Invertia From 'youtuber' to billing two million with his cosmetic line: the case of Álvaro Kruse from Cádiz and his firm Krash

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Lights, camera and action, but at home. This was the routine of Álvaro Kruse, a twentysomething from Cádiz who showed his love of makeup to his more than 300,000 subscribers on YouTube. The social network was his springboard to turn his passion into a business project that today competes with the bigwigs in cosmetics. This is the story of Krash, the makeup line that aspires to bill more than two million euros this year.

Krash Kosmetics was born in August 2018 and is defined as the first national cosmetics brand without any gender. Despite his recent birth, the idea was conceived from the desk. "I wanted to start my own project even before I started high school," explains its founder in an interview with Invertia.

Considered by Forbes as one of the hundred most important influencers in Spain, the man from Cádiz began to upload videos on YouTube and professionalize the use he gave to the platform. “It was the springboard I needed to realize that what I really loved was creating products,” he explains, adding that he entered the industry realizing its weaknesses.

The founder and CEO of Krash Kosmetics, Álvaro Kruse.

“Since I discovered makeup very early and, when I entered perfumeries, I felt how the looks of clients were nailed to me for being a boy. The years went by and it became normalized, but even so, the approach of brands to the client is always feminine, and those that want to be inclusive only stay halfway, ”he adds.

With this concern, Krash Kosmetics sees the light in August 2018. In January 2019, its new releases are released on the market, which are made based on trial and error. “Everything was selling so fast that we couldn't buy enough stock. Our salaries were invested in product and we almost went bankrupt twice due to lack of liquidity”, says the CEO.

Billing

The current situation of the brand is very different thanks to the response of the public that has caused the company to multiply its turnover by four. “It wasn't until the start of Covid-19 that we saw that we really had a lot of potential. We began to invest what little we had in paid media. With no physical points or expensive strategies, we started running thanks to Instagram”, says Álvaro.

With three years of life, Krash Kosmetics has a team of 16 people and is available in more than one hundred points of sale in Spain through Amazon and the Malaga-based Perfumerías Primor. Their sales are divided into 60% physical and the remaining 40% online. It has gone from billing 526,000 euros in 2020 to a forecast of 2.2 million euros for this year.

Krash Kosmetics products.

Good numbers are what mark the future of the brand. In the short term, the Cádiz-born company has decided to launch the last two collaborations of the year. In the long term, they finalize their expansion in Latin America, as well as in Italy and France to experiment with new audiences.

Role of the RRSS

The metamorphosis from being a project to competing with the big fish in cosmetics took shape with the role of social networks. From the company they point out that they have been the key to the implementation of the brand in the competitive market. "We have a community," they say from Krash, with more than 176,000 followers on their social networks.

“A minimum of 30,000 see our daily stories on Instagram and around 60,000 see them in a new release,” explains Kruse. Despite the online push, the founder admits that there is no secret to success in markets as highly competitive as beauty. "Just create an idea, believe in it to the fullest and hope that the public loves it as much as you do," he says.

In the case of Krash, the firm was created so that its public can have fun with makeup. “Do what you want and be what you want. We hate labels. Makeup reflects a large part of how we want the world to see us”, settles the founder, whose audience ranges from 16 to 50 years old.

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