The Interview: Evelien Kahn, founder of brand management and distribution company MDV on the international growth opportunity

Evelien Kahn is the entrepreneur behind one of Europe’s leading beauty brand management and distribution companies, MDV, with a portfolio of brands including Beautyblender, Peter Thomas Roth, RoC, thisworks, and Maude, alongside its own next-gen brands Charli, a sexual-wellness brand and the scalp-first haircare brand inspired by the ‘skinification’ trend, Styledry.

Let’s start at the very beginning. Can you tell us about your career so far and what drove you to launch the business?

I studied in London and then did a transfer to Leeds. I felt I wanted more greenery, because, you know, I’m a country girl. For my 21st birthday, I received a product that I'm sure you're familiar with, The O from Cloud Nine. I loved it! I took it to my hairdresser in the Netherlands and I said, Isn't this great? I got in touch with Cloud Nine, and I said, listen, I think I want to import this brand. I had no idea how to be a distributor as this point, and they probably thought, gosh, she's 21, but you know, it's Holland, so it's small, so what damage can she do? And they said, okay, what's your opening order? Then it dawned on me, “I need money for this”.

I wanted to really show that I could do this, I had something to prove. I said, “what, if you can give me 45 payment days?”… and they agreed. I don’t even know how they said yes. But now looking back, it was only a £2,000 order.  I felt like the Queen, I was up and running!  I had 45 days to pay my bills. I decided to go on the road, but I was still studying, so I chose Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday to study so that I could fly back and sell door-to-door to hairdressers Thursdays and Fridays.

When people say they sell out of the back of their car, I actually was, and it was my Mum’s car too!  I used my parent’s garage as a storeroom.

There were lots of people that helped me with advice and mentorship in the beginning and showed me how this industry works.

Whilst doing my Masters degree in business, I landed my first big retailer, Douglas in the Netherlands in 2015.

EVELIEN KHAN

MDV has been the exclusive distributor of Beautyblender since 2015 and works with some real beauty stalwarts. Tell us how MDV supports brands.

We're operate as a true extension of the brand. We don't just do logistics and key account management, we also do merchandising and staffing, marketing and PR, including eventing, trade marketing, education - we do a lot! We really are strategic partners, and what we bring brands is sustained growth and longevity. A lot of our brands, we've had, nearing a decade now.

What’s the reason most take on a company like yours?

There are so many complications of trading in Europe. First of all, if you want to do it yourself, you have to set up shop. Right? So, you need a warehouse, you need a team, this adds not just a lot of costs, but also a lot of headache. But on top of that, Europe is very fragmented. It's not like the USA where you have a national retailer. There, you list with one national retailer and you're done. In Europe, we have a lot of regional and local players.

We are able to scale across a very fragmented market, but it's not just that, it's also, supplying and adapting regional content, currency risk, and compliance . All this is a cost, and you have to be able to do this quickly. Speed to market is really key.

You work with over 25,000 retail outlets across most of Europe. Where are you seeing the opportunities for brands for growth?

I think there's a lot of untapped potential in knowing your data. We speak to a lot to brands that do not have enough visibility in their actual performance and stockholding and therefore cannot make very agile and strategic decisions on where to move next. I think being really data driven is what I would say, always, my number, one opportunity for expansion.

When we start with brands. The 1st thing we do is look at the data and based on that data, we’ll identify 10 points of low hanging fruit that I can change within 3 months' time.

I feel a lot of potential is in marketplaces and social commerce. It's a great place to harness brand awareness and consumer discovery. It's big in the States and it's so big in Asia, but I think in Europe, we're still trying to figure this out. Amazon is there, and I think it’s a big opportunity that not all brands are optimising. You can still do a brand shop on Amazon and it can still look really, really nice. You can also think about curation, so maybe not the entire assortment, but just the bestsellers.

[looking at other channels for growth] This is interesting because of the way the new consumer shops. When we look at alpha generation that's just coming up, they're on TikTok. They're no longer on Facebook on Instagram. they’re  searching for newness on TikTok. So 1st of all, you have to be on the platform, that's the 1st thing. Then the TikTok shop is, I think, a logical extension of this. But we always need to be very mindful with these channels, not just TikTok, but in general channels with aggressive growth. You never want to be too reliant on one channel, because they only need to change one item of their T&Cs, and your profitable business turns into a loss-making exercise.

CHARLI

For any brand looking to Europe for growth, what are the complexities when opening retailers outside the UK?

Post Brexit it has definitely become more complicated. The paperwork has just increased. And like I said before, it's very fragmented, it's not one retailer and one online player.

Then there’s compliance and labelling, for instance, if we supply Zalando, it requires 17 languages. Then you've got to deal with the customs and import complexities that come with exporting into different economic regions. Lastly, what needs to be said is that European retailers require tougher terms and conditions including higher margins, excessive listing fees, a lot of promotional pressure, so you have to be ready for that sort of environment.

Europe is not much different than UK. However, the UK is always first. I would say the UK is definitely a tastemaker market.

Brands can reach great success on their home turf. When do you think is the best time to scale globally for brands and is there a blueprint for it?

There is one thing I always say, and I'm very clear about it, is you can only look at expansion when you've got your ducks in a row in your home market, and not just in terms of volume, and having a consolidated, optimised business, but also in terms of operations. There's really no value rolling out a very ambitious international expansion plan if you are still facing challenges at home. You risk stretching your team too thin, and putting to much pressure on your financial resources, so, I'd say, the blueprint is, get it right at home, because you're going to run into a whole load of mess on compliance, logistics once you’ve decided to expand.

STYLEDRY

You also have your own brands. What made you want to be a brand owner?

To build a brand from the ground up is very exciting. We’ve just launched our brand Charli at Boots. It's an intimate wellness brand. I've never had so many conversations with buyers and had buyers saying, “look, this is literally what I need”.

We support some really, really great brands and we've helped them grow across our huge network, and I think what we've also seen with that experience is that we've seen some opportunities in how brands develop products, look at launching newness, and develop their go to market strategies, and I think that we've come to a point where we want to use our experience, and fill in some of these gaps that we feel still remain. Our intimate wellness line is a big example of this. We saw an opportunity in the market for lower priced clean alternatives and after speaking to buyers, jumped into it and really used our experience to create something tangible and to give the consumers something that they're looking for.