Kevin Gianni: Co-founder & CEO of Annmarie Skin Care & Salt + Blue

Episode 888

What does it really take to build a brand that lasts—not just through growth, but through every stage that follows?
On The Kara Goldin Show, I sit down with Kevin Gianni, Co-Founder and CEO of Annmarie Skin Care—a clean beauty brand built on ingredient transparency, thoughtful growth, and a commitment to doing things differently.
We talk about how Kevin built Annmarie Skin Care long before "clean beauty" became a buzzword, why he believes in making fewer, better bets instead of chasing growth at all costs, and what inspired him to launch his second company, Salt + Blue, after more than 16 years of entrepreneurship.
We also dive into what consumers should really look for in skincare, how to build trust in a crowded category, why saying "no" is one of the most important skills a founder can develop, and the lessons Kevin has learned through every season of building a business.
If you're interested in building an enduring brand, leading through change, or learning what it really takes to grow a company without losing your values, you'll want to hear this conversation. You can find it here or anywhere you listen to podcasts. 🎧

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Transcript

Kara Goldin 0:00
I am unwilling to give up. That I will start over from scratch as many times as it takes to get where I want to be. I want to be. We just want to make sure you will get knocked down, but just make sure you don’t get knocked out. Knocked out. So your only choice should be go focus on what you can control. Control. Control. Hi everyone, and welcome to the Kara Goldin Show. Join me each week for inspiring conversations with some of the world’s greatest leaders. We’ll talk with founders, entrepreneurs, CEOs, and really some of the most interesting people of our time. Can’t wait to get started. Let’s go. Let’s go. Hi everyone! Welcome back to the Kara Goldin Show. What does it take to build a brand that lasts, not just through rapid growth, but through every stage that comes after? Today’s guest is Kevin Gianni, co-founder of Annmarie Skincare, and I love this company, its story, and Kevin’s journey. Annmarie wasn’t built by chasing beauty trends or the latest ingredients. It was built on a belief that consumers deserved excellent skincare made with ingredients they could actually trust, and a company willing to grow without compromising that mission. Over the past 17 years, Kevin has led Annmarie Skincare through every stage of entrepreneurship, from scrappy beginnings to hyper growth to scaling teams, what he now calls lean growth. So very, very, very cool to have him here, and we’re also going to get a glimpse into his other brand that is killing it, called Salt and Blue, which is a clean mineral sunscreen company. So I cannot wait to learn a lot more about that company as well. So Kevin Gianni, welcome to the Kara Goldin Show. So excited you’re here!

Kevin Gianni 1:56
I’m so excited to talk to you.

Kara Goldin 1:58
Very very excited. So okay, so Kevin, for listeners who are just discovering Annmarie, or maybe they know the brand but don’t know what it represents and kind of the the really what it is, how do you describe the company and maybe what makes it different and unique from other skincare companies out there?

Kevin Gianni 2:20
Yeah, I think you said it in the in the intro when you said uncompromising. That’s that’s really what we’re based on. Our tagline, wild and beautiful, kind of encompasses what we want to do in the world. We want to be wild. We want to to be beautiful. We want to express ourselves in a way that’s unique and special. And on the business side, what that really means to us is that we want to do hard things. We want to challenge ourselves to do things that are different than than the rest of the crowd. And we’ve built our brand on really sticking to our principles, as hard as that is. Like there, it’s so easy to call a contract manufacturer and ask them to put some goop into a bottle. It’s like it’s the easiest thing in the world, particularly now with AI. You can have your AI formulate the thing, and you can send it right off there, and you can just place your minimum order, and you can start to sell online. We’ve never compromised with that. We have always done it the way that we felt was the best way possible, and so that’s kind of what we, I would say, differentiates ourselves nowadays in a world where clean beauty is is kind of greenwashed across the board.

Kara Goldin 3:31
Who is Annmarie, or how did you come up with the name for the brand?

