Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Kiki Quesada. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Kiki, thanks for joining us today. What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?
We all remember 2020. I was a junior in high school who went from barely having free time to only having free time. I spent a lot of my time watching videos online and noticed a trend for DIY. I’ve always loved to create; baked, cooked, did make up, did nails. I was very intrigued with the DIY lipgloss videos that I kept seeing so I decided to invest a little bit of money and start creating. With the help of social media, my little fun lipgloss business turned into my career. I am most definitely a business owner but my business is tied directly to my content creation. It’s a fine balance of advertising through social media as well as entertaining that draws people to my store and my content.
Kiki, 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?
My name is Makena but you may know me as Kiki. I recently turned 21 and my business recently turned 4. My business is called Kikiz Cosmeticz and is a trademarked name. I run an entirely e-commerce store that sells mostly handmade products. I make lipglosses, body butter, body scrubs, facials oils, lip scrubs, and many other items.
I do try to keep a base of products in my store but also pride myself in the creativity of my products. I love to make products based off shows, singers, actors, clothing, trending colors, seasons, etc. Some of my collections have included Stranger Things, Scream Queens, Swiftie September, Pink Christmas, and many individual glosses to honor various artists.
I love the flexibility I have in creating. I get an idea. I color mix until I find exactly what I’m looking for. From there, I work with my team to create packaging to suit the needs of the collection. Nothing is more satisfying than when the tubes & packaging arrive and are ready to be filled. Well, maybe one thing is more satisfying…getting them into my customers hands! I adore when people write to me, send pics, tag me on social media to tell me about their experience with my products! It’s absolutely the best.
We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.
2022-2023 was a period of tremendous growth. Thanks to my hit neon green color changing gloss, my content went completely viral. I had video after video hitting millions of views daily. We were constantly selling out of items and working around the clock. I had to hire 6 employees and even then my mom would be packing orders for 12 hours straight many days a week. Between making product, filming everything for content, packing orders, it became too overwhelming. I was completely stressed out, not having fun, and stuck running a business all day, every day. When the videos started to slow down, so did the pressure. At first I was very concerned but I look at it as a sort of divine intervention. I just could not keep up nor did I want to. I needed to find balance between work and life outside of work. During the “craziness” I thought about quitting many times but now I have a wonderful split of time I dedicate to my craft and time I dedicate to my life. And I love both equally.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
I have a somewhat funny story for this one. During my neon green color changing gloss era (she was named Dart, btw…after Dart from Stranger Things) I used the wrong color and it had a bad reaction with the base of the gloss, creating this disgusting brown/green color. This was really bad as it was a huge bowl, probably 500 glosses worth. I could’ve thrown away the bowl but decided to pivot. First, I took to social media making several videos about the mess up and then me adding other colors to try to save it. Then I asked people if they would buy it and what would we name it. The gloss lovingly got the nickname “Shart”….you know, Dart’s ugly sister but I eventually settled on Poison Apple. The gloss got so much hype that when I launched it, it instantly sold out. And to this day, people still remember Shart.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://Kikizcosmeticz.shop
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kikizcosmeticz?igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kikizcosmeticz?mibextid=LQQJ4d
- Youtube: https://youtube.com/@kikizcosmeticz?si=979bPNIgN1Iw0cHY
- Other: Tik tok
https://www.tiktok.com/@kikizcosmeticz?_t=ZT-8sqzvRVOxZq&_r=1
