Kosas Cosmetics Founder Sheena Yaitanes

Shena Utanus. I was pretty intrigued by not just that she's someone that loves beauty that grew up watching her mom, but she was super smart, had a science background, got her masters in business, was also an actress. But here's this girl who has a beauty brand. So I'm very curious to find out who is she? Ina utanous Hey, Shana, Hi, Bobby, So nice to meet you. It's really nice to meet you too. You have some incredible, incredibly interesting bio which

I can't wait to dive into. Let's dive into it. Yeah, but I but I remember the first time I saw the brand. I was still working at the old company, and you were, you know, you guys had just come out, and I just thought how fascinating, Like it was so new and different because there was nothing in the clean world that resembled like a real makeup product. So tell

me about the launch. Thank you, Bob, and thank you for knowing and noticing that, like was like that was like a big revolution and jump I think for clean um. But of course, like at the time that Coasts launched, there was no such term as clean. It wasn't even a thing yet. Well, there was some there was some things that people were making in their kitchen and you know,

granola kind of hippie stuff. Yeah, we had like natural and organic and like a sense of like understanding that maybe there was some there was some ingredients and conventional that people didn't want to use. There was like definitely a rise of like oh should we be questioning these

ingredients that was starting to happen UM. And then I like, I love where we've landed now and like the and I love the evolution of where things are going because I think there was like that big pendulum swing to natural and organic and that was tough for people who are obsessed with makeup and wearing it. UM. And so now I like, I love that we've kind of come back around to thoughtful and purposeful. Well, let's let's go back for a second. Because you grew up your mother

worked in cosmetics, she was in retail. Tell me he worked at the mall. My mother worked at the mall. Um she worked at before I was even born. She worked at Clarence Um. And then when I was growing up, she worked at Clinique. And I don't know if you I'm gonna I'm gonna go ahead and guess you've never worked at the mall. But I actually I actually sold

shoes in high school at the mall. Yes, okay, so yeah, I mean it's kind of a rite of passage, right, um So, because my mom worked at Clinique, and she actually really loved that. She still speaks fondly of like how fun it was, because of course your you work at shopping, Like how fun is that? Um? And her friends would be, you know, like the girl from the Landcomb counter or like you know, someone from Chanel and

then the s a Sta Lauter. And that's how I got to know these brands was through the people who were my mom's friends who wrapped the brands. And you really start to understand like a very early sense of like what does DNA mean? What's identity? And like what's the difference between these things? And so much of that just came through, like the the textures, the smells, the names, and they all had a little personality of their own.

So I got my beauty education on the ground. And you must have played with your mom's makeup when you were a kid. It's all I played with so Like I was a very quiet child, I spent a lot of time in my mom's bathroom or in my room by myself. Um, I've always been drawn to materials because like, I have a compulsion to make things. And what greater material or medium than makeup? I mean we had and I had so much of it, so much access to it. It was like it's like going to the art store.

Like going into her bathroom and going through her drawers was just like going to the art store. And you used to make your own makeup when you were a little kid, is that correct? Yes, I mean my own makeup. I started making my own makeup when I was probably

like ten. I would at that time. You know, you buy those little Monday Tuesday Wednesday like pill cases and the jar of vaseline and the eyeshadow and then crush it all up and mix it all together, and like I would make I actually made some early stuff that I'm coming back around to, like the idea of like glitter gel highlighter. That's a big one. Yeah, So I

would make. I would mix makeup. I would mix skincare too, and um and nail polish because I was like very I love the lackery like an Emily texture of nail polish. I think it's such a gorgeous material. And mixing the colors was like a fun early thing for me. So you were very creative as a kid and did all these really cool things. You grew up, you know, with your mom's makeup, but you were a smarty pants and you ended up studying by biology science at u C.

I yeah, I did my Um. I mean, here's the thing. My parents are immigrants. They moved here, and they moved to America from Iran in the seventies when they were in college. They were supposed to come here to do an exchange program. And at the time, like the relationship between Iran and the United States was good, and so things were okay, and they came here, they didn't speak English. Um.

They moved to Texas and they went to college. And while they were here, a war started back in their home country, and they basically became stateless, Like they couldn't go back to their war torn country. They didn't really belong here at all. Um, you know, they started to face the realities of what it means to be another here in the US. They were, you know, and then they and then they tried to make the best of it, which is two make a better life for their kids.