Kevin Gianni 3:36
Annmarie’s my wife. She’s uh, she’s we were we were traveling around in an RV, we were interviewing health experts, natural health experts for YouTube. We were doing YouTube videos back then, and we had sourced numerous natural health products from different places. We had gone to Costa Rica to get Ceylon cinnamon. We had gone to Peru to get Muño, which is a mountain mint that they make tea with, and our audience became increasingly more interested in asking us about skincare, and we realized that we just didn’t have an option to share with them, and so we started to research a product to partner with, and when it came down to it, nothing was up to our standards, and so we had to, you know, sit down and say, “Well, we can do one, two things: we can tell them nothing is available, or we can create it ourselves. And that’s what we did.

Kara Goldin 4:30
Did you have experience in the beauty industry, or how did this all begin?

Kevin Gianni 4:34
No, we we had had no experience in the beauty industry, only the natural health industry. So we knew everything about clean food, we knew everything about you know how pharmaceutical industry might be harming you with certain things. We knew just all of that. We just hadn’t gone into the beauty industry, and when we got into the beauty industry, we realized that it was very much like some of these other industries where you know there’s ingredients in products. That you don’t want. There’s regulation issues where you know things aren’t being regulated properly. I mean, if we consider the difference between the FDA in the U.S. versus the EU regulations in terms of skincare, it’s insane. There are so many more banned ingredients in the UK, in the EU that we’re just openly putting in products, not us, but other companies are openly putting in products, and it’s it’s tough. It’s tough to to deal with, and you know it’s tough to to think about when it comes down to it. As a consumer, it’s even more difficult because natural doesn’t mean natural anymore. I think you’re probably familiar with that. Like it just if if it’s natural on a label, like I don’t know. Like I would, I wouldn’t trust it.

Kara Goldin 5:43
When you were getting started, how many SKUs did you launch with, and how has that changed over time?

Kevin Gianni 5:48
Oh man, it’s been quite an arc. We launched with two SKUs, and we built fairly fast in terms of the number of SKUs that that we have. We have 35 now, and when I look at the way that direct to consumer marketing and direct to consumer world is now, you know, I would really caution against that. I mean, I think I think the way that things are working now is one skew with one promise, like direct funnel, go for it. That to me seems like a much more appropriate way to do it in in our time now, but again, we launched 17 years ago. So so having a brand with you know a whole bunch of different products that do a whole bunch of things was okay back then, and still fine. But I think you know to get a bigger reach. I mean, if we’re talking to entrepreneurs out there or people who are you know creating products, like having one particular product with one particular message solving one problem, boom, go, and really just putting all your resources and revenue into that is a better way to do it today.

Kara Goldin 6:51
I’ve heard a few of your interviews. You talk about lean growth. So is that where that’s leading you? I guess in direct to consumer, you’re much more interested in being not only growing lean growth, but also the skew mix as well, and sort of figuring out exactly what to focus on.

Kevin Gianni 7:09
For sure, I mean, lean. We’ve we’ve done all the things. We’ve we’ve grown really fast. We’ve hired a bunch of people to scale. We’ve had various success in scaling over over the time, we’ve gone flat. You know all the all the things that that you know a more mature business has done, and what we really kind of have come to is that just like our products, we really just want natural, organic growth as well, and that means less people. That means just just less in our ecosystem, so that we we can really focus on the things that mean the most to us, which is again high quality product, high quality messaging, high quality customer relationships, reaching out to people to our customers, doing live events with our customers, just so they can, in an AI world, so they they can still feel real human connection. Because when it comes down to it, you know, I’m I’m much more happy buying a product from someone that I like or seen on a podcast or met in person than I am just a nameless, faceless brand that you know maybe has an ethos, but you know it’s it’s so much harder to determine what actually is real nowadays. That you know, it’s better to go that route and to go back to even before all the AI and before all the information and like how did we make relationships before we met them? We met people face to face. We talked to them. We learned. We trusted them, and then we purchased their products.

Kara Goldin 8:38
You’ve described the company as going through four different seasons. When you think back on those seasons, is there one season that taught you the most about leading a company?

