Jenn Krouse: Founder & CEO of AUNU

Episode 806

On today’s episode, we welcome Jenn Krouse, CEO and Founder of AUNU — a skincare brand built around the transformative power of medical-grade Mānuka honey. After helping scale iconic brands like Tory Burch, WeWork, and Victoria Beckham Beauty — where she was part of the founding executive team that grew the business to over $100M — Jenn set out to build a company rooted in trust, clinical efficacy, and the intelligence of nature.
AUNU was inspired by both professional insight and personal experience. Growing up between Korea and Japan, Jenn was introduced early to the healing properties of Mānuka honey — a resource that later became essential as she searched for solutions to her own skin sensitivities. Partnering with Comvita™, the global leader in medical-grade Mānuka honey, she created a brand focused on supporting the skin barrier and delivering powerful results without harsh ingredients. Designed with clinically tested formulas and uncompromising standards, AUNU reflects Jenn’s belief that potent natural ingredients can transform long-term skin health.
In this episode, Jenn shares what it takes to move from scaling established brands to founding one of your own, why investing in clinical studies matters even as a startup, and how to identify true whitespace in a crowded beauty market. We discuss leadership, resilience, earning consumer trust, and the growing shift toward holistic skin health over quick fixes. A thoughtful conversation for founders, operators, and anyone inspired to build brands with both purpose and performance.

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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, and welcome back to the Kara Goldin show. Thrilled to have our next guest today. Jen Kraus is the founder and CEO of a fairly new brand called AUNU, spelled a U N U. It’s a skincare brand built around one of nature’s most powerful healing ingredients, medical grade, manuka honey, which I was not familiar with, and I’m a beauty junkie, so I was so excited to be able to try this. Jen has helped scale iconic brands, ones that you may have heard of like Tory Burch and Victoria Beckham beauty, and now Jen has decided to hang her own shingle, so to speak, and found her company based on this incredible ingredient. Really excited to see everything and hear everything that AUNU is doing, like I said, really born out of the benefits of manuka, honey, but I think it’s so much more so really excited to have you here. Jen, very, very thrilled. So welcome,

Jennifer Krouse 1:55
thank you. Thank you, Kara. I’m so happy to be here and so thrilled to join you today.

Kara Goldin 2:01
I am so excited, because Jen had told me before I came on that I was her first podcast. So I’m like, so honored on so many levels, and she’s just such a incredible entrepreneur and force. So really, really thrilled that you decided to come on.

Jennifer Krouse 2:20
Oh my gosh, my dream. Kara, my dream. Thank you.

Kara Goldin 2:23
So excited. So for listeners that are just discovering AUNU, how do you describe the brand?

Jennifer Krouse 2:30
Well, like you said, AUNU is a medical grade natural skin care brand, and it uses manuka honey as its key ingredient. And manuka honey is so and I’m so excited to tell you more about it, but manuka honey is such an incredible healing complex ingredient that’s so incredible for skin care. And what we do is we use a manuka called convita medi honey. And this is a medical grade manuka honey. This is actually an the used as the base of an FDA cleared medical device. So it’s used in hospitals globally for burn and wound healing and in AUNU for our cosmetic skin care.

Kara Goldin 3:21
So, so cool. So you grew up between Korea and Japan, I understand before coming to the US, and you were introduced early to the healing benefits of manuka honey, when you looked at actually creating a product. Did? Did this come from a personal like problem that you had had with skin, that you thought, I need to go and develop this product, and if I’m not doing it, then no one’s gonna do it or share the story behind what made you decide to do it?

