillable deodorants out there like Wild and Fussy and they're doing a fab job but they are only playing in the natural deodorant space.

We are playing in that space, but we've extended the range and our core range is actually in the high performance. So in the antiperspirant deodorant. So again, it comes back to why are we existing, performance, better for you and better for the planet because we're plastic free and we're not shipping water. So yeah, but so this is our little plastic free case. It's made of aluminium, which is infinitely recyclable rather than plastic, which can only be recycled so many times. And we designed it to go through letterbox, if I it that way you can see. And it feels light, mean, it's much, much lighter than the current sort of the competitor counterparts. And it's actually very simple. We kind of went back to basics. So you've got a little pullout lid, the refill slides up and then you push it down with the lid and then...

In usage, the only thing is that in usage you basically have to put a finger on it or a thumb to use it and you just hold it up and down. But we've just simplified it like that basically. And then that's the refill and then you just pop a new refill on. It just slots down into it and that's it. And the refills come in these little cartons the same. Yeah, so that's our latest innovation. And then we've got more coming. We've got more coming in the pipeline.

Yeah, so you know our mission, it's plastic free hair and beauty so we can go all of this right? Yes, yeah absolutely.

Subscribe to 20% off, remember that guys. Wonderful. Victoria, thank you so much.

It's been wonderful. It's been great. Thank you for inviting me on.

No, it's great to chat.