We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Andrew Lau. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Andrew below.

Hi Andrew, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

Ever since I was a teen I started getting acne. It started off with one or two tiny pimples, nothing serious. I had no skincare routine at the time but I knew I wanted to get rid of them so I looked into skincare for acne and that’s when I discovered the three-step system from Proactiv. After using that, all hell broke loose and my skin got so much worse. As a teen, I felt most self conscious about my appearance so it definitely took a huge toll on my confidence. Over the course of several years I went through tons of experimenting with different skincare, but nothing really worked. Most of them made my skin dry, irritated and didn’t actually help with my acne at all. I also felt sad that all the acne-skincare lines out there were clinical and boring looking – yes packaging is actually really important to me. I felt jealous of people with “normal” skin who could use fun branded skincare.

I eventually realized years later that what really helped my skin was to focus on hydrating and rebalancing the skin with gentle formulations instead of trying to dry out my skin. I wanted to help people with my type of skin, acne-prone and sensitive, feel empowered and happy while using skincare. So I created Smood, a skincare brand that creates gentle, yet effective products for people with acne and sensitive skin. Our formulations focus on soothing and hydrating ingredients as well as gentle actives that help treat acne. Our skincare philosophy is to treat the skin gently and repair the skin barrier to help reduce acne. I also wanted to make sure our packaging was bold and fun so that people look forward to their skincare routine.

Andrew, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Ever since I was a teen I started getting acne. It started off with one or two tiny pimples, nothing serious. I had no skincare routine at the time but I knew I wanted to get rid of them so I looked into skincare for acne and that’s when I discovered the three-step system from Proactiv. After using that, all hell broke loose and my skin got so much worse. As a teen, I felt most self conscious about my appearance so it definitely took a huge toll on my confidence. Over the course of several years I went through tons of experimenting with different skincare, but nothing really worked. Most of them made my skin dry, irritated and didn’t actually help with my acne at all. I also felt sad that all the acne-skincare lines out there were clinical and boring looking – yes packaging is actually really important to me. I felt jealous of people with “normal” skin who could use fun branded skincare.

I eventually realized years later that what really helped my skin was to focus on hydrating and rebalancing the skin with gentle formulations instead of trying to dry out my skin. I wanted to help people with my type of skin, acne-prone and sensitive, feel empowered and happy while using skincare. So I created Smood, a skincare brand that creates gentle, yet effective products for people with acne and sensitive skin. Our formulations focus on soothing and hydrating ingredients as well as gentle actives that help treat acne. Our skincare philosophy is to treat the skin gently and repair the skin barrier to help reduce acne. I also wanted to make sure our packaging was bold and fun so that people look forward to their skincare routine.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

We have factories in South Korea and New Jersey that manufacture our products. I’ve never worked with cosmetic factories previously so finding the right one took some time and lots of sampling. As a small brand there were several things I was looking for in a manufacturing partner: cost, quality and good communication. One of my biggest constraints was finding a factory that didn’t have a ridiculously high MOQ (minimum order quantity). I knew that I wanted to work with a factory in Korea because Korea is just so much more advanced in their technology and skincare formulations. I quickly learned that a lot of them required a MOQ of 10,000 units which was way too much for me. I eventually found a factory that could do an order of about half of that and they were very responsive and I loved the samples they sent over.

The sampling process took a long time though and I think we went through about 11 reiterations of our cleanser before we nailed the formula. What I learned about manufacturing a product is that it will always take more time than you think it will. You will get frustrated but it’s important to stay calm and have the expectation that things will not always go smoothly. An important skill to have as a business owner is to be able to quickly problem solve and pivot when things don’t go to plan and this is particularly important with things like manufacturing.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

We launched in April 2022 so we’re still a relatively new brand. Our best source of customers really came from a shoutout in one of Youtube’s largest skincare influencers – James Welsh, who ended up really liking our moisturizer that we sent him. We immediately got a bunch of orders after he mentioned it and it did well because it was organic – he genuinely loved it and his viewers trust his opinion. I’m really grateful for James as he sort of helped kick start the initial orders. Now we get most new customers finding us through social media like Instagram organically.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.smoodbeauty.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/smoodbeauty