Skyn Iceland founder Sarah Kugelman on surviving a break-up with Sephora and coming back stronger

Sarah Kugelman compares having her products dropped from Sephora stores to “being on a date with someone you really like and them not wanting to go out with you again.”

Sales at Sephora’s 200 stores represented 80% of Skyn Iceland’s business, until the beauty retailer cut the cord in 2010, a consequence Kugelman chalks up to the recession.

“There were a lot of big brands that initially didn’t want to be at Sephora that now needed the distribution, and so we couldn’t compete with them on a dollars per square foot basis,” Kugelman said on this week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. ”

Today, Skyn Iceland has moved on. The company brought in $20 million in 2019, a 50% increase over its 2018 sales. Partnering with Ulta Beauty was a big part of the company’s rebirth.

“I heard ‘No’ so many times from Ulta, but I just kept trying and trying, and one day they said, ‘Yes, come in for a meeting.'”

This was back when Ulta wasn’t exactly seen as a prestige player, but Kugelman thought she was on to the next big bet.

“I looked around and said ‘What’s going to be the next frontier?’ ‘What’s going to be the next distribution channel that’s going to create that inflection point for brands?’ And I thought that was Ulta,” Kugelman said.”Luckily, I was right.”

On this week of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, Kugelman talked about the difficult years between Skyn Iceland’s partnership with Sephora versus Ulta, the value of taking one’s business to an international level and why not everyone can become the next Drunk Elephant.