Kulfi Beauty Enters Sephora With A New Line Of Concealers

About 18 months into developing its new concealer collection, Kulfi Beauty was ghosted by its manufacturer. “Their bigger brands had picked up demand again, and they did not want to continue custom development with us,” says founder Priyanka Ganjoo. “There was a plan, but the plan was thrown off.”

Delayed by a year, the collection called Main Match is finally coming to market with 12 concealer shades priced at $26 each available on Sephora’s and Kulfi’s websites. At Sephora, Kulfi is scheduled to roll out to stores next year after its online premiere in the United States and Canada. The brand is named for a South Asian frozen dairy dessert, and the Match Made shades are named for different flavors of it.

Kulfi participated in Sephora’s 2021 Accelerate program along with Topicals, Hyper Skin, Eadem, Ries, 54 Thrones, Glory and Imania Beauty. The program helped Ganjoo establish relationships with the beauty specialty retailer’s merchandising, marketing and business development teams.

“They’ve been really understanding to make sure that we feel really ready and confident with the launch plan and even how we launch,” says Ganjoo. “Being an Accelerate brand gives you a little bit more handholding versus I would imagine an indie brand not going through the program would have. Without the program, I don’t know if we would have the same access to that strategic partnership and guidance.”

In addition to the Main Match concealers, the brand’s $20 Kajal eyeliners will be sold on Sephora’s site. To nail Main Match’s shades, Ganjoo organized focus groups in New York containing about 50 people. They were recruited from Kulfi’s email list and Instagram audience. “Every quarter we go back to our community because we’re developing our roadmap now going into 2023 and 2024,” says Ganjoo.

With Main Match, Ganjoo sought to address three main concerns affecting South Asian beauty consumers. The first concern is that complexion products tend to look ashy or orange on them. Ganjoo explains, “When shades can go deep, they can suddenly become very orange and so we had to find that balance where you want that warmth, but you want it to be more olive-toned for the people that we were creating the shades for.”

The second concern involves dark circles and hyperpigmentation, and the third is finding a product delivering sufficient coverage. “They wanted that kind of no makeup makeup aesthetic at times, but they found that the products on the market did not provide enough coverage for their skin,” says Ganjoo. “When they went for higher coverage, it didn’t have that light skin finish. We created a formula that was lightweight, but it was very buildable.”

“We created a formula that was lightweight, but it was very buildable.”

Complexion products are generally a big, expensive undertaking for a small beauty brand. “Doing 12 shades, it’s a huge inventory investment, even at the minimum order quantities,” says Ganjoo. She’s open to expanding the Main Match range in the future. Kulfi’s Sephora relationship will guide the direction of the expansion. “[The relationship] is going to open us up to an even broader community, and we’ll have a lot more new consumers discovering us,” says Ganjoo. “So, I want to go back and then see, OK, with this broader customer base, what are the gaps that we’re finding, and how do we add to the shade range?”

Ganjoo has raised an undisclosed amount of funding from friends, family and angel investors to sustain Kulfi’s business. She’s considering pursuing a seed round soon. Ganjoo says, “As we see the momentum and the growth we get from this new channel and this new product launch, I think that’ll make a really compelling story for the investors.”

Since Kulfi’s debut a year ago, she’s been dutiful about running a lean business and hasn’t executed large-scale paid marketing. Half of the brand’s customers discover it on Instagram and TikTok, and the other half arrive at it as a result of press mentions and Google searches, according to Ganjoo. “A lot of people search best eyeliner and land on our site,” she says. Kulfi draws customers via influencers it gifts products to and old-school word of mouth as well.

Ganjoo admits financing Kulfi’s Sephora partnership hasn’t been a breeze. “We’re maximizing our cash and also maximizing my personal credit and also being a little bit more creative with our vendors and asking can you extend better terms for me?” she says. “It’s an awkward moment for a small brand where you don’t have that history of purchase orders from a retailer when you have that first entry, so you can’t really access any of those traditional financing and supply chain resources. So, it’s definitely been stretching our existing financial resources to the max.”

She expects the risk to pay off, though. Kulfi forecasts that its sales multiply fourfold this year due to its Sephora deal and new releases. “I’m really glad that I’ve stayed true to my mission and really continue to focus on creating products that our community will enjoy,” says Ganjoo. “Also, for a brand like ours, I wanted to stand for more than just product. It needs to be about this community that we’re continuing to celebrate. I want to be able to invest in that and really continue to build that.”