Root Has Gone From Kitchen Project To Million-Dollar Mineral Makeup Brand And Retailer

Wherever there’s a kitchen table in America, there’s a possible beauty brand in the works. In 2013, crafty Iowa mom, wife and entrepreneur Krista Dolash was mixing ingredients on hers to formulate foundations and lip products. Pregnancy had motivated Dolash to search for clean beauty products, but none satisfied her stringent standards. She decided to create her own to ensure they’d be up to snuff. Within months of finalizing her first batch, family and friends were snapping up her handmade products and, before she knew it, Dolash was spearheading the makeup company Root. Today, Root has surpassed $1 million in annual sales, runs two brick-and-mortar stores and boasts a growing online business shipping merchandise around the world. Beauty Independent talked to Dolash about how she turned her hobby into a million-dollar enterprise.

How did the concept for Root come about?

When I was pregnant with my son, I really became obsessive about looking at ingredients in the food I ate, cleaning supplies, candles, soaps, literally everything. My makeup was honestly one of the last things I looked at because, when I was buying makeup, it was marketed to me as natural. This particular brand of makeup I had been using was supposed to be one of the biggest natural mineral makeup companies in the world. It was eye-opening to me that there were no regulations, that people can say anything they want in marketing and not get in trouble. There are so many levels of what people think natural is like if it contains some natural ingredients. It really opened my eyes to more of those toxic chemicals in products. So, I really made the commitment and switched to more natural and organic products.

Did you formulate products before jumping into creating your own?

It’s really been a learning process. Learning ingredients [is a] really fun passion of mine. I’ve always enjoyed making things. My husband calls me a serial hobbyist because I was always making candles, trying new recipes, blogging, doing any sort of creative thing possible. Trying new things all the time. So, thinking I was going to make my own makeup probably sounds weird to people, but it’s just totally something I would do. I had just researched what my makeup had in it and, then, researched what I definitely didn’t want. I took out all the bad ingredients, and what it left me with was four ingredients and pure minerals. I thought, “Let’s just give it a shot.” The product was so good. I was so amazed. It makes sense, if you take a bunch of crap out of products, it’s going to make a better product.

What is your background, and how did it influence Root?

I was doing design and marketing freelance. I figured it would cost me nothing to make a logo and a website, and get my social media going and see if people would even want to buy the makeup I was creating. The first thing I did was make a post on social media saying, “Hey, if you like this brand of makeup, try this, and I will literally send samples out for free.” I just asked that they give me a before and after picture. I had tons of requests for that, a lot of friends did that for me. Then, I had requests coming in for buying it. I wasn’t really prepared, but seeing that other people actually really liked it is what really sparked the company. I was like I have to get launched and get going – and just do it.

How did you get funding to start Root?

It started extremely small. I remember $160 was my first order for raw minerals and jars, which was enough to make a little bit for people and, then, it kept naturally growing. When I had the idea to start Root and make it a company, I was so adamant that I didn’t want to take any loans out. I wanted to do it all myself. So, I launched another little company making girls’ headbands out of old clothes that were eco-friendly and recyclable just to get enough money to start Root. I looked for something that people were really interested in and that I could do. I’m just a creative nerd. I can make headbands and sell them. It was a lot easier than trying to launch a big makeup company. So, that’s where I really generated money first.

Was it easy to make your own makeup?

Over time, it’s gotten a lot easier because I know how different ingredients work. Once we nail down formulas, that really helps making new colors is easy, but formulating products can take me anywhere from six months to years. I’ve been working on some products now that I hope to launch soon that I’ve literally been working on for a couple of years. My foundation was easier because I got lucky. It was only four ingredients, and I wanted it to be that way. It was super pure, so it’s not quite as complex as some of the other products.

What were the first products you made?

We started with our foundation. Then, we did bronzers and a setting powder. I did loose eyeshadows and loose blushes. Those were our core main products. People kept asking for more, so we have more products now.

Does Root have a variety of shades for different skin tones?

We actually have more than 45 different shades, and we made it a priority to make sure we did offer all shade ranges. About a year ago, we released 10 more shades and grew our shade range. It’s very important to me that everyone can wear my products no matter what shade of skin they have. We haven’t not had a match for someone.

How are your products made now?

We have a lab in our Waverly headquarters, so about 95% of our products are made in-house. For some more popular or trickier products to make, we do use some other labs to help us fulfill those, lipsticks and pressed products like eyeshadows and blushes.

Do the labs fit your organic and natural standards?

Absolutely, they’re still our formulas that we have worked to develop, and we make sure that they do hit all of our points as far as natural and organic without a list of ingredients that won’t come into our products or our building.

Can you tell us about the revenues Root is generating?

This past year, we did $1.3 million. It’s pretty wild. We primarily do business online, but we also have two retail stores that are strictly Root locations. Again, online is mostly where we do our business, and this has been without really any marketing. Social media is what we use and word of mouth. When [we] have a great product, our repeat customer percentage is through the roof, so that’s where we can maintain our business.