Jennifer Krouse 4:00
Well, it was, it was more multi layered than that, and took years and years. But starting from my childhood, I grew up in Korea, my mother’s Korean, and in Korea we were, our household was very and the health and kind of the wellness was very based in natural, holistic healing. So we always had ginseng. We had all of these supplements, these, my uncle was a Chinese herb doctor, so lots of different herbs, all of the honeys, including manuka honey and manuka honey was introduced quite early, and this in that sense, it was used, or my use of it, was taking it and then taking a spoonful of it when I started to get sick or started to get a sore throat. It’s used very commonly. It has very, very incredible antibacterial benefits. So once you start getting sick, you know, you can really take that to kind of. To ward off your cold, and that’s how I had always taken it, and had always known it, and that, as you know, having our my childhood based in that type of of health and wellness, really, all has always continued throughout my life, and when coming to the US moving to New York. I’ve lived and worked in New York for over 20 years. Have always continued to kind of seek out these natural ways of of care and self care. But a few things happened. So I had always only known manuka in that way of taking it as an ingestible, I continue to take it it’s really great for all sorts of health benefits. But I was working at Victoria Beckham beauty. I was, you know, wanted part of the founding executive team there. I was a CFO and the COO an incredible, you know, lots of growth, lots of change, like so many learnings, both professionally and personally. I had two children during this time, really, you know, very just kind of peaked, I think, in terms of mental and physical health, and that was really showing up in my skin, plus, you know, I’m sure all the the hormones and everything else that was happening on top of that too. But I was experiencing all of these new skin conditions that I had never had before. You know, all of the dryness, the sensitivity like it was weirdly, like dry, but also breaking out, and I just didn’t really understand what was happening. But when trying to navigate the skin care landscape to under, you know, to try to explore what I should be doing, or how I should be treating all of these conditions like it was it was nearly impossible. It was so complicated, and it was so oversaturated, and the messaging was just everywhere. And it was really ironic to me, even working in the beauty industry, for this to be so confusing when really having this kind of problem solution. And then on top of that, it was the confidence and the level of safety of the products that I was using, because I was in such a vulnerable state, either pregnant or postpartum, really having, you know, an idea of of how these different ingredients would affect me, or kind of, you know, my child in that way. So these were all kind of, you know, internal thoughts and experiences that were happening. And then I met the then CEO of Comvita, the lenuetka Honey company that we partner with, and he was really passionate about partnering on building a brand using manuka honey as a key ingredient. And I think if you work in manuka honey, it’s a very it’s a very short leap over, because it has so many incredible benefits for for all of these ingestible purposes, but it also is, is so just fascinating for and so efficacious for topical usage, especially can be to having their medi honey line and their wound healing line. So we, we met, and it was really like Kismet in this way when talking to him and learning about how manuka actually operates in topical application. And the thought of of using this as an ingredient, as a key ingredient, and building the skin care brand around it was a really kind of fast and natural progression.

Kara Goldin 8:36
So you’ve worked with incredible brands and executive level, you watch them grow from just an idea to scaling and all the you know, beauty and warts that go along with that scaling, and then you decided it’s time. How different is it founding a company than actually being in, you know, the executive roles that you were in, do you think that it’s what you thought it was going to be, or do you think that it’s significantly, you know, different? Because I think that the key thing that I’ve seen is that I worked for founders prior to actually starting the brand that I found at hint, but it’s no one ever told me, I guess that the buck stops with you, right? Like it’s just and especially, it can be really lonely in the beginning, especially when there’s no one else there, right? And you know you’re it’s there. There’s different elements of that that I didn’t have in some of my other experiences. But I’m curious what your experience has been.

Jennifer Krouse 9:49
Yeah, absolutely, it’s it’s all learning, it’s all new. And I think that I was in this position through my other roles where I felt. Are, you know, ready to do something like this, and confident in, kind of my ability to develop a brand like this, but I, you know, it’s just, it’s just so, so much more than I ever anticipated, really, I think, you know, in listening to a lot of your previous guests, I think one of these recurring themes, and something you hear often, is that you just really have to believe 1,000% in what you’re doing. And I think there’s so much and so many conversations that happen during the cycle of of concepting, of building, of, you know, positioning and development, you know, and where there’s there’s just so many questions, and people will kind of question what you’re doing or not, you know, give advice that goes against what you think is the right thing to do, and all of this, you know, you’re just, I didn’t anticipate thinking about AUNU every waking minute, whether it’s, you know, like consciously or subconsciously, I you know, it has to be something that you are just so passionate about and that you believe in so much, because it is all consuming in that way. And like you said, it’s also very lonely. It is very lonely. And I think that’s that’s something that is difficult to, kind of, you get into your own head about things, you start to really, kind of, you know, question things you just, you know, all the unsureties is they really rise up a lot. And that’s, that’s difficult too.

Kara Goldin 11:36
What were the first things that you did when you know, you have this idea and you’re looking at this partnership, but now you have to build a company around it, right? And not only produce the products, but also the packaging, the distribution, how you’re going to actually go to market, all of those things. What did you do first?

