Lindsay Holden: Co-Founder of Odele

Episode 768

On today’s episode, Kara welcomes Lindsay Holden, Co-Founder of Odele Beauty — the clean, inclusive, and high-performing haircare brand redefining prestige beauty for all.
After more than a decade in retail — including eight years as a merchant at Target — Lindsay and her two co-founders set out to build something different: a gender-neutral, salon-grade haircare brand that was affordable, transparent, and designed for real people. They launched Odele in 2020, reaching profitability within six months, and have since grown into more than 12,000 retail doors nationwide, including Target, Ulta, and CVS.
In this episode, Lindsay shares how she turned her corporate experience into founder grit, the challenges of breaking into a crowded beauty aisle, and why progress over perfection has become her personal and professional mantra. We also dive into the brand’s Odele For Good platform and how purpose, inclusion, and community are at the heart of everything they do. This episode is packed with lessons on leadership, building with intention, and creating products that make people feel seen. Don’t miss it!

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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 you. 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. So excited to have my next guest. Lindsay Holden is the co founder of an incredible brand called Odele, which is the clean, inclusive and high performing hair care brand that’s redefining prestige beauty for all, and I have to tell you, it is one amazing line of products. So Lindsay’s story is one every founder will relate to. After more than a decade in retail, including eight years as a merchant for target, she and her two co founders decided to build something different, a gender neutral, accessible, clean hair care line that didn’t compromise on performance or design. So that is exactly what they did. And beautiful 2020, I can’t even wait to hear about all of that. And reached profitability quite quickly, quickly. So fast forward. They are now in Target, Ulta, CVS, online, all good. And they also have an incredible impact initiative called Odele for good that I can’t wait to hear more about. So without further. ADO Lindsay, welcome to the Kara Goldin show. So excited to meet you finally.

Lindsay Holden 2:04
Thank you. It’s wonderful to be here. What an introduction. I’m like, wow, that’s, yeah, that’s a lot. Thank you.

Kara Goldin 2:11
Super, super excited. And by the way, it’s Lindsay’s birthday as well. So while we’re recording this, and I mean, I’m so honored that you would come on today, on your birthday, it’s just, it’s so great.

Lindsay Holden 2:23
I mean, what better day to make a new friend? So thank you for having me exactly.

Kara Goldin 2:30
All right, so let’s start first. I always ask people to kind of describe the brand even before we get into the backstory. What is Odele.

Lindsay Holden 2:40
I mean, you, you said it, you said it beautifully. We are a hair care brand, we’re clean, we’re inclusive, and we are obsessed with maximizing value, right? And so I’m a firm believer that crazy good does not have to be crazy expensive, and what Odele does is bring that high performance to the masses at a very accessible price point with goop that says it’s going to do what it’s going to do. And there’s a lot of we saw a lot of barriers to what made it easy to shop for hair care. And so whether that’s understanding what’s meant for you, or the price point the fragrance, there are a lot of reasons not to buy, and we kind of went through and tried to remove all of those barriers that may have kept you from getting that product in the past or easily identifying what’s best for you.

Kara Goldin 3:36
So you launched the brand with two co founders. Can you tell us the backstory of how this all came to be sure?

Lindsay Holden 3:44
I mean, it’s a very long one, I guess, you know, hindsight is always 2020, so I met my partner, Britta, at graduate school. We knew we had a very compatible skill set. And I think over, you know, I think it was probably 10 years later that we came up with the idea of for Odele, but it was really we both went to work. Like you mentioned. I went to Target, she went to Mills, and then came to target. She then went to consult for some other companies, where she met my third partner, Shannon. And I think, you know, we’re all moms. We’re all very I think when you become a mom, you come you become even more like discerning with your time and how it’s spent, and what you’re giving, what you’re getting back, your ability to be present with your kids. And we had always known we had wanted to do something on our own terms, but timelines never really lined up. You know, I think at one point we were talking about a baby gear company, and so it wasn’t until 2018 that we both found ourselves at a transition. And you know, as a merchant, you’re really trained to kind of look at a category, see the opportunity, you know what is not being addressed. And we looked. At the hair care shelves at Mass and in, you know, despite there being so many options, there just didn’t seem to be that option that checked all the boxes. And so what I mean, when it’s like, checked all the boxes, it’s like, all right? There were clean brands, but they weren’t really performance driven. There were salon brands, but they were really expensive, and they weren’t clean, and then the less expensive brands didn’t meet, you know, our personal performance expectations, and at the same time, we looked at our showers as parents, right? And I’m like, oh my god, it’s like, bottle madness in here. There’s like, so my kind, the kids kind, the whatever kind for my husband, like, Why isn’t there that one brand that addresses my needs but isn’t able to share with whoever is in my shower? And so we set out to create just that. And you know, I think it’s kind of ignorance is bliss sometimes in an industry that hadn’t had much exposure to but we really believe that, you know, we could pass along more value to the consumer if we went this route, via mass, and start to carve out what that prestige space could look like in mass, raising people’s expectations of what a mass brand could do. And that’s, that’s how Odele started.

