KIKI World, the pioneering beauty company where products are voted in by its community has announced a $7 million funding round.
The round is backed by Estée Lauder Companies’ New Incubation Ventures (NIV), a16z crypto, consumer-tech funds Double Down, 2Punks Capital and Advancit, digital communities RedDao and OrangeDao, and Web3 entrepreneur gmoney.
Alongside this announcement comes news that KIKI is building out the propriety software that powers its consumer arm with a suite of platform tools and applications, enabling enterprise clients to launch their own community driven and participatory campaigns.
That Web3 enabled brands are still in their infancy—gmoney’s own 9dcc, Ismail Tazi’s Trame and and Colby Mugrabis’ mmERCH being examples of the emerging technology at work—makes KIKI’s swift evolution from brand to enterprise platform all the more noteworthy.
KIKI launched in early 2023 with connected beauty products co-created by its community which can participate in product innovation, receive rewards for each engagement with the brand and connect with other fans via KIKI’s blockchain powered platform.
First product was Pretty Nail Graffiti, a near field communication (NFC) chip enabled nail pen with colors voted by its customer. There followed further collections including the Skin Development Kit—a skincare line where customers can vote on key ingredients.
With a successful consumer beauty brand up and running KIKI already has a proof of concept which puts it a step ahead of other emerging tech platforms which need to onboard clients before they can showcase the value of their product.
“KIKI’s innovative platform strategically takes “brand.com” capabilities a step further to leverage community and drive creativity,” say co-founders Jana Bobosikova, Brendon Garner, and Ricky Chan.
The trio view their online community as the engine that will create the brands of the future so it’s to this end that they are building out their toolkit.
It was KIKI’s consumer centric focus that appealed to Estée Lauder Companies. “Consumers are at the heart of what we do,” Senior Vice President, NIV, The Estée Lauder Companies, Shana Randhava said in a statement.
“That’s why we’re excited by the KIKI team’s vision of finding new ways to put the customer first,” she continued, citing in particular its use of blockchain technology for co-creation and engagement and dubbing the offering “a valuable window into the future of beauty.”
Arianna Simpson, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) agrees. While there’s always been a deep connection between high-quality consumer brands and their customers, there has, until now, been no direct input from the community, she says.
“KIKI is now breaking down that barrier by letting consumers directly weigh in on what products they want to see created next.”
KIKI participated in aforementioned venture capital fund’s spring 2023 Crypto Startup Accelerator program and Simpson added that she has derived immense reward from seeing the company grow.
According to the brand, its new tool suite includes “blockchain-powered profiles and collectibles that empower peer-to-peer connections and dynamic rewards; robust discovery engines and community management tools designed to reward fans first; and platform API’s that enable the creation of incentive-driven engagement campaigns and conversion-focused rewards.”
