Kate Assaraf is the founder of DIP, sustainable haircare now in 800+ independent retailers across the country. She’s redirected over $5 million to those local economies, all without Amazon, ads, or influencers. We got into how she built a “counterculture, anti-marketing” brand on word of mouth, why she refuses to undercut her retailers, and what growth looks like when you’re not trying to scale at all costs.
This is an abridged version of our conversation. Listen to the full episode right here, or find it on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Tell me a little bit about DIP and what makes you guys different.
DIP is sustainable haircare. And now we’ve expanded into body care for people who would never consider sustainable haircare. It’s really high-end performance — shampoo and conditioner bars, especially.
There’s this emotion of people who feel burned by sustainability. They were really excited about it in 2020, 2021, and they got really disappointed with the results. I was that kind of customer. So I wanted to solve that problem of sustainable disappointment when you bought something to replace something that was originally in plastic. So DIP is haircare that ends up surprising people.
What was the origin? How did you decide to go all in on this idea?
In 2014, I discovered that plastic was not only accumulating on the planet, it was also messing with our hormones and our endocrine system. Now it’s 12 years ago. But back then, if you talked to people about plastic, you were a little bit of a tinfoil hat person.
My frustration was trying to find plastic-free everything — a replacement for Ziploc bags with Stasher, plastic-free deodorant, switching all my cutting boards over to wood and stainless steel. I’d been in the beauty industry for a long time, and I kept buying the bars that existed on the market.
They say character is what you do when you’re alone. So I’d project out to my friends and family that I was reducing plastic, but in my shower, I would always go back to these luxury bottles. I was like, I cannot let this happen anymore. I need something that can compete with Oribé or Kérastase — these really luxury brands.
So out of frustration, I built DIP. It started with the conditioner bar, because the conditioner bar was really a source of contention for me.
When you first started, how did you begin connecting with customers?
The first thing I did — and I suggest anyone find this, I think it’s 10 bucks to listen to — is I watched Sara Blakely’s MasterClass. Something that really struck me was that she went literally with her backpack door to door to different stores, and was just like, here you go, here’s my product. If it’s not the best thing ever, don’t worry about it.
DIP was kind of like that too. I knew I had a conditioner bar. The conditioner bar was the number one problem I wanted to solve. So I went to zero-waste stores all around the country.
While everyone else was doing digital acquisition, I went total analog. I would pick up the phone and physically go. I’d say, “If this is not the best conditioner bar, you don’t have to stock it — it’s pricier than the rest, but it is so good. I promise you.” I’d had people call me from their towels saying, “I cannot believe that this is a sustainable brand.”
That’s how it started. And it started to get its reputation on its own.
Talk to me about the why behind the local stores versus going online.
I want to move the needle on sustainability and plastic. I can’t do that with just one product. You really need to start making lots of changes.
I had that sustainability frustration with things I bought online that didn’t work well. The antidote for that — for the digital marketing that was overselling sustainability — was the refill store. Deanna at Good Bottle had curated all of the best of the best in every category.
If I could get someone to buy DIP in a store, by accident or just by the Target effect of going in for one thing and seeing other things — I wanted someone to go in and be like, “Okay, I got the DIP bars, but my gosh, I can get gentler-for-me laundry detergent. I can get coffee that’s not in Mylar bags.”
I wanted to do something bigger, and I wanted to protect this distribution channel. I think real sustainability happens in person with that kind of discovery.
How do you balance selling online with the brick-and-mortar stores?
I make sure I don’t undercut my brick-and-mortar stores. The first curiosity purchase — that initial purchase — is usually a shampoo and a conditioner. We have a discount there if you buy the bundle. But for replenishment, we don’t run a lot of sales.
We send a store locator in every box so people can go and see — “I can actually buy my next one in person. Skip the shipping and all of that.” So I do a lot with our D2C to drive people into stores. We keep the prices honest and fair, so our stores don’t just become window fronts for us.
What sorts of marketing and growth activities energize you?
I love figuring out how to do word-of-mouth marketing. It’s so fun for me, because I’ve been in marketing for so long — and beauty marketing for so long — that you kind of see all the tricks and the usual playbook. Which is: hire influencers, go big on Meta, seed influencers, engage in fake UGC.