And they're both they both have like such a deep artistic nature. I watched my mom grow up. She has such an amazing sense of color. I like everything I learned about mixing colors came from her, Like the emotional response that you get I'm putting pink connects to orange, Like that's something she taught me when I was a kid. And so these are the things that moved her. And yet she was filled with such a fear of ever pursuing anything creative in her entire life because she was foreign.

And that takes guts, and it takes showing your heart, and it takes so much confidence and courage, which she did not have. So I watched this as I grew up with my parents not speaking English, and that like affects the dynamic of the parent child relationship because in a lot of ways, like they can't guide you, you have to guide them. And then, yes, my nature was artistic from day one, like these are the things that

I was obsessed with and wanted to spend my life doing. Um, But I also had to carry some of that fear too. They were afraid for me, which actually like just made me afraid too. And so the last thing your parents want you to do when they feel that way is to do anything risky, like become an artist. That's insane.

So oh um. I pursued science, which I actually find to be a very creative discipline anyway, because you are in uncharted territory most of the time, you're trying to discover And so that part of it I really did love, and I still love, and I never thought it would become useful to me, but turns out it has. Well. If someone would have told me that in high school, maybe I would have gotten better than d's in science because there was nothing creative about my science teacher. So

besides this, besides this brainiac creative girl. You happen to be beautiful. You acted. I acted for thirty seconds and I did not like it. Okay, but more than thirty seconds. You you were in House and you were also Season one of Master Chefs. So you cook. I love cooking. Yeah, I love cooking. And it's that whole like compulsively making things with your hands. There's a theme here. Yeah, no, no, no, it's it's quite something else. And then you also started

a makeup company. You started with eight lipsticks. I started with four. Four, all right, I started with ten. You started with four? And how did you like? So? How did that happen? I had? I still think about this a lot, actually, because my love is with color. My love is with color and form, and I have what feels like a lot of concentrated creative energy that needs to come out somehow, and that can come out through

a lot of different things. And there was a period of time where I wanted to really, like more formally learn the principles of art. And so I started working with an art teacher. And this was right before I started COSIS, and um, she was teaching me color theory, like we were really understanding and we were working on portraiture because like I think, I'm just so fascinated by and like I get a lot of pleasure from the female form and humans in art, Like that's my that's

something I love. I'm less drawn to landscapes, more drawn to human So you could paint, you paint people and face. I paint. I do not paint well, like let's not let's not get ahead of ourselves. I love it, but I'm not good at it. And like it's like the same thing with the piano for me, Like I love it, but I'm like not good, you know, and that's okay. Um, So I learned. But I did start to learn painting

and I learned color. And it was in that process of like when I was learning how to mix earth tones and skin tones, which I had like absolutely no idea what the anatomy of these were. It was it's so fun. But when I was doing it, like I was ending up these piles of skin toned paint and they were so gorgeous and so alive, and I was like, that's makeup that I want to wear, Like those are the colors that I want to wear that I feel like you're going to bring to life my whole face,

and that's what I've been looking for. And yet, like every time I try to find a color like that, why is it that when I put it on, I end up looking worse? And I know that this is a podcasting so other people can't say me, but you can. I'm so green. My skin tone is really really olive um. And so it's like a it's a hard to mix with situation, and there aren't a lot of products out there that like kind of cater to this tone family.

And so those piles of paint to me like I felt seen by them because I was like, if I put those on, I am going to look good. That's gonna be great. And then those drove what those first four lipstick colors were. Okay, everyone wants a makeup line now, but the question is where does someone begin that doesn't know anything? You know, how did you find a chemist? How did you find the packaging? Great question. I was in the makeup chair on I think it was House.

It was my thirty seconds of acting. See I knew it's always like it's like some dog millionaires of life. Everything has a reason. So it was in that thirty seconds of acting. I was in the makeup chair. I was talking to the makeup artist and I told her about like I want to have a makeup and at that time, by the way, there weren't as many people saying they wanted to have a beauty brand. Beauty was a place that fashion people were escaping too, because it

was like a way more laid back business. Like they were like fashions too intense, it's to aggro, Like, let's go to UM beauty. And so I thought it was like relatively chill and laid back as an industry then UM. And I asked her and I told her about it, and she said, oh, I have a few friends who have made some products. And you know, here's the name of somebody. I had tried the Google thing. I reached

out to any chemists, not one of them wrote me back. UM, and then she gave me this name and this one person wrote me back and that started everything. Wow, So how did you sell the first four lipsticks? So I made a website and I actually don't think like shopify was even around around them. There was something different. I had to actually like make a custom website and it had four products on it, you know, it was these four lipsticks. It was a single page yourself or did

