We recently connected with Karen Hoekstra and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Karen, thanks for joining us today. Do you think folks should manage their own social media or hire a professional? What do you do?

I manage our social media accounts. Being the face of the business has let me stay authentic to our audience. I have worked with outside teams in the past, which have added value, but I always come back to managing it on my own. I like the personal touch it brings, interacting with our customer base. That being said, after almost eight years of focusing on social media to reach our community, I decided to leave social for 6 weeks earlier this year to focus solely on our newsletter. I was getting frustrated with the changes in social media algorithms and didn’t feel authentic using sales tactics and gimmicks to get engagement or to show up in our followers feeds. I also didn’t like the idea of our community having to mindlessly scroll to find our content. The switch to our newsletter has let me stay authentic, sending out one newsletter per week. It has been met with very positive feedback as the k’pure community can now consume our content at their leisure, when it suits them and their schedule. After the break, we do use social media again, but only 1-2 posts per week and Stories a few times a week. We use a great local company to curate the newsletter and to take my ideas and turn them into a beautiful, enjoyable newsletter.

Karen, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Before starting k’pure, I was a personal trainer and bootcamp instructor. I owned a small fitness studio and after a few years, I made some self-care products to promote the studio. Long story short, those products turned into k’pure. I formulated and handmade the products with my Kitchenaid Mixer on my kitchen counter for about a year before moving into a small space and taking on employees. We are now in over 300 stores across Canada and in 2022, I purchased a warehouse space and have five employees. We make products for the home, body and skincare, using natural ingredients. This is a very saturated market, so staying authentic to our community with our message and our products has been key. We call ourselves an ‘anti-anti-aging” company, choosing to focus on health and wellness over vanity and looking younger.
I am most proud of our ability to focus on our values, even if it means going against what the majority of our industry is doing. We refuse to make claims about anti-wrinkle and anti-aging, and remind women that getting older is our super power. We focus on living a healthy life and provide products that people can feel good about using on themselves and their entire family.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

2020 was a time for many businesses to pivot and we were definitely one of them. When retail stores were forced to shut down, I believed k’pure was in big trouble as wholesale is a huge percentage of our business. Just before Covid hit, we were formulating a hand sanitizer using alcohol, and adding organic ingredients like aloe vera and essential oils. As Covid hit, I knew we would need to finish the formulation and make large quantities, but availability of alcohol was impossible. I got into my car one day, and drove around to marijuana grow stores who happen to carry the alcohol needed, and I loaded up! We were able to sell the sanitizer on our online store and also provide first responders with thousands of bottles. With our retail stores being closed, our customers went directly to our online store and 2020 ended up being a great year for k’pure.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

We do manufacture most of our products. I started in my kitchen in 2016 and had no idea what I was doing! I do love to cook though, so I looked up recipes online and tweaked them until they were formulated to my preference. It was many late nights and trial and error, but it is how most of our products have been formulated. I do love that we manufacture in-house, as it gives us complete control over QC and getting scents and consistencies perfect. I have loosened my rein on control though, over the eight years, as we have expanded into more complex skincare recipes. I have learned a lot about ingredient sourcing and supply chain issues, especially since 2020.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.kpurenaturals.com
• Instagram: @kpurenaturals
• Facebook: facebook.com/kpurenaturals
• Linkedin: Karen Hoekstra
• Twitter: @kpurenaturals
• Youtube: /kpurenaturals

Image Credits
Iulia Agnew