Kara Goldin 6:22
I love it. So your co founders didn’t have experience in in this industry either.

Lindsay Holden 6:28
You know, they started to get their feet wet in it before me. Shannon, my ops. Shannon came from a hair care specific brand beforehand on the manufacturing brand side. But she, she was the one who had the deepest knowledge in terms of who makes the goop, where to source the bottles from, how to get it to shelf. Britta had started to consult a bit in that space of beauty while at Target, and then back, you know, to some on just kind of some of the some brand sides through her consulting practice. But that was more in like her the recent years leading up to OTEL.

Kara Goldin 7:06
So you were a buyer at at Target for eight years, not in this category, in another category, but still, you had experience right sort of seeing, not only how to present products, but also probably having some knowledge about, like, what it would take, and especially when you’re a brand new brand, you know you don’t have velocity, you know you don’t have anything, right? And so, so and you decided to do an exclusive with target to first launch the product. So can you talk just about, I guess, like, How’d you do it, and how did you, like, decide that that was the right thing to

Lindsay Holden 7:53
do? Sure. I mean, we really needed scale out of the gates in order to pass along so much value, and at the same time, to your point, like I, you know, I knew brick and mortar. I did not know DTC as well. Same with my partners, right? So this very tangible kind of high risk, but high reward, if it works, scenario is what we were most familiar with. And like what defines success. And so it is tough to show up on shelves without having done so. Before you know, being less familiar with okay like these are your productivity goals, or what is that recipe that we think will lend itself to success? So we did have that familiarity in terms of how to speak to the value that we’re adding to a category. You know, it’s like, you want to walk in and be a partner with these merchants in order to grow the total business, not just kind of steal share from some existing it’s like, how do you make the pie bigger? And why do you think your brand is the right solution to do just that, and so that that was, like, the familiarity that we had right, and the passion we had around, like continuing to build an offering in total right for for this category in hair. But I think a lot of brands right, they don’t necessarily have that. Have they not had any familiarity or background in working in retail brick and mortar, there’s a lot of costs that come hand in hand with it. And so it was also setting up the structure of our business to be sustainable in order to support the costs of doing business once you’re on shelf and get the product to the shelf, because if it’s not there, you can’t sell it, right? And so that was really that, I think, just awareness that we have, that we had at the time as a newer brand, to trust that, you know, we could, we could see it all the way through, kind of beyond just the selling, if you will.

Kara Goldin 9:57
So how many SKUs Did you launch with?

Lindsay Holden 10:00
Oh, I want to say we launched with nine and so we really distilled it down to, all right, like, what are the most common hair types and textures across the population? What are the key benefits that they seek? And starting out with that core of shampoo and conditioners that address the broadest, you know, uniquely address the broadest population. So it was, you know, volumizing shampoo and conditioner smoothing, you know, for hair that’s wavy and medium to curl defining. So we started with a range of shampoo and conditioners that address like kind of the most core and basic wants, benefit LED. And then we a handful of stylers that that did the same. So leave in conditioner, air dry styler was among our first trying to think it was, I don’t think it was dry shampoo. Year one, that might have been year two, but nine, nine skews in total out of the gates.

