We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kerrington Muldrow a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Kerrington, appreciate you joining us today. Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

Your business name is the first introduction to your potential customer. Knowing this, I spent a lot of time considering what I would want this first impression to be. When brainstorming the name of my brand, there were a few things I wanted to keep in mind. My brand serves as the voice for natural skincare, timelessness, and pure luxury. First, given that I knew I wanted a timeless approach to my business, I wanted the name to be short and easily memorable. I aimed to stray away from words that could be considered as trendy and didn’t sound like it could be scaled on an international level. Second, I wanted my name to have a meaningful impact, which required me to look back at what my brand represents. To this point, I knew that I would be selling clean and natural products, without the inclusion of toxic chemicals. I searched for words that would evoke this feeling, which is where the word “bare” came into action. Additionally, I knew that I wanted my brand to be an advocate for natural skincare and a sense of luxury. With this in mind, I searched words that were relative to being of advocacy. This is where the word “influence” came into fruition. After some time of strategically mixing and matching words that best represented my brand, I found that the name Bare Influence Skincare best served my brands mission and purpose.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

Hi everyone! I’m Kerrington Muldrow and I am the founder of clean skincare brand Bare Influence Skincare based in Los Angeles, CA! From what stemmed as a passion and a side hustle, scaled quickly into my dream business as I was pursuing my bachelors degree at the University of Southern California.

Bare Influence Skincare is a premium skincare brand with the vision to empower and elevate the self care experience through clean beauty that doesn’t compromise luxury. Specializing in all natural products for the face and body, Bare Influence Skincare takes pride in providing unique experiences to live a lavish lifestyle that begins with the highest form of self care for all. Notable products include rich body butter creams, hydrating oils, exfoliants, as well as facial and self care products for men and women.

Many may ask what sets us apart from our competitors. Our brand offers a unique experience to our consumers, with the mission to promote clean beauty that doesn’t compromise luxury nor quality. Our selection of unique aromas accentuates pure opulence that is tailored to provide an invigorating experience with every use in any occasion and remains exclusive to our brand. Additionally, our brand packaging consists of minimal label designs complimented by durable glass jars and bottles that are appealing to the eye and sleek to the touch. Through high quality packaging, we encourage consumers to reuse or recycle their durable packaging to remain sustainable.

Throughout the past two years of being in business, I am most proud of the impact that my brand has made in my customers’ lives. Running Bare Influence Skincare has been about much more than just selling a product, but rather selling a solution and an overall experience. I take great pride in educating my community about the benefits of natural skincare and the real results that it can provide. I also am a firm believer in advocating for the idea that you don’t have to compromise luxury or quality when incorporating natural products into your self care routine. Bare Influence Skincare is an overall experience. I aim to always maximize the customer experience and make my customers feel like their highest selves when using my products. This trickles down to the quality of my products, packaging, marketing, and more. Ultimately, I am proud of the community I have built within Bare Influence Skincare. I enjoy giving people who experience the same skincare issues I once faced the opportunity to feel seen, connect, and relate through my brand. What I would want everyone to know about me and my brand is that Bare Influence Skincare is operated by a single Black woman, and that I am always working to maximize your experience. No matter who you are, you deserve to prioritize and feel like your highest self when shopping with my brand.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Funny enough, I began building my audience on social media prior to the official launch of Bare Influence Skincare. I took a lot of time building a community on my personal social media to relate with my target audience on the many skincare issues I have faced in the past while also showing a glimpse into behind the scenes of the making of my brand. This allowed me to build a lot of momentum and heat around the upcoming launch of my brand while also having the early opportunity to form relationships with potential customers.

When considering the official launch of Bare Influence Skincare, aside from word of mouth, I always knew social media would act as an essential platform when looking to maximize my brand presence. With this being said, I spent a lot of time on the back end doing extensive research on the market, my target audience, and creating a social media strategy. During this process, I knew that in order to make an impact on social media, I needed to do a deep dive on my target audience and really work to understand them. Additionally, I also had to consider what kind of experience I wanted to provide on social media that would also align with my brand.

With this being said, I really wanted our social media page to act as a space that highlighted different aspects of our business. Likewise, whether the content be informative, educational, or fun, I wanted our social media page to be organized and easily able to navigate. This allowed me to utilize different features on social media to organize content. For example, on Instagram, we primarily utilize the highlights feature for informative content such as testimonials, skincare tips, sponsorship & events, press, how to place custom order inquiries, about our rewards program and more. On the other hand, we enjoy using the Instagram stories feature to conduct polls, Q&A’s, behind the scenes content, skincare relatable content and more to act as an overall community hub for our customers to engage with. This has allowed for our brand to continue to build relationships with our customers and be a source of entertainment. Finally, with the use of customized templates, potential and current customers are able to easily navigate all these different forms of content in an aesthetically pleasing way that aligns with our brand identity being sleek and luxurious. Moreover, other social media accounts such as TikTok for example are strictly used for behind the scenes content and to create a more personable approach to our business relationship with customers.