Jennifer Krouse 11:59
Yeah, the first was really thinking about the brand position. And this is something, you know, that just had so many iterations of what the brand actually stood for and how we wanted to present this brand. And, well, one I guess, let me take a step back. The first thing I did was just obsessively research Monica honey. So it was, you know, I was just consumed with it, just reading, researching, thinking, like, if you did this, and then, what about this? And that was really, you know, that was kind of the basis then to think about, then, how that kind of looked in a skin care brand, and then on top of that, so one we you know, the use of the Medi honey, the there’s a high concentration of this medi honey in all of the formulas, really understanding why and how manuka works and why it is such an like unique skin care ingredient, you know, it has really, you know, it has all of these natural benefits. It has really high antioxidant activity, anti inflammatory. It’s a natural moisturizer, you know, it, it’s, it seals moisture into your skin. It has a very unique antibacterial property. So there’s all, you know, it’s all this kind of the learning and the education around there, and then synergistically, how this as an ingredient works together. And what it does is it makes your skin stronger, makes your skin healthier. It’s always protecting and healing and regenerating, and so that as kind of our key ingredient was one, and then using a high concentration of that is two, and then developing all of the formulas around that. Because here, too in skin care, it’s not unusual for there to be, you know, white label formulas or kind of similar formulas that are just used and packaged in different in different products or different brands. You know here, everything was like proprietary built around this concept of the manuka honey, so ensuring that all of those ingredients were also meaningful for that final forum or that product that was being developed. So that was one. But then there were these other additional benefits, going back to, kind of my own experience, and looking at the skincare landscape, there’s, you know, there’s one one side, which is very kind of clinical and scientifically driven. It’s, you know, it’s for it’s just a more kind of like, you know, synthetic world of skin care. And then there’s another side. And then even past that, if you go even a level past that, there’s like medical skincare steroids, prescription for really kind of irritated or compromised skin, which is ultimately not healthy for you. And then on the other side of that, there’s these clean you know. Clean, natural skin care brands, and there’s issues between all of them. You know, the natural and clean skin care brands, they are or can be really great for you, but may not necessarily be as clinically validated as some of those science level driven brands. And then on that side, on the science level side, you know, there’s some formulas that are really just very simple, where they’re not irritating, they don’t, you know, they are kind of a short list of ingredients, and they’re really meant to be kind of like non triggering for skin issues, or just have something that’s really kind of proprietary or interesting as a as a scientifically built ingredient, and there wasn’t really a bridge between the two, where you have this natural ingredient that has so much of this medical and scientific data behind it in terms of its efficacy, but yet is this natural ingredient, which is, you know, one of these wonders of our world. So kind of bridging that and positioning the brand to really to ensure that we wanted it to be as or I wanted it to be as clinically competitive with some with these science led brands, but really utilizing this truly medical grade ingredient with this FDA cleared medi honey. And this is really where we land, where the the landing of this medical grade, natural kind of formation of the brand began along with that, because it is a natural ingredient, I also wanted to ensure that it was really clean and it was really safe and a very kind of pure way of caring for itself. So there was this other work done to ensure that all of the formulas are NEA certified versus the national eczema Association. They’re EWG verified. We’re really trying to put some claims against it because and put these clean credentials against it to ensure that it’s also safe for use for kind of anyone at any life stage.

Kara Goldin 16:56
That’s incredible. Yeah. And that the emphasis on, like, these clinical testing. I mean, a lot of brands, especially early brands, don’t do that. So I think that the fact that you’re putting such an emphasis on that is is just really awesome, and it’s it’s another reason why I think you telling the story of getting the story out there about it, because often it’s really hard to get that information out to consumers, especially AUNUr packaging. You get, you have a very small space, right, right? So how are you getting the word out about all that you’re doing in the background? Because that’s, that’s huge,

Jennifer Krouse 17:41
yeah, this is, you know, I would say another learning from, from building a brand, is just the the network of so one, we’re getting the brand out just kind of through that, through these means of on in our digital space. We have our website, which is where a lot of our information lives. We have our social but we are a brand new brand. You know, we launched a little over three months ago. So the the impact that we’ve had is very small. We’ve been able to have, and I think, you know, the brand has resonated with some real beauty, you know, experts in the field. So we’ve had some great we’ve been able to secure some great coverage, some media. But as a whole, it’s really difficult, you know, getting the brand, getting the brand out, and getting the awareness of the brand out there. We have taken a very, a very you know, a very concerted effort. We’ve taken a very concerted effort on starting to roll out the brand in a very thoughtful way. Through this professional network of dermatologists and estheticians, we have this professional network, which is really great because there’s so much kind of education that does come along with this brand, and they have this customer that a brand like this can really, that they can really benefit from, you know, in this medical space, on the dermatologist side, it’s really a wonderful brand to bring in if you have compromised skin, if you’re suffering from a lot of these skin issues. At Manuka, so incredible at healing like, you know, the eczemas and the dermatitis and these other kind of compromised skin are just really irritated or sensitive skin on the cosmetic side. Under the dermatologist, there’s a lot of, you know, lasers or cosmetic procedures where a brand like this can also really help on the healing aspect, and then on the estheticians. It’s really so much about this kind of holistic Kara and the health and and the healing of skin quite often. So we have, you know, we’re going through that measure of really partnering with with that, with those professionals in that distribution space, but another, you know, really like such a an an overwhelming way that. We’ve also been able to reach new people is through word of mouth and through, like the most amazing group of people that are really cheerleaders of this brand and have really supported the brand, and have come out, and, you know, to completely unprecedented actions of of sharing and and supporting and passing the brand along, and that, to me, has just been the absolute best thing about starting AUNU. And, you know, something that’s just taught me, has inspired me so much and has taught me so much, just through kind of those actions that I’ve seen