Kara Goldin 10:57
And when you think about like facings, I guess, you know, that’s always such a key thing. I remember when hint first launched in Target, and it was, you know, we just, we barely understood that. I mean, we probably had three facings, and wow, what a difference it made when we actually had nine facings, right? It was, it was just life changing. And I now tell, yeah, I tell founders now that, you know, sometimes actually launching with too few, even though it sounds like such a great opportunity, you could be like, oh gosh, like, this is not working. This is a failure, right? And and it could actually be how you present your brand, and how you’re able to present the

Lindsay Holden 11:48
brand totally, I mean, you think about it, it’s like, those runs are 48 feet and there’s just so many bottles there, you know your category or mine. It’s like, if you just have a few SKUs, it is you can get lost so easily, and so protecting that brand block and like, honestly, the simplicity and the design of our bottle at the time, which, like, we’re just these design junkies, we wanted the bottles, obviously the goops got to work, but we wanted them to look good in your home, like there’s added joy in the usage and discovery of that. And I cannot even tell you how many people pick up our bottle, because they’re like, Oh, it’s a pretty bottle. And we’re like, Yes, I know. And like, thank you. And you know, the goop is great too. And so I think it is that brand block that is the stop in your tracks, stop in the aisle moment to help lend itself to that discovery and finding you when people are looking for you.

Kara Goldin 12:45
So once you got through the three year exclusive, what did you do then? I mean in terms of availability, I guess for the brand?

Lindsay Holden 12:56
Yeah, we, we wanted to prove ourselves in other channels. So we looked and we expanded into specialty with Alta as well as drug with CVS. And so we were very, very careful not to, I mean, I still to this day, see there is so much potential, even within our current partners, right? We’re figuring out Amazon tip of the iceberg. We’re figuring out Target, Target, how to continue, you know, our double digit growth year over year, and same with all of these partners. And so we’re very careful, not, you know, to be patient with that expansion. But also, like, super curious of where are people shopping? Where are they hoping to find us? Where does that behavior already exist? And hopefully that we when we then expand into these other retail locations, that’s just more points of distribution that lends itself to more discovery and more effective marketing, and then more kind of, like, we’re like, ease of replenishment for you as a shopper, you know to just pick it up where you’re at, regardless of like, where you’re at, because we all just don’t shop at one place.

Kara Goldin 14:09
So the name Odele, how did you come off with the brand name?

Lindsay Holden 14:14
Odele, sure it’s, um, I mean, I don’t know if you know, but it’s really hard to find a name that’s not already taken, but we really that I mentioned sharing. You know, like sharing, like your shower is a shared space. I looked up how to say to share in every language, and in Norwegian, it’s a deli with a little o over the A, and it’s pronounced Odele. And I was, like, that is a beautiful name. It’s like, it’s not, it doesn’t lean too feminine. Doesn’t lean too masculine. It like represents, like a core tenant of why we saw this opportunity of just true inclusiveness, you know, in terms of making ourselves accessible to regardless of your age or. Your gender, you know, at a price point that’s very accessible at places that are very accessible. And so it means to share. I love it. And it’s a nod to like, you know, I’m in Minneapolis, so we’ve got a lot of Swedish and Norwegian heritage up here in the North. I

Kara Goldin 15:17
love it. So I read that when you launched in 2020 you reached profit profitability in six months. I mean, congratulations. That’s pretty rock star, especially given that you’re, at that point, a brand new founder. So how did you do it? I guess you had bigger margins to play with, but and also you had growth. But also, what do you think that that’s gotten you? I guess is, is the bottom line.

Lindsay Holden 15:47
I have to give a lot of credit when my partner, Britta, is a beautiful mind at building a beautiful business I love, like the brand and art side and the maximizing opportunities. Shannon’s in the ops Britain, this business strategist, like we were, that we are the three kind of legged stool. I think there’s also a beautiful model when you’re selling at brick and mortar, where they pay you for what they purchase, and they’re always purchasing so right, you get, you know, we’re out of the gates. We needed to raise a little bit in order to fund like that initial inventory set, you very quickly start to get paid for what you’re moving through. And we were very discerning. I would say the like, we did not understand the return on investment, on like the D to C, types of you know, levers that you pull as as much. And I’d say our margins were not representative of what we see, what you sometimes see in prestige beauty, for example, just based on wanting to protect that accessible price point and passing along that value to the consumer. And so we were just very discerning with how and what we were spending on to make sure that that really like translated in those initial years, so we could sustain this, this offering. And so I’ll tell you, you know, like, that’s like, it’s, then it goes like this. You then learn how and what to spend on. You start to, like, experiment more so on, like, what, you know, what are the big guys doing with that work for us. And so I’d say we’re very much on a learning journey. But that was how that was, that was evident, like the profitability out of the gates was a result of just being really discerning on how we were spending and how we were bringing this to life, like with things like we use stock component tree versus taking out our own mold, for example, on the on the packaging, you know, we were able to create efficiencies by gaining, you know, having larger runs and being, like I said, at a place that has volume to, you know, then gain some more competitive pricing with scale. So we’re still working on it.

