How Karen Young Built OUI the People
About this episode
Karen Young shares her journey from fashion to founding her beauty brand OUI the People, discussing the challenges and lessons learned along the way.
In this episode, I sat down with Karen Young, founder of OUI the People, a fine fragrance and body care brand born out of her own struggle with razor burn and ingrown hairs. Karen walks us through her path from fashion, where she interned at Dolce and Gabbana, to becoming an executive at Estee Lauder, to eventually building a beauty brand now sold in Sephora. But Karen's story starts before OUI the People, with a lifestyle and home goods brand called Hammocks and High T that she built and ultimately had to close. We talk about the hard lessons on margins and capital that came out of that experience, the unexpected subway encounter that led to her job at Estee Lauder, and how she used her years inside a major beauty conglomerate to build her own brand from the ground up. Karen also gets honest about the financial rollercoaster of raising venture capital, scaling a team, and chasing growth without profitability for years, and what finally shifted this year. We close things out with her thoughts on consumer psychology, pricing a premium product, and her advice for women weighing whether to leave a steady paycheck for their side hustle. Main Takeaways Why closing a business is not…
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