I turned all of that on its head. I was like, okay — we’re not going to use influencers. We’re not going to run ads. We’re not going to have any dishonest UGC. If you see someone on our feed, it’s someone who’s paid for the product, which is scarily rare in beauty.
So I became this kind of counterculture, anti-marketing brand, and that became the marketing. It became its own new marketing story. And it created word-of-mouth buzz that you could only find at the grassroots level. DIP has a cult following — it’s not mass, not everyone knows about it. That’s really fun for me as a marketer to see.
What does success mean to you in your business?
Success for me is one — taking care of my employees, because I don’t do this on my own. My team works really hard, and we are all really excited about getting people to switch off plastic.
But the biggest metric of success for me is seeing our retailers thrive. All of our retailers are independent — zero-waste store owners, salon owners, and surf shop owners. Those three channels, pretty much. And we as a brand have redirected over $5 million to those local economies.
That is a big, big, big source of pride for me. When I started, and I came up with this roadmap of how I wanted to grow my business, I was literally laughed at. They were like, “You’re going to support these small stores? Why wouldn’t you try and get into Sephora or Ulta or Amazon? You’re leaving money on the table.”
And it was like — okay. I’ll leave that there. I already know that playbook, and honestly, it wasn’t exciting. I wanted to prove that you could build a business that did a lot of good in the world and was also profitable.
The way you’ve done it is refreshing — you started doing this word-of-mouth marketing when everyone was going digital. Now people are kind of desperate to get back to it.
It’s so exciting. When I started, I didn’t know it could be done either. Sometimes the criticism would get to me — “You could 10x your sales if you went on Amazon.”
I think about these business owners I’ve grown to know personally and really admire and love. These are human beings in towns doing punk rock economics, really. They’re opening refill stores and engaging with people human to human, with full accountability of what they’re selling. It’s so refreshing.
And most of the zero-waste store owners — they’re women, they’re mothers. They come from all different kinds of backgrounds, and they’re doing their best to motivate their communities to ditch plastic. I can’t think of any type of person I’d rather support than them.
Unfortunately, not all brands behave my way. A lot of the other sustainable brands have gone on Amazon, and it’s kind of decimated the businesses that really built these brands. So the next phase of DIP is — we’re going to run ads. And we want to get people into stores. I’m going to use DIP’s success to fund marketing for these individual retailers. That is another big source of pride for me, and I’m really excited about this next phase.
As you’ve been growing this business, what mindset blocks have you had to work through?
I think the biggest one is imposter syndrome. I find it very difficult to put myself out there. If you notice, I’m not really in a lot of the DIP media.
There’s two parts to it. One is, I still hear the criticism of others — like, you could have a much more successful brand if you just did XYZ.
And the other piece is, I am scared of energy vampires. The more you put yourself out there, the more you grow, the more you expose yourself personally — the more people want to tear you down. I’m not at that level yet. I don’t have the thick skin I see other people have, especially entrepreneurs who put themselves out there as a character beyond their business.
How do you define growth for yourself?
For myself, growth is — I’m an endurance runner. So growth is built into doing better every time. Every time you hit a new milestone, those are the things that drive me.
But I have that personality where it drives me too far off the edge. In my twenties, I would run a hundred miles a week, until I fractured my hip. I have that personality that’s like — I want to always do better, and better, and better. And then I actually have to temper it and slow myself down.
So growth for me is actually learning to do less, instead of doing more. Because I am someone who wants to do things all the time. Growth is hiring someone to help me do things, instead of trying to do everything myself.
What does growth mean for your business?
I would love to have DIP in more salons. I would love to have DIP in more surf shops. We’re already in most of the zero-waste stores. So growth is getting into more independent retailers, so we can help them.
Part of that is me realizing that I have to probably run ads to do that. It’s been four and a half years of word-of-mouth business. But at some point, personal growth would be admitting that I have to. I owe it to my employees. I owe it to other small stores that don’t actually know about us yet. I have to grow this, and share the wealth even bigger.
Listen to the full conversation with Kate wherever you get your podcasts.
Website: dipalready.com
Double DIP Coconut Almond (shampoo + conditioner bars): shop here
Hair & Body Dry Oil (Coconut Almond): shop here
Kate’s LinkedIn: Kate Assaraf
DIP’s Instagram: @dipalready
DIP’s TikTok: @dipalready