About this episode

Alberto Zandi interviews Maria Hatzistefanis about her journey in building the Rodial brand from scratch.

This week Alberto sat down with Maria Hatzistefanis, founder and CEO of the Rodial Group, bestselling author, and a Dragon on Dragons Den Greece. Maria grew up on a small island in Greece, dreaming of a bigger world. She moved into magazines, studied business at Columbia, entered investment banking, then got fired at 25, a moment that forced her to choose what she actually wanted. With 20,000 in savings and no beauty industry experience, she started Rodial from home, faced investor rejection, and built the brand through focus, persistence, and product storytelling. She took a suitcase to Cosmoprof, met suppliers stand by stand, found the lab she still works with today, and launched with a tight initial range, because focus beats noise in the early days. You will learn How Maria built Rodial from home, with limited capital, no funding, and no industry background Why launching with focus beats launching too many products, and how to pick a niche that travels How to win attention without huge budgets, naming, storytelling, press strategy, and consistent brand positioning How to think about influencers realistically, what works now, what changed after Covid, and why long term…

People in this episode

Host: Alberto Zandi

Guest: Maria Hatzistefanis

Topics covered

• entrepreneurship
• beauty industry
• business strategy
• product development
• storytelling
• influencer marketing

Keywords

• Rodial
• Maria Hatzistefanis
• entrepreneurship
• business strategy
• product storytelling
• influencer marketing
• Cosmoprof

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Rodial Group, Dragons Den Greece, Columbia

Places: Greece, Cosmoprof

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