Kevin Gianni 8:51
Oh, for sure. the The scaling, and then looking at the balance sheet and the P and L, and seeing that you weren’t making any profit. Like I mean, you know that’s that’s a real like sit down and and you know talk to the wife kind of moment where you’re just like oh man what are we even doing this for you know what I mean and and of course we’re we had the principles of you know we’re doing this to to change the industry and and that’s actually what kind of the throughline that kind of kept us going, but I mean, scaling for scale’s sake, and and you know, to maybe get a a laurel or you know, in a in a magazine or get an interview or something like that, just it it wasn’t what I thought it was. You know, you get you get to. I think Alan Watt says, you know, a lot of people live life. They climb up the ladder, and then they get to the top, and they realize it’s not the place they wanted to go to. And that was exactly what happened to to us, for sure.

Kara Goldin 9:49
That’s absolutely resonates with me for sure. So, was there ever a moment when you thought this company, Annmarie, is just not going to make it? I mean, you’re you’re you touched on the you know the P and L and and you’re like, what are we doing here? What what got you through that? I guess those really challenging times.

Kevin Gianni 10:14
Really a good mentor. So one of our mentors was an early investor in the company, Reed Tracy. He’s the CEO of Hay House, and he was an accountant before. And he taught me the ins and outs of a balance sheet and a P and L. And I didn’t know any of that. I I’d never been in a finance position before. I’d never had to even look at finances. I was always like, well, you know, I think that if there’s some money here. We can move it here. We can kind of do this, and he really helped me tighten finances around everything, manufacturing, around marketing, and all this. and And it was really what saved the company. I I swear to you. Like if if it wasn’t for Reed, we we would be doing something else.

Kara Goldin 11:00
Was there one lesson that he shared with you that you like just on the fly when you’re thinking back on those conversations that it was just kind of like wow that was that was a big thought that’s going to stick with me.

Kevin Gianni 11:14
I mean i I think it was more so just in just the question of like you know just questioning what was on the sheet, and then me like realizing that I didn’t know, and and it really was a reminder that that there’s always going to be questions behind the question, and that I need to know them before he comes to me with the first question because it’s not the question that he want is getting to. There’s multiple ones, and you know, if you feel better as a human in communication when you actually can answer the the questions after the first one, you know, and so just being more prepared is really the is I guess what I’m trying to say here.

Kara Goldin 11:55
You’ve continued to grow, Annmarie, over time. Is there one or two skews that are kind of the runaway. Like everyone thanks you for producing this product, and it’s so great. And you know, I I love the the love. I always tell friends of mine that are not founders. I’m like, you should write to these founders. Like you have no idea how much the love letters mean, and they can come in a DM or customer service phone call or whatever. But they mean a lot.

Kevin Gianni 12:27
Yeah, I mean the the two SKUs that have always performed well is our anti aging serum and anti aging oil, and they’ve they’ve been they’ve done well since the beginning, and they’re just a great mix of of nutritive herbs, great oils, just you know products that have never changed like from the beginning, like never never changed, always always so well.

Kara Goldin 12:53
I love both of those products a ton, and I mean, I I remember trying them, you know, a while ago, were they some of your original products?

Kevin Gianni 13:04
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, they were. They were in the first five mix of five SKUs. It’s it’s wild that we didn’t go with those SKUs first. We went with a mask and we went with a cleanser, and it it’s just wild that we didn’t go with those first because it seems like now it’s pretty obvious that they would sell well. But who knows? You know what I mean. Like we were new, we were green, we were just trying to, you know, launch fast and and do something cool, and that was that’s how we did it.

Kara Goldin 13:30
So you built Annmarie largely online. Would you do that today if you were to launch a company?

