Giving Palette Profile

Describe your product or service: 

“Cosmetics company partnered with nonprofit organizations.”

Describe your company culture in 3 words: 

“Clean beauty for good.”

Describe your company values and mission: 

“By partnering with nonprofit organizations, Giving Palette aims to grow support for a variety of causes through the company's products. 

Inspired by the strength of online communities and the growing creator economy, Giving Palette uses beauty as a means to engage audiences. Unboxing a Giving Palette is an experience that lets you learn, explore, and interact with the stories that have inspired causes.”

What are you ultimately hoping to achieve with your business? 

“Spread stories about different charities, raise money for causes.”

How are you funded? I.e. venture capital, angel investors, etc. 

“Angel”

How big is your team? 

“3 people”

Tell us about your team (I.e. co-founders, freelancers, etc.) 

“For the past year, I worked with a group of friends, designers and laboratories to create what is now Giving Palette. I'm grateful to all of the supporters, volunteers, and partners who have helped along the way. It's been incredibly humbling that people have wanted to get involved and we've gotten emails from people being inspired by Giving Palette in so many different ways. What started as a personal project to try to find a fun, repeatable way to raise money for charity has turned into an incredible journey filled with wonderful characters. When I started writing notes for this idea at home, I never imagined it would grow to have the support of the organizations it does today!

It's about more than just makeup now — it's about building community and making friends with individuals around the world who care deeply about important causes. Giving Palette has created multiple clean-vegan eyeshadow products and partnered with half a dozen nonprofit organizations. I am so grateful for each one of them — Igor and Jenny offered us their design expertise to create the beautiful packaging for our limited edition palettes and website design. Shane gave us a hand at building a fast, reliable website. Fernanda has worked with me since the early days of this project and created beautiful custom shades. Thea, Dave, Bri and everyone else working at the nonprofit organizations we partner with who were willing to get behind Giving Palette's idea from the get-go. I hope we can keep creating beautiful palettes that help get the word out and raise money for important issues that are happening every day in our world.”

Did you always want to start your own business? What made you want to become an entrepreneur? 

“For the past year, I worked with a group of friends, designers, and laboratories to create what is now Giving Palette. I'm grateful to all of the supporters, volunteers, and partners who have helped along the way. It's been incredibly humbling that people have wanted to get involved, and we've gotten emails from people being inspired by Giving Palette in so many different ways. What started as a personal project to try to find a fun, repeatable way to raise money for charity has turned into an incredible journey filled with wonderful characters. When I started writing notes for this idea at home, I never imagined it would grow to have the support of the organizations it does today!”

How did you develop and refine your idea/concept? How did you decide to actually act on the idea? What gave you confidence that you were on the right track? 

“Giving Palette is devoted to awareness and partnership. From the very beginning, we have pledged to donate as much as we can to charity each month. This ambition, combined with raising awareness using the power of internet communities, remains at the center of Giving Palette's entire business.

Giving Palette also strives to develop new initiatives supporting nonprofit organizations, specifically to create lasting relationships among various causes and the communities around them.

As a result, Giving Palette has created product lines with the focus on specific topics of interest like suicide prevention, breast cancer awareness, and domestic violence. Through these products, Giving Palette wants to help people contribute in different ways towards end goals that are meaningful and important to them personally. These efforts expand beyond the company's initial goals as an e-commerce beauty brand. Now Giving Palette helps people realize their own personal goals of donating to charity or participating in fundraisers for nonprofits they care about, which means transforming consumers into donors during the process of everyday shopping. To further connect our diverse audiences together, Giving Palette will continue providing tools for more opportunities for growth new initiatives that encourage connection and partnerships among nonprofits and their supporters. This will be done by writing articles, providing social media content, creating Youtube videos featuring the stories of various nonprofit organizations, as well as supporting the efforts of our charity partners with giveaways through our upcoming subscription service.”

How did you come up with your company name? Did you have other names you considered? 

“The name was inspired by Bill Gates’ Giving Pledge.”

What makes your company unique? 

“Our purpose is to raise awareness for charities.”

What is the greatest challenge you faced in starting your business, and how did you overcome it? 

[From Giving Palette’s website]

“We’re a small team that does our best to make a delightful product experience for people.

‘I started Giving Palette with the purpose of sharing something positive. The world constantly faces discouraging news, events, and negativity. I wanted to create an experience that people could engage with, while making a charitable impact’ notes now 27-year-old founder Vladimir Novosselov. ‘Facing difficulties at the time myself, I noticed how much a smile brightened my day or even my week’ — this still remains at the core of Giving Palette's business. If we can pass that along via the nonprofit organizations we partner with, that's a job well done.

Give Palette is rewriting the beauty rules as we collaborate with nonprofits and creators who set a new standard. From bold colors to refreshing scents and an empowering message behind every product — Give Palette knows what it means to live your best life while caring for others. Our love for artistry translates into its products in ways that are inspiring and innovative. It's never been easier or more fun to be yourself than when you're wearing our products, starting with energizing makeup pallets laced with high-impact pigments perfect for all skin tones.”

Who is your product or service made for? Who is your target market? 

“Beauty community”

What's your marketing strategy? 

“We spread the word through internet creators on Youtube, Instagram, and TikTok!”

How did you acquire your first 100 customers? 

“Social media.”

What are the key customer metrics / unit economics / KPIs you pay attention to to monitor the health of your business? 

“We pay attention to the growth of our social media and the amount of money we are able to donate to charity.”

How has your approach to managing your business changed from when you started to now? 

“Since we have grown, we have more communication with our team members to make sure everyone is on the same page internally.”

If you could go back in time and change anything about your entrepreneurial journey, would you? 

“I would live a more balanced lifestyle, paying more attention to my sleep and hobbies.”

What is the biggest lesson you learned during your journey? 

“The lesson I learned while working as an entrepreneur for a while is that we need to pay much attention [to] our thoughts after getting involved into taking action at a certain stage of business.”

Who is your support system? 

“My friends and family.”

How do you stay motivated? 

“I love seeing people's reactions to products we make.”

What’s the #1 resource you rely on for success? 

“A good night's sleep.”

Did you have to develop any habits that helped lead you to success? If so, what are they? 

“A good night's sleep, good eating habits, and a consistent wakeup time in the morning.”

What are you most proud of as an entrepreneur? 

“The partnerships we have been able to make with great organizations for Giving palette.”

What advice do you have for aspiring entrepreneurs? 

“You can't lose if you don't give up!”

How can our readers support your startup? We recommend listing at least 5 ways. (e.g., by buying your product and/or service, following your social media, sharing your story with friends and family, etc.) 

“They can share the Giving Palette on social media and donate to one of the organizations we support!”

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