My Little Mascara Club

Every week or so, I feature on company listed on Seedscout I like and how I would think about the investment opportunity. The last post like this was on Personafi. Today’s post will be on My Little Mascara Club. At any point while reading this post, feel free to view them on Seedscout so you can learn more.

What is My Little Mascara Club?

My Little Mascara Club is a subscription service that ships its customers a month’s worth supply of mascara in a little box, every month. The emphasis on “little” infers that each subscriber gets enough mascara to last a month, but not too much where any goes to waste. I personally don’t wear mascara but it does seem like they’ve listened to their market and made something they really love, with features including:

• Their mascara is ACTUALLY Smudgeproof

• The brush is shaped like the human eye

• The brush has a shorter wand making it easier to apply

• It passes the "Beyond Clean Beauty" standard set out by Whole Foods

Strengths

Their Brand Pops

Right out of the gate, My Little Mascara Club has an incredible brand. When you land on their website, you are hit with bold pink and white text staking their claim as “THE MASCARA THAT EVERYONE IS SUBSCRIBING TO”. Also, the brand seems to have an opinion on how the world should be and makes sure you know. When I was talking to the founder, Christie Kerner, she also referred to it as MLMC, making it original and completely brandable. Now all I want to do is use the acronym too!

When a company has a simple value prop like MLMC, brand is more important than ever and with minimal resources, Christie already has the makings of strong brand with a completely untapped market. Speaking of which…

Mascara Is A Huge Market With No Clear Leader

We all remember the insane Dollar Shave Club commercials to pioneer the monthly shave pack market. Since then, several companies have rose to dominance in the razor market, making its founders and investors millions while changing the mass consumer behavior to buy razors on a monthly cadence. What’s insane to me is that there are few companies doing to the mascara industry what Dollar Shave Club did to shaving. MLMC is here to change that. Some stats on the mascara wearing market:

• The global mascara market is a $10.3B market, with hundreds of players but no clear winner, leading to a saturated market with unsatisfied consumers.

• The market is similar sized to the razor market, which which has supported outcomes like Dollar Shave Club ($1B in 5 years)

• This market segments has seen massive growth with the likes of Smile Direct Club (IPO in 5 years) or Hims & Hers ($1B in 2 years)

Experienced Founder Who’s Been Here Before

Christie Kerner, the founder'/CEO has gone from $0 to $5M for another company and has managed teams as large as 150. Outside of her direct business experience, she has held multiple volunteer roles in the Phoenix Startup Community that have been crucial to the growth of our early ecosystem, proving she has that founder gene and can get people together (a crucial skill of an early stage founder). She has an ethos of executing, giving back, and having fun while at it.

Risks

Will need to be an early mover in uncertain market

Although first mover advantage is generally a good thing, it does come with risk that someone else can learn from their mistakes and enter the market once it’s more mature and out execute them. They can copy Dollar Shave Club’s playbook but mascara is bound to bring up different and unexpected challenges

Are people less reliant on mascara than expected post COVID? Unclear!

My Little Mascara Club relies on the user behavior that a large amount of people use mascara and they use it often. If this hypothesis is off in a post COVID world, it generally affects the TAM and the investment opportunity.

The Bottom Line

Christie is a great founder, executing flawlessly, in a massive market. At the same time, you can assume 70%+ of the investors looking at this deal don’t wear mascara, therefore not being able to understand the opportunity properly. From Seedscout’s perspective, we think this is a golden opportunity to invest in a great company at a great price. We hope you enjoyed learning about them as much as I enjoyed writing about them.

Curious to get access to their traction numbers, deck, or access more information about My Little Mascara Club? They are listed on Seedscout. If you’re a customer, access the deal below. If not, sign up for Seedscout to get access to MLMC and 1,000+ other startups.