Kevin Gianni 13:38
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it’s. I didn’t know anything about wholesale marketing. I had no idea, and I always felt that like it’s so complicated because if you’re a store owner or if you’re a buyer in a store, like everyone’s coming to you. Every like all the different brands are coming to you. Every single one, and it just to me it seemed like that was not a an easy path to success. I mean, you know, it’s funny. I actually, our team knows you very well because I tell a story that you told on stage once about bringing an entire like case or crate of hint water to Whole Foods without a PO and saying that we have your order here. And so, I mean, like that’s that’s hard to do, you know what I mean? And I and I tell them that when I’m just like, hey, we got to be persistent, we got to do this, and I tell that story often. You can you can check for them and they’ll tell you, but um, but I always felt that it was a crowded space to do stores. I think now actually maybe coming back in a way where stores might be a good way because if you look at you know cost per acquisition, and you look at a lot of things that are happening now. Think prices are going up to advertise. Going back to stores might actually be you know kind of a a nice way to do it. We’re doing it with with the other with Salt and Blue now, and so but I I would direct a consumer all the time, every day for us for me. Not not for everyone, but for me.

Kara Goldin 15:02
Yeah, we found too that even as we grew our direct to consumer business, the the omni channel approach. I mean, it’s it gets tricky because it’s the you know the stores, for example, that experience is something where maybe the consumer is just seeing it, maybe they’re not purchasing it there, but it’s like a it’s a billboard, right? So that for us was always something that we continued to want to grow, so long as there weren’t huge slotting dollars or something like that, which happens as you get bigger, as you get more established, and that’s the biggest challenge. Not with every industry, but and with every retailer, but certainly in the beverage and in the grocery business for sure.

Kevin Gianni 15:48
My fear also on the on the stores is that they could pull you at any time. So I mean, you could you could build up and ramp, and then suddenly, boom, just you know, rug pulled out from underneath you, and that for me, that’s too much risk to accept at any given time, particularly with employees and all that.

Kara Goldin 16:04
Yeah, I mean, it’s the same risk if you’re working through an Amazon or some other retailer online. But having said that, I mean, we’ve had a few people on from different categories who have dealt with Amazon and you know other large retailers that have an online presence that they work through, and you know they’ve got an audience, right? And so that’s also a billboard, right? That’s how do you get to their audience, and so so it’s super super interesting. So you have been a founder for some time. What’s something founders spend way too much time worrying about that consumers you think couldn’t care less about.

Kevin Gianni 16:46
There’s two things. One, founders forget that they need to repeat their story over and over and over again because no, not everyone knows your story. Not everyone opens your emails. Not everyone sees your ads. So not everyone knows your story. So you need to repeat it. But the founder gets tired of that. Founder gets bored of telling their story over and over again. That’s why we’re founders, is because you know we we get a new idea and we’re like boom, and then the whole team scrambles and you know just doing all the things. So that’s that’s definitely one thing that the founder you know definitely gets gets wrong in the mix. The second thing about the founder is that a lot of times the founder really wants to focus on the features of their product, the things that you know they think is important to the consumer, without actually asking the consumer, you know, why do you use this product? What is it doing for you? And hearing that story, because a lot of times it’s different. A lot of times, you know, you’ll think that the reason people are buying it. Here is a good example. You’ll think that the reason people are buying it is because it’s a sustainable product. No, that yes, in in a hierarchy of items, but it is definitely not the top priority for a consumer, you know, sustainability is not because you could have a product that’s the most sustainable product in the world, but it doesn’t work. So you know, you you have to go up the hierarchy to say, hey, why are people actually buying it, and how can I convey that message to them? And then all the other you know secondary, tertiary, you know, kind of features can be listed below that, so it’s it’s really getting into like what’s the real messaging I need to give, and how does it speak directly to the consumer to solve their problem in the moment that we hit them.

Kara Goldin 18:32
Yeah, I totally agree. I think I’ll add on to it, and this sort of goes along with your the lean growth concept, especially when you’re getting into retail, every buyer asks the question, “What do you have that’s new? Right. So they want, in in the case of you know, like hint water, they want a new flavor, or they want you know, are you putting in electrolytes? Are you putting in you know some other ingredient that’s out there? What what else do you have that’s new? And so often founders get into this trap where you know they’re creating these these products, but they’re not doing skew rationalization at all. They’re leaving, you know, they’re continuing to grow because that’s what you’re supposed to do when you grow. You think, especially as a new founder, is continue to add products. But I think you just have to be super, super careful. Consumers will do that too. They’ll say, “Oh, you know, do you have any new flavors? Or, but at the end of the day, I think you just have to be really, really careful with that. So I think Steve Jobs said this best: like, you know, you have to tell the consumer what they need, right? And and at some point don’t necessarily wait for that feedback or do what everybody else says that you should be doing

Kevin Gianni 19:48
for sure yeah

Kara Goldin 19:50
yeah so after 17 years or I guess how when did you start Salt and Blue then your other.