you have to ask someone to do I had. I had to ask somebody, So I had want this, you know. I went to this guy's garage and he made me a website with one page, and I designed it by drawing it on a piece of paper. People are so sophisticated, now, aren't they. They're like have all these branding decks and like the whole thing. And I was just like, here's my website. I put some squares on there. I was like, put the face here, the button here, and that was

kind of it. And it was a single page. And then like one day I turned it on and that day was the day I received the lipsticks. Like it wasn't this like grand master plan. It was just like I was so scared to even own this many lipsticks. Remember how many was your first order? The minimum the minimum order quantity which was so cute, which was a thousand pieces per shade. So I had four thousand lipsticks in my house and I was like, what does four

thousand sticks seriously even look like? Like I was like, can you give me, like, is it like going to fill up one room? What's it gonna look like? Any it wasn't It was actually not that big. I was surprised. Um. I put them in the den in my house, in these little piles, and then that was it. I turned on the website and I posted about it on Instagram to my five hundred friends and family that followed me,

and people like people started placing little orders. It was so like, I remember how long it took for me to make the first and dollars. You know, I love hearing this story because so many people You're right, they make the decks, they get the investments, they do all of this and I and I have people calling me all the time. How do I get these two influencer?

How do I get pressed? And I'm like, you need the product you need, Like, if you don't have a product that you think is better than what's out there, you don't have a company. You can't do it the other way around. So honestly, anyone that's listening, I don't care if you want to make bras or granola. This is how you start a business, and this is how

you become an entrepreneur. And by the way, I don't know how long from the time that you did those four lipsticks too, when people started hearing about you, but in and I know that you were the number one indie brand of the year in two thousand and nineteen. Like, that's huge. That was four years later. That was four years later. Yeah, it took time. There's so many coast of questions because it's become such a giant brand. How many employees do you have right now? We have forty?

Kink you for thinking we're a giant brand. We're a teeny tiny brand. But I'm glad that it looks that way. But yeah, we have a team of forty. In the indie world, you're a giant brand. Okay, I'll take that in my small pond. I'm a big fish. Yes. And what what keeps you up at night? Oh my god, Bobby, when is the last time I slept? Everything? Every little thing I would I would say, I mean, I think

what's very There are a few things. One is I'm a person, Like I'm a human being with a heart and a soul and bones, and I'm just eight, Like I'm just as vulnerable as anybody else because we all are. And so I think the like giving up of my personhood in some way, or or like not having the

sensitivity towards like who I am as a person. I know that's a super abstract and vague, beyond vague thing to say, but I think that sometimes does because like it ultimately comes down to this like feeling of being misunderstood sometimes or or like misrepresented, and that's that can hurt because, Um, I think that we have a drive to be seen by those we love as what we

believe we are. And when you end up doing something a little bit more public than you know, you're being seen by a lot of people who don't love you as well. So like there's a huge amount of misrepresentation that can happen, and that sometimes keeps me up at night. I mean, don't you think that social has been a big like reason how your business grew so fast? Absolutely, it's been a big reason. I think that's because of

the time that the business started in. Like if if we were in a different time and social didn't exist, then it would have grown fast in another way, because like I do believe like I'm here to do this regardless, and I'm getting into the time frame that I've been planted here in. So yes, it is because of social right now, um, to some extent um, But I think it's like it's just like one layer deeper. It's like

because of the love of love, love of doing it. So, I mean, your business has grown so much, what are you hoping? What are you hoping for the business? And then I want to just dive into some of your special amazing formulas and products, So what are you what

are you hoping for the business? I right now, I think that our business has grown definitely, but it's really just like at the very beginning stage, so early, and I haven't even like scratched the surface on like some of the things that I want to do, which all really have to do with storytelling and product and because

those are the two places where my heart is. Um, there's you know, I want to be able to I can't wait to be able to like actually like touch people again and be able to have that conver station with other women about how they feel about their appearance, um, and like what coases can do and what kind of support we can bring into like from a product perspective, and have that like really like what I'm always looking for, which is that feeling of like finally, you know, like

finally I've been looking for lip color that looks like this finally, like I you know, I've been wanting to be able to like get this like polished skin look, and I never have been able to. And you know, like thanks for making this and finally, like I feel like I love doing this ritual every day and like you know, really enjoy it and it doesn't feel like a routine or a chore. Well, your tinted oil has

been a runaway success, you know. I think that was a very unique um formula that I think really you know, hit like hit a nerve. So when did you how did you think of that? Because there's not a lot of tinted oils on the market, No there aren't. I mean for me, it was like I liked to use oil and I like the look of of a of like a foundation, Like I like the look of a little bit of complexion product. I think it makes me

