210. Building Seven Figures Without Running a Single Ad ft. Kate Assaraf

About this episode

Kate Assaraf discusses her journey in building a seven-figure sustainable haircare brand without paid advertising.

Kate Assaraf is the CEO and founder of dip sustainable, a plastic-free haircare brand she launched in 2021 that hit seven figures within 18 months without running a single paid ad. Before starting dip, she spent 20 years inside the beauty industry, long enough to see the deceptive marketing practices that eventually pushed her to build something completely different. Most DTC beauty brands launch with paid social, influencer seeding, and a race to acquire customers fast. Kate did the opposite. She cold-called refill stores, traveled across the country to meet sustainable retailers face to face, and built distribution through brick-and-mortar before she ever thought about digital advertising. Today, dip is carried in all 50 states and has sold over 300,000 bars by word of mouth alone. The conversation covers why Kate chose physical retail over digital-first, how she thinks about authentic customer marketing in a category overrun by sponsored content and AI-generated testimonials, and why she built her own factory after her contract manufacturer went bankrupt. That last decision, vertically integrating manufacturing and fulfillment under one roof, turned out to be the most…

People in this episode

Host: Eitan Koter

Guest: Kate Assaraf

Topics covered

• sustainable business
• direct-to-consumer
• marketing strategies
• retail distribution
• entrepreneurship

Keywords

• sustainable haircare
• DTC brands
• customer marketing
• physical retail
• vertical integration

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: dip sustainable, beauty industry

Places: United States

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