Kara Goldin 18:02
We’re still working I love it, though. So when, when you were launching inside of target, I mean, first of all, that must I always talk about, for me, I think it was because we did an off site where I had to, like, build out a timeline. And I said, this was a good point. This was not so good, and I, like, went through that. So I always think of life like that when I think about the biggest points where you said, like, I’m on to something, I would guess, like getting into Target and getting that deal. I mean, it’s like, you celebrate for 30 seconds, right? Maybe two days, and then all sudden you’re like, Ah, I gotta, I gotta deliver. Is it gonna work? All of that that’s going on. What was the moment after launch where you said, okay, like, we’re gonna make it like, it’s, like, it’s, it’s really, and it may sound crazy to somebody who has never launched a brand, but it’s like people are, you know, it happens sometimes where you launch a brand and it doesn’t work, right, like, and, and obviously it’s working for you. So, but what was the point where, like, how far in or where, like, what was the moment where you thought, Okay, it’s working.

Lindsay Holden 19:24
I’m like, I’m still having that. I was like, we need to do this. But I think, um, I think you’re like, you describe it well, it’s really terrifying. It’s like, all right, selling it in is one thing. Making it Work is another thing. And I think you get like that real time feedback by being on retailers shelves and understanding like, Okay, here’s my goal of productivity. Like, this bottle of shampoo has to sell one per store per week of every door that it’s in, right on average. And so it’s kind of like we had these metrics for the for success. Yes, that we knew we had to achieve. And a lot of times it’s like, it takes, obviously, like, a bit of a runway, like, they find you, they know you’re there, then they like, come back. So it takes a while to, like, some patience to like to get there. But I think it was, I mean, let’s, let’s just set covid aside, because that happened like a month or two after we sat indoors. But I really think it’s when those metrics started coming back, where we could see, like, our productivity ticking up, that we’re like, this is this is working like we are doing well. We’re adding value to this category. We are like, what we defined as joint success, like, we are meeting those metrics. And honestly, for me, it was a lot of more, more of those kind of softer, like accolades and tangible like, it’s like the like, how we were, you know, being tested by editors or making, you know, winning some of these industry awards. And just kind of like that word of mouth that we started to feel in terms of, like lending itself to building awareness, but like, the stamp of approval, like I’ve always said, like, it matters so much more to me, like what you say about Odele than what I tell you what to think about Odele, because it’s your experience. It’s like, are we meeting the discerning tastes that we set out to satisfy? And so it’s those kind of feedback loops that I think really helped me sleep at night.

Kara Goldin 21:37
Is there one product that is kind of the runaway hero of your line?

Lindsay Holden 21:44
Yeah, I love this question because I also take pride on the fact that, like, each of our products warrants its space. And, you know, like we do have, we don’t have one product that is like Far and Away carrying the brand at all. I would say we definitely have some Hero products that are, by nature, more inclusive to all hair types, so that lends themselves to being kind of like a larger audience can shop them. Our clarifying shampoo is one of those. It is a great gateway into Odele. Our hair oil is phenomenal. So I’d say those two are really among the hero sets for us.

Kara Goldin 22:28
They’re so great. I love the frizz, the spray, too. Oh yeah, detangler, yeah, it’s so good. So

Lindsay Holden 22:35
they’re all such hard workers and really good at doing what they set out to do. Yeah?

Kara Goldin 22:41
So great. So the Odele for good partnership. So I think that so with the n, w, n, b, A’s Minnesota links and but just overall, like the partnership, how did you decide to do that?

