Career Diaries: Leila Kashani Dishes on Founding a Lifestyle Brand for the Girl on the Go

Leila Kashani, a toy marketer turned beauty innovator, is on a mission to bring self-care back to reality. Yes, multi-step skin care is great, if you have the time. But girls-on-the-go need products to keep up, work well and save time. Enter Alleyoop, a solution-driven, problem-solving, efficient lifestyle line that has you, your makeup and that one rouge strip of hair your forgot to shave (hey, it happens!) covered. Ahead, find out everything from what inspired Kashani to found her brand and how she generates community-driven product development to her humble take on being CEO and the pocket-sized razor that changed it all. 

You weren’t always in beauty. Can you give a little background on your career? 

I started on the brand side helping with strategy, from conceptual stage to bringing brands to life. I worked for companies like Nike and Sorel. Then, a little later I went to work at MGA Entertainment, a toy company. I was in charge of product development and marketing for white space in the toy industry. So I was able to bring really creative concepts to the market. We won Toy of the Year with one of the products that I came up with, we also got a Netflix series — a lot of really great, fun stuff.  While I was working at the toy company, I was simultaneously consulting for other brands and working on a charity, and, at the same time, just very much involved in life and having fun. I was just a really, really, really busy woman doing a lot of stuff. I thought, There needs to be a beauty brand that creates efficiency. And actually, that’s how Alleyoop was born. 

Toys to beauty is a pretty big career jump. What really inspired you to move into the beauty space? 

It really came from being busy and my time in the toy industry. I was actually midway through a presentation to Target for one of my toys when I realized that the buyer was staring at one of my armpits. I looked down and realized I only shaved one armpit! I just realized that it was so crazy; this pain point keeps showing up in my life where I'm not able to keep up with my self-care routine. 

So, I developed an all-in-one portable razor for missed spots and touch-ups. After that, I decided that I had to run with it and create a brand — especially because it wasn’t out there already. Having come from a background in toys and development, I was thinking about it very differently, too. I designed this portable razor and I gave a few prototypes out to friends to see what they thought. One of the prototypes was on my friend's desk and her boss ended up grabbing it because she was so fascinated by it and giving it to a buyer at Ulta. Ulta wanted to take the product nationwide and, well, that's how the business originally was born. 

Alleyoop is based on solving problems for your community. How did you create such a democratic, customer-first business model? 

The razor was the first product; I got into retail very quickly. But as a brand builder, I realized that the razor came first, but the brand was coming second. I had a bigger vision of what I wanted the company to be. I really felt like there's a problem in the beauty industry when it comes to efficiency. For example, I use Drybar [to get my hair blown out] twice a week, not because I'm lazy, but because I can save time. I can work on my computer, answer emails and get stuff done. I'm that person who shows up at Drybar with a computer. Drybar created efficiency for us. Postmates brings food to our door and created efficiency for us. Why is every industry being so thoughtful about efficiency for us except for the beauty industry? 

The beauty industry is giving us one more step, wanting us to take more time, when we should really get outside and enjoy our life. Right? And so we reached out to 10,000 customers. We said this is our mission, this is what's happening. If you want to help us create products that actually solve problems and help save time, please fill out this survey and together we will create this. We thought we were going to get like a hundred to 150 people apply. We got 2,600 people in 48 hours. I was doing cartwheels in the office. Eventually, we narrowed it down to a couple hundred people and dropped them into a Slack channel. We  spoke to them daily about problems and pain points in their beauty routines and lives and about how we can make it more efficient. Together, with these women, we did a whole rebrand. The name Alleyoop actually came to be from the basketball reference of scoring a basket. We looked at it as creating products to help you score time for whatever else matters to you in your life, instead of having routines and products slowing it down.

The brand’s mission is really clear on being useful, saving time and solving problems. How does that translate into product development? 

I think it's really important to say we don't look at ourselves as exclusively a beauty brand. We look at ourselves as a lifestyle brand that is solving problems for you, so that you save time, whatever that means. Whether that's creating you a beauty product or whether that's creating you a razor or deodorant, everything that we're developing, it's with the mentality of efficiency. 

For example, we asked our Slack channel to send us pictures of their eyeshadow palette. When we got the pictures of this, we were shocked because people were only using one to three colors in a palette of, like, 12 to 16 colors. Isn't that crazy? So with that, we thought of making eyeshadow sticks. The efficiency comes from how you don’t need a brush, it’s portable, long-lasting, it saves space and it’s not wasteful. Another example, we brought our four-in-one makeup pen to the market. We asked the women, “If you could only carry four items with you on a trip and that's all you can have to get a full look of makeup, what would you bring?” They responded back and the highest voted products were a brow filler, eyeliner, lip product and a highlight. That’s how we decided what went into the four-in-one pen. 

What’s been the biggest pinch-me-moment for you? 

I think seeing the product come to life and every time we get a five-star review. We ask for feedback all the time. It still makes me feel like, “Wow, is this really happening?” We try to have pinch-me moments every day, though. I always try to end my day with gratitude and think about what I was grateful for that day. — and I always think about one that relates back to work.

What has been the biggest challenge for you so far? 

Having not been in the beauty space before, I had to learn a lot very quickly about products; it was an advantage and a disadvantage. I'm trying to create products for the woman who's also overwhelmed with all the products that are out there. To be fully transparent. I didn't even know, you know the difference between mauve and terracotta. That was certainly a challenge.

On a logistical side though, the biggest challenge is that we don't have one factory. We pick our factories based on which one makes the product the best. So for our deodorant, for instance, we tested four different factories and then choose the one with the highest performance. We’re way less likely to have bad reviews and it’s great for product development, but, at the same time it’s a logistical nightmare. 

Fill in the blanks. 

My three desert island products are chocolate (duh), sunscreen and water-based body cleansing cloths (I hate showering!). 

My first memory of beauty is my mom’s black eyeliner. I would put in my inner corners, it was the Avril Lavigne days. 

A beauty trend I regret trying was super thin eyebrows. I mean, what were we thinking? 

What’s next for Alleyoop? 

Keep your eyes out for more products in 2020. It’s important to know that the next two things coming out are not in beauty at all… We’re just all about her life. Currently we’re available on alleyoop.com and in-store at Fourpost, a pop-up for e-commerce companies, and then come January we’ll be in Ulta stores. 

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