Finding Ferdinand Allows Consumers To Create Color Cosmetics Just For Them

Finding Ferdinand recognizes that no beauty consumer is the same, and treats each one as an individual.

Founded by Nhu Le, the brand encourages women to tailor lipsticks, blushes and palettes to their preferences. “I don’t just see Finding Ferdinand as a company that sells makeup,” says the CEO. “What’s more important to me is that we are providing you with the products that make you feel like your best self.” Beauty Independent talked to Le about taking the leap from technology to beauty, the challenges of being a female executive in the beauty industry and why she wants customers to break color rules. 

How has your background in tech and data analytics helped Finding Ferdinand grow?

Working with these data engineers and scientists is how I first became exposed to entrepreneurship. I’ve always wanted Finding Ferdinand to grow digitally and having the background in tech has really helped. That’s how I was able to build the website, analyze color data and create the app. I have definitely needed to teach myself things, and I’m still learning a lot of different aspects now. I first saw the possibility of this type of growth with the data scientists at my tech startup. I was a program manager working with companies like Sephora, Urban Decay and Walmart. From my end, I could see that sales were doubling and tripling from the e-commerce sites. With this in mind, I knew I would be able to grow Finding Ferdinand digitally.  

How much money did it take to launch your brand?

It was an evolving process. I hired a designer who really understood my aesthetic to create the logo for a few hundred dollars. I built the website myself and went to a lot of trade shows, where I found two women to back me, and they took my measly couple hundred dollars for an order of raw materials and packaging. It only took around $1,000 to launch the brand because I found people who were willing to work with me on a smaller scale.

Finding Ferdinand

Do you think the orders came as result of press or word-of-mouth?

In the beginning, I did a lot of pop-up shops and went to different markets around the country with Finding Ferdinand products. My booth was always really popular. At a market that I went to in Chicago, the demand was so crazy that I didn’t sit down or eat anything the entire day that the shop was open. We were lucky that one of the customers who came in that day was a Steve Harvey Show producer. She’s still a customer today and orders the same color. She had me on the show and that sparked a lot of growth. Soon after, Today reached out to have us on for National Lipstick Day. From there, it’s been a combination of word of mouth and consistent media coverage.

The beauty industry is really competitive. You start out with a million different competitors, and new competitors are launching every day. People can buy lipstick anywhere. The most important thing about Finding Ferdinand, for me, is that we are delivering a service to our customers. This brand is for them. Finding Ferdinand has never told anyone how to be beautiful or what color to wear to look pretty. I think at the end of the day it is not about the color rules. You can break all the color rules and as long as you like a color, you should wear it. There are no rules around it, and that is what beauty should be. That is what I want Finding Ferdinand to be. We’re just here to help you get the products, colors and technology that you need to feel good. Our products are just things to help get you there, and we want to offer you the best and easiest way to do it. I don’t just see Finding Ferdinand as a company that sells makeup. What’s more important to me is that we are providing you with the products that make you feel like your best self.

The beauty industry is really competitive. You start out with a million different competitors, and new competitors are launching every day. People can buy lipstick anywhere. The most important thing about Finding Ferdinand, for me, is that we are delivering a service to our customers. This brand is for them.

How do you approach formulating your products?

We want our products to be high performing without compromising your health. You would be surprised about how many toxins and carcinogens are in popular mainstream products. I work with the lab and approve each ingredient that goes into Finding Ferdinand’s products. Using clean ingredients impacts our pricing, but these are products that I and many other people use every day. I cannot imagine knowingly creating and using products that are harmful to you. We often check out ingredients in other companies’ products and are in shock. Once you know about clean beauty, you really can’t go back.

Where are Finding Ferdinand products sold and what is your retail distribution strategy?

We do most of our business online and are primarily sold through our website or our app. In terms of distribution strategy, we want to stay an e-commerce site, but we’re also slowly introducing products to smaller boutiques. We have specific color data for different zip codes. We collect this and know what colors are trending and where.

I am still learning the best way to do wholesale distribution. We take a different approach than many other brands and make sure that the colors we send out to stores are successful by using color data because we want to offer colors that are moving off the shelves. Our distribution strategy is to stay true to who we are and not do just one massive color. Traditional retailers produce one color a million times and send it out to 500 stores. We produce a million colors in a million different ways and only send them out when we’ve found stores that are the right fit. I see this as a reflection and expression of each community that we enter, and believe that we can tell each community’s story through customized color.