For anyone looking to build their social media presence, there are definitely a couple of things I would recommend keeping in mind! First, it is vital that you know your target audience. This will include sitting down and getting really specific on who your potential customer, client, or viewer would be. After this, take some time to do a deep dive on your target audience and understand who they are, what motivates them, inspires them, what kind of content and social media platforms do they typically engage in, and more! You should know your dream audience like the back of your hand!

Next, it’s important to understand that providing an experience does not stop at your website or in person sales. Whether you want to believe it or not, people engage with and are more likely to purchase from brands that feel aligned with. This is why it is important for you to provide an authentic experience to your consumers and make them feel a part of your brand. Once you have done the initial research and have reflected on who your audience is, ask yourself how you can provide a unique experience to them on social media while still remaining true to your brand! It is also important to keep in mind that you may need to run different forms of content in different ways to see what your audience is responding to best to get a better idea of which kind of content to place an emphasis on and how you may stand out from your competitors! Next, keeping your branding materials such as colors, fonts, illustrations or images aligned on your social media platforms also provides a sense of cohesiveness and makes your brand that much more memorable. This leads me to my last point, consistency is key! Success on social media does not happen overnight, in fact it may take a lot of trial and error, however the more effort you put into it, the more you are likely to get out of it. Overall, social media can be a powerful tool in building your brand presence and for this reason should be just as important as any other factor in your business plan and a great source to build a community!

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

Interestingly enough, my side hustle stemmed from a passion turned into a dream career. Growing up, like many others I struggled with sensitive skin and eczema on my inner arms that would peak during the colder seasons. During these seasons, I struggled to find a wide range of skincare products that would not only soothe my inflamed skin, but would also provide maximum hydration that would last longer than the occasional three hours or so. I grew tired of reapplying the same watered down moisturizers that were packed with thousands of toxic chemicals I couldn’t pronounce, yet provided no benefit to my skin. It wasn’t until my senior year of college that I put forth effort to evoke change within my skincare routine.

I was a senior, studying Communication Studies at the University of Southern California. It was early in the fall semester and the weather began to change. Given that I’ve always had a passion for all things skin and self care, I remember hoping online and doing some research on the newest skincare trends and products to try, but nothing seemed to stand out. With shea butter being a common ingredient that is widely used across products and as a stand alone product for moisturization, I began to dig deeper into this interest. I began purchasing raw shea butter. During my trial and error to find the solution to my dry and irritated skin, I noticed a few things. First, I found raw shea butter to be extremely difficult to work into the skin. Second, I didn’t quite enjoy the natural smokey smell of raw shea butter. It was at this point, I realized that there had to be a better way.

I hopped on my laptop and immersed myself into the world of natural butters and oils. During my research, I learned of the many other butters in the world that the typical person wouldn’t know about. I studied their textures, uses, origins and their skincare benefits. From this point on, I was fueled with the motive to create my own moisturizer, one that was soothing to my eczema, easy to work into the skin, smelled amazing, and of course, was all natural. After experimenting with countless natural butters, oils, and essential oils, I discovered the perfect formula that would change my skincare routine forever.

Fast forward to a month later, I noticed a tremendous difference in my skin using my homemade body butter creams. Not only did my eczema completely clear up, but I also noticed how hydrated my skin became without having to reapply my product throughout the day. This resulted in my friends and family begging me to make this moisturizer for them and even offering to pay me for a jar. Once success stories began reigning in and my moisturizer began gaining more popularity, it was almost as if I was unintentionally running a small business while in school.

As the months went by, I was inspired to continue this passion of creating natural skincare that provided real results. While making body butter creams as a side hustle, I began dedicating more of my free time to formulating and testing additional natural skin and self care products. As my product offerings began to expand, I began building my brand and putting together a business plan that was measurable. I began perfecting formulas with percentages, worked on my brand, its identity, sourced vendors, and utilized social media to build heat around my passion and upcoming endeavors. Before I knew it, on June 4th, 2021, I launched Bare Influence Skincare with an influx of testimonials and an audience already ready to purchase.

Looking back today, I am extremely proud at the pace my brand has steadily grown. All within two years, I have participated in the biggest monthly pop up festivals in Los Angeles, partnered and vended with brands such as Black Love, sponsored gifts for the 54th NAACP Image Awards nominees, participated in a Los Angeles fashion week, and more! I am beyond grateful for the constant support I have received from my customers and am even more proud of the community Bare Influence Skincare has built and the impact we have made thus far. This has truly been a passion that has become my dream career and I am more than excited to see what is yet to come.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.bareinfluence.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bareinfluence
• Other: Follow Us On TikTok @bareinfluence !

Image Credits
Image Credits: Black Love Inc. ; Ezephotography ; Bare Influence Skincare