Kevin Gianni 20:00
Blue was this year. It’s brand new

Kara Goldin 20:02
this year. So 16 years into Annmarie, I guess then you start Salt and Blue. Completely different personality from Annmarie and different brand. How did you decide to do this, and how did you decide, I guess, to launch it as a separate brand?

Kevin Gianni 20:20
We saw some of the same signs that were happening in the natural skincare industry years ago. That were kind of around the sunscreen industry. We really saw that there was a lot of deception going on. There are chemicals in the products that can be found in breast milk. If you put imagine you put on sunscreen, and then that chemical from that sunscreen, oxybenzone, can be found in breast milk. I mean, that’s like it’s like you’re trying. You’re just trying to protect yourself from the sun. You know, I mean, that’s that’s all. You know, that that should be the only that should be the only goal. Just so you can enjoy yourself, go to the beach, be on vacation, do whatever you need to do, or even go out in the garden. So, so we saw that happening, and we we said, you know, we really need to to do something that is important in this industry, change it a little bit, do the best that we can with what we know how to do. And the reason that we we broke it out as a new product is is because of you know what I mentioned before. We I really think that that these days one product, you know, one message, sunscreens is is easy in terms of a message. You know, like you you want to go out in the sun. You know, we we can’t sit inside all day. That’s you know that’s not good for our health. So we want to go out in the sun. We want to make sure that we’re protected. We want the best protection possible. So we want UVA and UVB protection, so we protect from aging and burns. So you go outside, you put something on. It should be easy. It shouldn’t be something that we should be thinking about. You know, are there chemicals in here or not? We just want to get it on and do our thing. And so we wanted to solve for that problem. And you know it’s it’s been great so far.

Kara Goldin 22:03
I love it. And how many SKUs did you launch with with that product? Just one.

Kevin Gianni 22:08
Yeah, I mean it’s almost like a personal challenge. It’s it’s it’s like it’s all the things that I’ve that I look back at Annmarie and I said, oh, we did this wrong. We did this. Like, am I correct about that? And can we do it now in a way that I think might be better, and again, it’s work in progress. You know, who knows? But it’s a lot easier in terms of a from a founder’s perspective to to be singularly focused. Is

Kara Goldin 22:32
there a product that you’ve launched with either brand that I guess probably not with Salt and Blue, but with Annmarie, that you thought this definitely isn’t going to work, but we’ll give it a try, and then it just really took off.

Kevin Gianni 22:49
One product that that we launched a few years ago was a face cream, face moisturizer, and we had been talking about how you know oils are better. You know, we we just we prefer oils, but our our customers really wanted a face cream, and so we went and we did a bunch of research on how to make the best face cream so it wouldn’t clog your skin or anything like that. And we launched it, and it launched with okay results. And I was like, man, you know, I thought this was, I don’t know, I didn’t, I didn’t know what to expect from this. And then one of our team members was like, I’ve been using it on my chest, and it’s it’s been wonderful. And so what we did was we started to market it for face and neck, and it started to go crazy, and we were just like we were we were blown away, and so like that’s it’s one of our our best promotions now. When when we do it, when we talk about how to use it for face and neck, that one was really that one was really kind of crazy because I didn’t expect it to to do what it does now, just in just with a simple tweak in terms of our marketing and the story, that was that was fun. Oh, there was one that totally failed that I thought was going to do great. It was back when when essential oil like were really like kind of big. I mean, DoTerra and Young Living and all all these, and we were just and we saw a bunch of ads online about all these different essentials. I’m like, we need to launch an essential oil blend line with an essential oil, you know, diffuser and all that. And I mean, I we must have formulated three or four different things, and we launched. And I think we sold like three the first email, and I was like, oh boy, we’re in trouble.