feel like I look dressed. Um, I don't like a lot And it's like very specific what I'm looking for, Like I want a little bit of my skin to show through, but only the parts of my skin that I love, and then I want the rest of it to all look really even and I want to address my redness. I don't want to. I don't want something that's going to settle into my pores. And most importantly, I wanted to look better and better throughout the day, which i've you know, have had a hard time experiencing

as a person who wears foundation. And I want to be able to wear it every day. Frankly too, I don't want to save it for special occasions, which is how I was feeling. I want to be able to get up and put on my favorite face every day quickly. But I wanted to look awesome. And that's really how that product came to be. It was like how do I fulfill all those needs? Um which is usually where I start. I'm like, I'm looking for something that makes me feel like this, so like what would be the

ingredient profile of that? And that the ingredient profile turned out to be something that I like, tremendously love, which are oils. And then I ended up putting pigment inside the oils, and then I was like what is this? Like this is like pigment in the oil, it's face oil, and it's tinted, so it's tinted face oil. And that's like how it was named. And you have a new serum deodorant. Yes, I never I never ever thought of putting those two words together. So could you tell us

what it is and how you thought that? Totally so similarly to the foundation thing, Like, I had this issue which was that I have very strong BO and smells terrible and ripe and insane, and um, I wanted to like not have BO. I mean, it was really like, it's really actually that simple. I want to not have BO. I had started to hear about like I've been I've been looking for things all over the place, Like I had tried baking soda on my armfits burned my armpits

and turned them black. I had tried. I was like, okay, maybe if you do like a few drops of lemon juice and like some tea tree oil, like that will be the thing that you know is like so anti microbial that you won't have BeO. None of those things worked. I've tried several different kinds of things, fennel oil. Um. I then like caught wind of people putting h a toners on their armpits and this was like changing the

game for their BO. So I started doing it too, and I was like, wait, what there was this first day that I did it, and I was like, I don't I smelled my own armpit. I'm gonna do it right now. I do it all the time. Now. I'm now now that I use my own theater, and I'm obsessed with among my armpit because I know what my actual real armpits smells like. I know what my own essence smells like, and I like it. I think it's pleasant when it doesn't have any b O. And that's

what I started to experience. So I was like, I have to figure out how to really, like, you know, make this safe and great for armpits. And um, that's how that was formulated, and it was a Serumi texture and therefore it's a Serum deodorant. I do want to ask you the same question I asked to everyone I have on this podcast, What does beauty mean to you? Beauty? Beauty to me is like an entire, whole life lived experience.

It's like a collection of things that make you love looking in the mirror but also make you feel really good and make you feel, to me like the favorite version of yourself. Like if I were to close my eyes and picture myself in my own perfection, which is such a thing that comes like we are born. We are all born that way. It's such a thing that comes from all your thoughts and feelings and who you are on the inside. And I focus deeply on the

things that I love about myself. What are the ways and things in my life that really support me showing up as my favorite version of myself? And that's how I see beauty. And what's your health routine? Like, my health routine is very human, um, and it's like totally based on doing things that make me feel like my favorite version of myself. So um. I like in terms

of eating, I would call myself balanced. Like I love food, and dinner is my favorite meal of the day by far, and I love like a full dinner and like the full ritual of it and everything. I think that's such a like heartwarming time of day for me. Um. And then the rest of the time, I eat almost the same thing all the time. And I also like, so I like eats a lot of healthy things. And then I eat like cookies and candy and I drink wine because I like them. They make me feel good. I

love that. I love that. I would I would call it intuitive eating, totally intuitive eating. I very much like listen to what I want and then I of it, and then I feel awesome about it, Like that's the one thing that I like to throw away, which is like any feeling of guilt. And what do you do for fun? I think the thing that I do the most for fun those I spending time with my friends. It's like spending time with friends just talking, like there's

nothing more fun to me than that. And last question, is there one product you cannot live without anything in the world. Oh my god, there's like twenty I could not live without coffee. I'm with you on that. Yeah,

I'm with you on that. But I am really really happy to have met you and to listen to your journey, and I'm I'm excited to be back in the clean game and be you know, someone who you know could also be here for support if you ever need anything, I'm available because you know we're we're in this together. So I'm I'm happy to meet you, and I'm really proud of you and I can't wait to see what you Thank you so much, Bobby, thank you for having me.

It's really great to meet you. My pleasure. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.