What are some bestsellers for Root?

In makeup, it’s definitely our foundation. For skincare, the top seller is the fresh-faced cleanser and the pomegranate collection, which is the anti-aging collection. Our hairspray is so popular. And, for home, Pretty Everything is really the universal soap. You can use it for cleaning your brushes, doing laundry, your dishwasher, cleaning your whole house pretty much. We made our own soap to clean our labs and stores. Now, we sell it.

How do Root’s product prices compare to the prices of other mineral or organic products on the market?

Generally, other brands are more expensive than ours. Even some that are pretty similar ingredient-wise are almost usually double the price as ours. For example, our lipsticks are $16 and, typically, our competition’s price point is $28 to $40. Customers always comment when they come in that when they go to a department store, those brands are twice as much. That was one of my missions. I wanted people to be able to afford healthy products, so they didn’t have to resort to products that are full of chemicals. So, while we aren’t as dirt cheap as something you can get at Walmart or other places like that, for the quality of our product, you can’t find anything comparable in price point.

How do you keep product pricing down and make a profit?

The big thing is we do not distribute our products, so we don’t seek mass distribution or a whole lot of wholesalers because we can’t give the products at that 50% off price point. We do have some wholesalers, but it’s just not as high of a profit margin for them. Most of our competition, they really rely on mass distribution and wholesale for an income stream, whereas we just distribute ourselves.

Where are most of Root’s customers?

We ship worldwide every day. That’s really fun. The Midwest is a big place for us. [We have] tons of customers locally in Iowa, and large markets like New York and Los Angeles. It’s so diverse all across the United States. Canada is very close, and they have been our most popular international place we ship to as well as Australia. We do a lot in Japan and China. We get requests every day to add new countries, so that’s fun to see and encouraging.

How many employees do you have?

We do all of our own distribution in our stores and even in our lab, which is in the back of the building. We do all of our shipping and finish the labels on products. We have five full-time employees and five to 10 part-time employees.

How do you help customers understand Root products?

We try to do a lot of Instagram Stories and Snapchat. We are trying to do those videos to help people understand the products. We will also post videos to Facebook, and I want to do more Facebook Live videos for education, that seems to be popular right now.

Does Root put on in-store education events?

We do more one-on-one consultations with customers in the stores. We spend about an hour with each customer really focusing on teaching them how to use our products and making sure they understand all the different ways to use the products.

Do you have affiliates?

We have a handful of people that we work with on occasion. Anyone can sign up and be an affiliate. We don’t limit that really. It’s always fun to work with influencers. They have such a strong role in the beauty industry, especially with how awesome social media is. I definitely value affiliates as part of our team.

Has Root gotten involved with beauty box companies?

We have in the past been approached quite a bit, but it comes down to us not being able to fulfill it because we are making the products by hand. We still need to maintain our business, being a small team. It’s something I imagine we will eventually do. We have to often weigh if it’s going to be hugely successful or is it more of a risk. I love beauty boxes. We actually do a monthly subscription called the Pretty Club, where our customers get three brand new colors each month from us. So, we kind of do our own little version of it because we do get asked so often to be in subscription boxes. Every month the subscribers get a Pretty balm, an eyeshadow, and a cheek product: a bronze, a blush or an illuminator. There always brand new to Root. We didn’t want to duplicate something our customers already had.

How many people are signed up?

Right now, about 120.

Do you keep track of what’s inside each person’s box or is it the same box for everyone?

It’s the same every month. About two months later, we will release those products to the public, so it’s really exclusive. You can only get those colors early if you’re in the Pretty Club. They’re full-size products. I want to say it’s $10 off compared to full retail value. The box plus shipping is $29.

Which social media platform drives the most traffic to Root?

It’s a toss-up between Instagram and Facebook. They both have such different audiences, which you wouldn’t really think, but they do have quite a different reach.

What advice do you have for people on starting a business?

One piece of advice I tell people all the time is that it doesn’t need to be a huge success right away. I think that’s where a lot of people fail. Growing slowly isn’t always a bad thing. That’s what we’ve really done. I had zero plans to ever open a makeup company, I never in my wildest dreams imagined it. It’s something so simple as my makeup being something I wanted to change and looking around not finding something. So, I tried to make it myself, and now it’s developed into my business. It might not be what a person expects or what their dream is, it could be as simple as something they use every day and being able to start small and grow. Fine-tuning the philosophy and products is so important. Trying to compete with so many professional companies, maintaining that professional appearance even if you’re making products out of your kitchen, that’s important.

What are your plans for Root in the next year?

Definitely to continue to make new products. Since we are a smaller company, we can turn new products or new colors around in a couple weeks, whereas it takes bigger companies two years to plan releases of new products. Our customers will always see new products from us all the time. We also want to do more online education pieces for customers and fine-tuning everything a bit more. We want to make sure that our customers know that they’re the most important thing to our business. We wouldn’t be there without them. We’re always listening to them and doing what we can do really cater to our customers.