Kara Goldin 20:40
you’ve been at companies that have scaled into the hundreds of millions as as a senior executive, when do you know that a company is successful and you know, really taking off? And what is it like? Because you’ve been there right when you’re building these brands, this is a brand new brand right now, and you’ve got, you know, the little wins that are happening right now. But what is that moment when you know that you’ve done it?

Jennifer Krouse 21:14
You know, it’s difficult because, like, I think that can, that can mean a lot of things to a lot of different people. And there was something I read recently where it was like, if a customer buy something one time, you know, you’ve made a sale, and then if they buy and then if they buy it again, you’ve gained trust, and then if they recommend it to someone like, then you’ve built a brand. And just reading that, you know, I felt like, wow, I’ve actually built a brand, because I’ve seen that activity already. And knowing that there is a place like that, you know, a place for for this brand like that in the market is as a very small measure of success to grow a business and be successful in that business is very different. And I think this is something that obviously shows in in sales and volume and customers and opportunity of reaching new customers. And for a brand like AUNU, I think when I feel like this brand is successful is when this brand is on, as on whole families. You know, I think that manuka honey as an ingredient is so good for you. It’s so pure, it’s so healing, it’s such an you know, this brand is really meant to deliver something that changes people’s lives in this way. And I don’t want it to stop there. You know, we want this brand to be able to expand into touching every part of a person’s body and every age of a person. So for me, when I when I think about this brand, and what the success is, this is a brand that is across skin care, whether that be face, body hair on children. You know, such a it’s such a healing it has such healing power for many of these skin issues that children suffer from. You know, I have one product in our line right now, which is called the solve and this is incredible for children. I use it on my kids all the time. It heals any kind of compromised skin. So when we’re when we’re touching people in this way like that, to me, is success, and when we’re seeing that and the use of this product and delivering this in in households where more people know about manuka honey and understand that this is, is a skincare ingredient that is, you know, something that can rival anything they’re using today, and it’s so good for for you. So that, to me, is what success looks like when you have a customer who loves the brand, and when you’ve built a really incredible business, and that’s from everyone that works on the brand, and that passion and that unity and delivering something positive, that’s Success.

Kara Goldin 24:18
Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. I i always say too, that the consumer feedback that is often given to brands actually, it’s probably not given as much as it should be, but that’s often the fuel that founders need to keep going too, right? Like it’s, it’s so huge,

Jennifer Krouse 24:42
absolutely, absolutely there’s, yes, you know, there’s been so many moments when, you know, I was down, and then there was that feedback that was like, Okay, this reminds me, like this is meaningful to somebody.

Kara Goldin 24:57
Yeah, absolutely, when you look. At overall entrepreneurship. It you know, any entrepreneur, any founder, will say that it tests resilience for sure. You have those days where you never know what you’re going to wake up to. You think you have a plan, and then all of a sudden you get a phone call, and your plan changes good or bad, right? And I’m sure you’ve had those moments where things get delayed that you didn’t expect, and then that’s like a domino across the rest of the business. Can you think of a time that you got through, but gosh, it was challenging, right? Like it was a story that maybe you didn’t expect, but then it’s, you know, you ended up getting through it. But you look back on that, and you’re like, Oh, that was exhausting.

