Customer Story: Kim & Fiona from Frilliance

Created by a teen for teens, Frilliance is clean, skincare cosmetics focused on safely controlling breakouts for teen-skin and providing simple and easy healthy-skin solutions---all at affordable prices as a trusted, go-to brand.

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Welcome Fiona & Kim! What was the motivation for Frilliance? 

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Fiona: I spent my younger years constantly in front of a camera, which set the stage for my early interest in skincare and makeup.

I’ve been acting, modeling, and making Youtube videos since I was 10.  And in every gig I worked, I needed to layer different products on my face: skincare products, beauty products, and makeup. And it led to these gnarly breakouts. 

At the time,  people told me “oh, that’s just puberty” — but I dug deeper. I didn't want to accept my inevitable acne. I noticed that ingredients like coconut oil, mineral oil, and sodium lauryl sulfate both dried out and clogged my skin — at the same time. So I took a step back, and completely stopped putting anything on my face. And that’s when my skin cleared up. 

That was my “aha!” moment. I saw a lot of my friends go through similar struggles and I really wanted to create a clean skincare brand dedicated to supporting teens with their specific skin concerns. When I looked around at the “teen skincare” already out there, it seemed like none of the brands had met an actual teenager. Companies full of adults way beyond their teenage years marketed quick fixes that might kill a breakout in the short term, but irritated skin in the long term. Today’s teens want well-researched, powerful products that aren’t harsh or comedogenic. Where were they? 

From that moment on, I’ve been motivated to create high-quality, affordable products that help teens feel empowered and educated to build their best routine for clear, confident skin. It’s tough as it is to navigate everything during those early years, and skin concerns shouldn’t be added on top of that. 

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Beautiful mission. Talk me through going from the “Aha” moment to selling online and also in retail. How challenging was that?  

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Fiona:  The “aha!” moment was easy. Launching a business was not!  Researching, learning which ingredients work and which ones are all hype, working with a lab to create the perfect formula — it was really a hands-on, trial-and-error process. 

After we fine-tuned our product line, we also needed to create product packaging, decide on branding, build a well-functioning website, and figure out a business model, which was a huge challenge in itself.

It was A LOT of learning for a 13 year old! 

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Kim: I remember that Fiona was inspired from a young age by other successful makeup brands and websites, and all of her favorites were built on Shopify. So when it came time for us to build our own site, we knew that Shopify was the best platform for us.  

We wanted Fiona to have a hands-on role (and an important learning experience!) in the creation of the site, so we hired a local developer to help us put all of the puzzle pieces together in real-time. 

Eventually, we launched. That was December 1st. 2017. We stayed D2C until 2019, and since then we’ve also expanded our footprint into retail - we’re now in 500 Walmart stores nationwide. 

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Really impressed by your focus and resilience since day #1. Did you have any support along the journey? 

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It’s been mostly me and my mom. My dad has also helped - but outside of that, we’ve really been a bootstrapped, independent team. It’s been a great way for me as a homeschool student to learn and work at the same time.

While I’ve been super inspired by successful beauty lines like Fenty, I (sadly!!) do not personally know Rihanna and I’ve never gotten a chance to ask her for advice... I also didn’t really know any kids my age who were entrepreneurs in the skincare industry, so I was often creating a playbook myself from scratch. But what definitely helped was the support I got on social media; my community was incredibly supportive. 

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So tell me Fiona: Today - How do you split time between running an eCommerce business and keeping an active social media following? 

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Frilliance takes up 95% of my focus. I do still post on social media - especially on TikTok. But for the most part, I’m just super busy working on our online and retail sales and everything that goes into the marketing of the business.  Every month, new challenges pop up and priorities change - it’s an always-on journey.  

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So how did you stumble on Storetasker? How have we supported you? 

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We found Storetasker through our first e-commerce agency. They recommended you back in 2018. 

We had a first dev who was based in London - we worked with her on an ongoing basis for a couple of years. And then recently - we went through a site refresh and got paired up with Erin Vaage. 

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We absolutely love her. We had a great initial call and we just went from there. The project was priced fairly, and the process was very smooth. I really can't really say anything negative about Storetasker at this point. It's been super helpful for us, and we’ll be working with Erin again.

One last question from me: What’s your one key to success? 

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Fiona: Not listening to people's opinions – I’ve learned to tune out the noise. I've had so many people tell me that our business would fail. We stand here today because we trusted our vision, stayed the course, and didn’t get distracted by the opinions of non-believers.

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Kim: For me, it’s persistence. We’ve just kept on going and adapting since day #1. A clear vision and a “slow and steady” mindset is what’s led us to where we are now. 

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Kim & Fiona - Thank you so much for sharing. You are both so inspiring, and I’m so glad Storetasker has been able to play a small part in your success. Go Frilliance go!!