Lindsay Holden 22:58
Yeah, I think so. You know, giving back has always been part of what we’ve done, you know, honestly, very reactively and now more proactively, through this Odele for good. And how do we kind of create opportunities, removing barriers, making making those opportunities more accessible for for communities that may not have them, and the Minnesota links is kind of part and parcel with that. But we ended up, they reached out, I think, a few years ago, and it was, I was like, Oh, this sounds like, this sounds fun. Like, what a great way to get you know one invest in an incredible group of women who are, you know, so talented, so passionate. There’s a passionate fan base. They’re local, they’re in our backyard, and they also do so much good. And so they, we agreed to sponsor them for, I think it was three years. I mean, this might we just finished our second year, and which has been awesome. I mean, the WNBA is just incredible in what they’re building and what they’re attracting, what they’re doing for women’s sports. So we sponsored them. But part of that relationship, we’re like this. We want it to be more than just like this exchange. Like, we know you’re involved in a ton of amazing philanthropic work. Like, let’s do some of that together. And so part of our Odele for good investment is in partnership with them and some organizations that are local, one called girls taking action, just empowering confidence and mentorship and community within middle schoolers and high schoolers. So it’s, you know, it’s, it’s just been a really natural kind of organic year over a year evolution to doing good.

Kara Goldin 24:51
I love it. So when you think about getting the word out about Odele, every founder, you know, you. You you want to do Super Bowl ads, maybe not Super Bowl, but you know, you want to get it out there, right? But it takes money, right? Yeah, so, so how do you get the word out? I mean, you’re not shampooing people’s hair and target, right? You’re like, it’s hard to do that. So how do you do it? Like, how do you get the word out in a reasonable priced way?

Lindsay Holden 25:27
I mean, I wish I had like, this is definitely part of that learning journey, and it feels like it changes and evolves in terms of, like, what should you do, or what’s the most effective, cost effective, or what is even the measurement of success, right? I think, like, the earned aspect has always worked really hard for us, and that’s something that we just is like a drumbeat, right? Last year, we did more exploring in, like, more of the traditional media type of investments with, you know, ads on YouTube, or, you know, cert, the search and, you know, there’s parts of that, well, that will always be on for us, but like, we can’t compete with, like, the massive conglomerates out there. Yeah, it’s like, you know, we’re always like, you can’t, you know, boil the ocean with a curling iron. Literally, that’s what it feels like you’re trying to do so I think this year, you know, it’s like, All right, let’s take it back, reevaluate, like we’re kind of constantly testing learning. It’s like, how do we really leverage what we can do better as a smaller, insurgent brand, as, like, a more entrepreneur with a more entrepreneurial lens? And so we’re really kind of swinging the pendulum back to, like, investing more in the communities that we are naturally connected to, and like spreading the word in that way, and so with more life events, and just like events in real life. And so I think it’s like, I don’t have the answer. I think the answer is to kind of be curious about it, and, you know, test and learn, but move quickly enough to kind of always, obviously stay true to being on brand and how you’re showing up and where. But it’s, it’s, it’s a tough one. It’s really changing. It’s quickly.

Kara Goldin 27:17
It’s tough. But I think more and more like, I mean, PR was always a huge driver of awareness for us from day one. And I think doing podcasts, doing, I mean, you’ve received many accolades, Inc, to new beauty, to Cosmo, so all of that is really good. And people do you know, listen to podcasts, they listen to or they read magazines, and so all of that, I think, is, is really good stuff. So finally, what are you most excited about with Odele, and what does 2026 What are your wishes for that year for the brand?

Lindsay Holden 28:03
I’m really excited about the team we’re building. You know, I think, like that is an incredible position to be in, to not, you know, it’s like the three of us did everything for too long, and now it’s we have these incredible minds and capable people like to help us, like continue to run. I’m still so excited by all of the potential I see within our current, you know, retail partnerships. I think the runway for where this brand has to go, not just with new kind of SKUs or points of distribution, but just even the awareness building of our core, right? We’re still relatively unknown, but like, we know that if people know us and try us, they come back, you know. And so it’s like, gosh, what would that feel like to just boost our awareness a few notches, you know? And how that translates to opportunity. So I’m most excited, I think about, you know, our overall potential for growth from from here on out, which is something that we’ve done a pretty solid job realizing, like year over year. I think it gets, you know, it gets harder to find that meaningful growth. But I think it’s like we have every right to own it.

Kara Goldin 29:23
I love it well, Lindsay, thank you so much for joining us today, and happy birthday again. So excited for everything that you’re doing. And Odele, you should be very, very proud. Everyone could check out Odele beauty inside of as Lindsay mentioned, Target, Ulta, CVS, and also online at Odele, beauty and Amazon and definitely follow them on social. Thank you again for sharing the journey, and also thanks everyone for listening. Thank you, Kara, 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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