Jennifer Krouse 25:49
Yes, you know, so many, just so many. And I, you know, I’m a real believer in a lot of these things, a lot of things you know, are out of your control. And more often than not, when you look back, you’re like, that was that it was meant to happen that way. But you know, there were a lot, I think, you know, at launch of the brand, there was for me, because in my experience of of brand growth. It was so much about kind of distribution and partnering with retailers and going and growing the brand in this way. And, you know, touching customers, and being able to get in front of these customers. And you know, we kind of started out exploring those paths, like having these conversations with bigger retailers and wanting to go into these doors and and then, you know, like making those plans, and then when it started coming down to the actual plan, and like, those actual meetings, of those partnerships happening, you know, I just had the biggest pit in my stomach where I just felt like, really, really scared, and I was like, this does not feel good. I don’t know what this is, but it’s terrifying me, and I feel like I’m making a huge mistake, and I just don’t know if this is what’s right for for us, you’re for the brand, and that’s happened. And then, you know, what we ended up doing was really kind of just resetting, resetting the timeline. And I think that was a really, you know, it’s not, it’s not that dramatic of a thing, like when, when talking about it now, but here it was just something that was like, also just giving me so much anxiety, and then just kind of facing it and being like, you know what? This isn’t right. We’re not ready this. We want to push it back. And it was just kind of such a simple solution. And the retailers were so great. And we’re like, okay, great. And that’s and that’s how it ended. And then that’s when it became really clear to me, you know, working through these professional networks, like working with our dermatologists, working with our estheticians, who really are interested in the brand and really want to talk about the brand and and recommend them in these very thoughtful ways to their customers, was something that felt so good to me at this time.

Kara Goldin 28:32
I love that, and especially as you’re building out the company and and really seeing kind of what the right mix is as well. How many SKUs Did you launch with then?

Jennifer Krouse 28:43
So we have five. They really cover kind of like your daily regimen. I’d love to hear about them. So first there’s a cleanser, really incredible. So hydrating, non drying, non irritating. And, you know, a big part of kind of our brand and our value proposition is that the use of the this product, and the use of and what manuka really does is it makes your skin healthier, and that’s really synonymous with really building your skin barrier. It does a lot of other things. You know, it calms inflammation. It, you know, protects from free radicals. It’s the antibacterial benefit. But all of these together, like, it all starts with your skin barrier. When your skin is healthier, when your barrier is healthier, you know, it’s really this healthy skin begets healthier skin. Like then you’re really able to retain more moisture, and your inflammation continues to calm, and you start to really noticeably, in my own personal experience, through this regimen, really noticeably start to to see this healthy, just this healthier, stronger skin. And so building out that product line, we have a cleanser to start, which is kind of step one you don’t want to irritate your skin. You want to make sure you’re cleansing it really gently. Step two, we have an essence, and the essence is my hero product I have to use this morning and night. This one actually has 20% of medi honey in it, which is our highest concentration in our formula. It’s a hydrating essence. It’s also kind of brightening and toning we’ve done, you know, as you mentioned earlier, the clinicals on product. So one, we have all of this medical validity against the manuka ingredient, but also on the formulas. As a young brand, we wanted to ensure we really invested in doing clinicals to ensure that we are seeing these, these actually like validated results on skin care use. So the clinicals on the essence is there’s a 90% increase in hydration. After you apply it, you’re essentially doubling kind of your skin hydration. After four weeks, there was an almost 30% improvement in your texture and appearance. You’ll really start to see this brightening, this healthy glow from the essence. Next we have a cream, which is a very cocooning, protecting moisturizer that I apply after the essence. And then we have two, you know, somewhat ancillary products. There’s a mask which is 100% medi honey. And this I really like to think of as, you know, an ode to the ingredient manuka, can be used on its own, you know, off the shelf as a as a face mask. You put it on for 20 to 30 minutes, you get that dose of moisturizing and inflammation, calming and bacteria, antibacterial benefit and and, you know, antioxidant protection. But here you, you know, put that on, kind of rejuvenate your skin, wash it off. After 2030, minutes, you’ll be glowing, calms the inflammation in your skin. And then we have a very special product, which I mentioned earlier, which is the solve. And the solve is, you know, a mix of manuka. There’s natural oats in it. There’s two plant based ingredients that together act like a steroid, but of course, it’s a non steroid, and what this formula does is really heal kind of compromised skin. So this is kind of the jack of all trades. You can put this on anything for on irritated skin, on eczema, on, you know, any kind of weird patches I put it on my kids all the time. They’re always have, like, weird things happening diaper rash, you know, this is, or even just as a really heavy kind of moisturizer, because it’s a very much thicker kind of cream than our moisturizer. So that’s what we’ve started with, and those are our five products.

Kara Goldin 32:44
I love it well AUNU is, is such a great, such a great brand that you have built? But also, just like I’m so impressed with everything that you’re doing, and the products are so so great. So Jen Krause, founder and CEO of AUNU will have all the info in the show notes, website information, all of that everyone needs to stay on the brand and purchase the products and check it out themselves. But thank you so much, Jen for sharing your wisdom, and thanks everyone for listening until next time on the Kara

Jennifer Krouse 33:22
Goldin show. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Kara Goldin 33:25
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 of 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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