Kara Goldin 24:41
That’s so funny. Well, it’s we all have one. Ours was hibiscus, so I grew up in Arizona, and yeah, you know, had been around sun teas and hibiscus. And when we launched hibiscus water, it was too early, but it was. No one knew what it was. I mean, the majority of people it did okay in Southern California and Arizona. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, the rest of the country, everybody’s like flower water. Like, what are you guys doing? And got so upset about it. So cucumber was the other one. I mean, it was people were, you know, there’s there are certain things that people eat or taste that are very polarizing. That either you love them or you hate them. You’re not just like, eh, you know. It’s it’s it’s something that people feel very strongly about. And I didn’t realize that cucumber is one of those. And let me tell you, like launching a cucumber water, people were the amount of emails that we got on on cucumber water, and also when we when we discontinued it too. I mean, the people that loved it, they’re like, “Wait, what? Why did you discontinue it? But it was so many people saying, “Like, I can’t stand this. You know, it tastes wrong, and you know, it’s it’s sort of like along the lines of cilantro to people. Like you either love it or you hate it, and so anyway,

Kevin Gianni 26:06
we get that with smells. It’s it’s it’s very similar. We get that with smells and product. You know, some people love rose, some people don’t. Rose is more likable. It’s very approachable, but we have a product that has tramella in it, which is a mushroom extract, and it’s a very earthy smell. And you either like it or you don’t. And and it’s like we can’t we can’t change anyone’s mind about it. But you know we’ve we’ve had that over the years for sure. Like you know, do we reformulate it? Do we not? You know, there’s a number of people who like it. Is it selling okay? Like let’s leave it, and then we’ll formulate something else with a different smell, you know.

Kara Goldin 26:43
So after 17 years of of building companies, what’s one truth about entrepreneurship that nobody believes until they live it?

Kevin Gianni 26:56
Oh my god!

Kevin Gianni 26:57
Oh man! There’s a certain amount of freedom that comes with being your own boss, but the misconception is that that comes with less stress, less responsibility. Sometimes you just have to do it because none of your team members can do it. You know what I mean? I think I think the the myth that I believed was that I would get to a point and then the team would just run everything and it would be great. And for me, because we want to keep our commitments to our customers with our quality and all that, I still need to be involved. I still need to help handle issues and problems that arise. And I think if you are going to be an active and involved founder, then then you can’t run the the myth in your own head or the or the the untruth. Can’t tell yourself the untruth that that you’re not going to get away from it because it’s always going to be there. And and I think that that’s for me, like the for the founder. I think that I I got trapped in the past, with thinking that it you know everyone else would handle at one point, but it always comes back to you, and so you just become better at handling problems, and then it just trickles out into your regular life, your real life, which is you know as an entrepreneur it’s the same, and you get better at handling situations with your partner, you’re with your kids, with your family members, you know, it just it creates a resilience that’s um that’s quite remarkable.

Kara Goldin 28:46
Yeah, so so interesting. So Kevin, thank you so much for joining us today. I love everything about Annmarie and your honesty and realness is just makes me love the brand even more. I’m so excited about Salt and Blue as well. So for everyone listening, definitely check out Annmarie if you haven’t already. Annmarie Skincare, and keep an eye out, and also purchase Salt and Blue as we all need sunscreen. And Kevin, thank you again for joining us, and thanks for doing all you’re doing in creating great companies and sharing all your wisdom with us. Really appreciate it.

Kevin Gianni 29:29
Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Kara Goldin 29:31
Thanks again for listening to the Kara Goldin Show. If you would, please give us a review and feel free to share this podcast with others who would benefit. And of course, feel free to subscribe so you don’t miss a single episode of our podcast. Just a reminder that I can be found on all platforms at Kara Goldin. I would love to hear from you too, so feel free to DM me. And if you want to hear more about my journey, I hope you will have a listen or pick up a copy. My Wall Street Journal best-selling book, Undaunted, where I share more about my journey, including founding and building. Hint: We are here every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Thanks for listening, and goodbye for now.

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