Nhu Le Finding Ferdinand
Nhu Le

Can customers customize products in store?

Currently, we offer the popular colors trending around the store’s geographic area. As we continue to collect this new color information, we make color suggestions to stores. We are working on creating an in-store color mixing experience.

What type of response have you seen to the beauty customization trend?

We’ve had pretty good feedback on it. We work so hard to make sure we understand what colors people want and to give them that exact color through the color mixing tool. Color is so personal and that’s been our main focus.

Who is the Finding Ferdinand customer?

Our core customer is female between the age of 18 and 35. It can be broken up depending on products. Usually mini lipstick purchases and app downloads are really popular with gen Z and we love getting fun products to these young women. Older women also love our products because they can customize colors for special occasions like for a bridal party. It’s also been helpful for people to create their favorite lipstick colors that have been discontinued by other brands.

What has been the biggest lesson that you’ve learned so far about what it takes to make it as a beauty entrepreneur?

The biggest thing is that you really have to believe in what you’re doing and have a greater purpose for achieving your goal. This is the only way that you can overcome many of the obstacles that you will face. Starting a business is not easy, but if you believe in what you do and in yourself, it will work out.

What obstacles have you faced as a female CEO?

The sad truth is that every female CEO — and even just being a woman in general — you have a lot more obstacles to overcome. In my own experience, it has been hard to be taken seriously because I’m a female and in the beauty industry. There are some stereotypes that go along with this. Some people don’t think it’s real work and that it’s just my hobby. I’ve gotten the, “Oh, that’s so cute,” and “Oh, you’re still doing that?” It’s condescending, and I have had to overcome these comments and even just brush them off and keep going. That’s what you have to do when people don’t take your work seriously.

I came from an industry where I worked with a lot of men, and now that I work on a team of all women, people have started to ask if my workplace is catty. Honestly, the Finding Ferdinand team has never been like that at all. It’s really important for us to respect each other and treat each other how we want to be treated. I just want the world to get over that stereotype, too, because working with women isn’t difficult. I’ve had pretty strong female mentors and leaders in the past and I’ve been lucky with experiencing this treatment in my other positions as well. This has been important to me and I hope that as Finding Ferdinand grows and brings in more people — men or women — that we continue to have a good company culture where people respect our mission and what we do, without treating us in a condescending way.

The reality of it is that you just have to work harder and not make excuses for anything. This is the way the world is right now and, in order to help change this, you have to get past it and prove people wrong.

How was the transition from tech employee to Finding Ferdinand founder?

It wasn’t easy, and it’s still not easy. I think sometimes it is hard for me to say that I’m the CEO of a company. It’s still an odd thing to me, even though I have all of the responsibility to approve everything and make all of the company’s financial decisions. It is a little uncomfortable, but, at the same time, I love teaching. Part of it is that I’m big on setting processes and taking one-on-one time with the people on my team to make sure that I understand what is happening with their work and projects. It’s also helpful for me to get a true sense of what is happening with everybody and to show that I care about them. I have my employees’ best interests at heart and we take care of each other.

I always explain why the company does or doesn’t do something. I find it hard when people tell you to do something and don’t say why it is important. I provide background and context around the situation. Part of what makes our employer-employee relationships work is that I give feedback and ask for feedback, and I take all of it seriously.

Finding Ferdinand

What are your goals for the future of Finding Ferdinand?

I strive for Finding Ferdinand to be the place for people to easily buy products that are exactly what they want. I am going to continue to use technology and products as mediums to provide people with a platform for beauty, provide incredible service to our customers and also expand into new categories, all while making it easy for consumers on multiple fronts. My goal is to continue to grow the company and build a place where people love to come to work every day. That’s extremely important to building a long term successful company. I also plan to continue to be inclusive with the diversity shown in the models on our website and to continue to modify and upgrade our company culture. I recognize that typical nine-to-five workplace hours cater more to a man’s life than a woman’s. I want to create a workplace where women can thrive and have their families as well.