https://directtoconsumer.typeform.com/DTC-Brand?utm_source=podcast-636&utm_medium=podcast
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Fifteen videos in a shoot day. A writer's room where creators cross-edit each other's scripts. Hair, makeup, and wardrobe walkthroughs before anyone hits record. This is what organic content looks like at Kiyoko Beauty (kiyoko.ca), the curated Asian beauty retailer that hit 8 figures in 5 years, bootstrapped, while all three co-founders kept their full-time jobs.
Gillian Liu walks through the whole machine, from a part-time student's 3M-view TikTok to a production calendar planned a month out.
If you run content, growth, or a retail business on thin margins, this episode is worth a notebook.
What's inside:
- The full production process: concepts and formats planned a month ahead, scripting against a reference hook library, a writer's room because "sometimes you're in it too much by yourself," script read-throughs with talent, then batch shoot days. "It's not vibes at all."
- Her comparison for why the pros post consistently: comedians who have joke-writing down to a science.
- The hiring filter for content roles: "What's your screen time? Show me." Her most recent hire clocks 8 hours a day. Gillian's reaction: "That's it?"
- Where it started: a student with 1,000 followers, found via Instagram DM, told to post three times a week with no direction. Three months in, one video hit 3M views on a niche product only Kiyoko carried, and site sessions 10x'd overnight.
- Platform roles: TikTok reaches strangers, Instagram converts them through stories and community, YouTube Shorts reposts overperform, and Red Note gets Gillian recognized on the street by the Chinese Canadian community.
- The math forcing all of this: retailer margins. A Meta top-of-funnel ad runs ~$10 CPM; organic works out to under a dollar. Paid has been bottom-of-funnel Google only for five years.
- The curation model itself: pay brand premium on COGS, then harvest demand created by other people's marketing budgets.
- Merchandising by data: Amazon US/Canada volume, Korea's top sellers, brand heads-ups on strategic SKUs, and Shopify's "search queries with no results" report.
- Brands as partners: one runs a 50/50 ad split with Kiyoko, others commission content monthly and pay in inventory value.
- The early jank: a $2,000 first order, a free Shopify theme, shipping from a co-founder's basement, and buying out-of-stock items from the Asian grocery store down the street.
- Why three co-founders kept their 9 to 5s (cash flow first, risk second), plus two warehouse moves in five months and the new California fulfillment center.
Who this is for: content leads and founders doing organic at scale, and any operator whose margins can't support paid top of funnel.
What to steal: her writer's room. Have creators cross-edit each other's scripts before anything gets shot.
Visit the brand: kiyoko.ca
Timestamps:
00:00 Building an Eight-Figure Brand While Working Full-Time
06:10 The Organic Content Strategy That Changed Everything
10:02 How Kiyoko Produces Viral Content at Scale
17:07 Merchandising and Choosing Winning Products
28:03 Why Organic Beats Paid for Customer Acquisition
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