012. Pamela Anderson's Skincare CEO Built Her Career Fixing What Beauty Gets Wrong

She started a recycling club at 16, launched a clean beauty brand into Sephora, sold out her launch — and nearly went out of business because of it. In this episode, Susannah Dellinger sits down with Kailey Bradt, CEO of Sonsie Skin, to talk about what it actually takes to build differently in beauty — and why the industry's biggest gap isn't innovation, it's access.

In this episode:

• What happened in Gloria Steinem's living room — and what shifted for Kailey walking out of that conversation
• The high school recycling drive that filled an entire gymnasium, canceled gym class, and required tractor trailers to clean up — and what it taught her about impact
• How Kailey launched Sansci into Sephora in 2021, sold out the launch, couldn't restock fast enough, and got pulled off every marketing calendar
• Why the Sephora Accelerate program prepares you for the pitch — but not for what happens after you're in
• What "speaking seven different languages" means in beauty — and why that skill is rarer than any ingredient innovation
• How Syndeo was born to give indie brands access to biotech, sustainability, and product development infrastructure they couldn't afford alone
• What Sonsie Skin is building for women over 40 who are tired of being sold to — and why Pamela Anderson asking every question nobody else would answer changed everything
• Why female founders are still locked out of the funding conversations that matter — and where Kailey sees the next gap to close

01:34 Can Beauty Be a Tool for Feminism? What Gloria Steinem's Living Room Taught Her 

04:14 The Recycling Drive That Canceled Gym Class and Changed Everything 

06:45 She Sold Out Her Sephora Launch — Then Almost Lost Her Brand 

09:37 Why Scientists and Founders Can't Talk to Each Other (And How She Fixed It) 

13:24 How Syndeo Is Giving Indie Brands Access to Biotech They Can't Afford 

14:42 Building Sonsie Skin for Women Who Are Done Being Sold To 

18:07 Is Retail Next? What She Learned the Hard Way About Timing 

20:14 Female Founders Are Still Last in Line for Funding — Here's the Data 

21:41 Where to Find Kailey

CONNECT WITH KAILEY BRADT

Instagram: @kaileyraee 

Sonsie Skin: SonsieSkin.com | @sonsieskin 

Syndeo Accelerate: SyndeoAccelerate.com | @syndeoaccelerate

Off the Shelf is a podcast about the people, brands, and behind-the-scenes forces shaping the beauty industry — money, relationships, risk, and what it really takes to scale.

CONNECT WITH SUSANNAH

Instagram: @brightbeautyconnect

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/susannah-dellinger

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I really wanted to build a space for other brands to have access to do the right thing that was actually better and have someone they could come to that understood how to do it better. And there was kind of like, you know, nope yes, I can give you everything you need. And um so today was porn and honestly it's expanded to also having fractional support, advisory, product development operations. Super like $2,500 a month because most of these brands could hire like an intern or you know someone really junior for that price. But this gives them so much more value and really understanding how to build differently even before they go to market.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

This is off the shelf, where we take the most iconic beauty brands, products, and people in the beauty industry off the shelf and examine the stories behind the story. It's where beauty is treated like the economic, cultural, and power-building force it really is. I'm Susanna Dellinger, and here we're going to talk about what really shapes the industry, who holds the power, how the decisions get made, and what it actually takes to build, scale, and quite frankly, survive in beauty. These are the conversations happening behind closed doors about money, relationships, risk, and cult moments. If you're building, breaking through, or trying to understand how beauty really works, or just love a really good story, you're in the right place. Welcome back to Off the Shelf. I am so excited today to have with me Kaylee. And Kaylee is the CEO of Sansi Skincare. Kaylee, I would love to kick it off today by asking you about the event at Gloria Steinem's house that we just were at, that we had the pleasure of being in her apartment in New York City and talking about whether or not beauty can be a tool for feminism and how it could possibly be a tool for feminism. Um, what did you think about going into the event? And then did anything kind of shift for you after the event?

SPEAKER_01 2:09

Yeah, I mean, first of all, what an incredible event you put together. That was so cool to be in Gloria's home. Um, and then also just all of the women in the room, you know, I was so impressed. And, you know, I I went in kind of, I don't know, curious. I think I have a great sense of curiosity, but I was very curious where the conversation would go, and I wasn't really sure. And I've been in beauty for about a decade now and obviously entered very young and was always, you know, kind of surrounded by a lot of women who I had looked up to, but also I think I've always kind of like had a challenge going into every scenario. And what I really appreciated about the room that you put together is I really felt like everyone was just on the same page, wanted to be part of this same movement of really empowering women and helping raise them up, which is such a big thing, especially for what we're doing at Sonzi, of like, you know, just embracing yourself and really having that space to just be you and not having the beauty industry ask you to change. So it was so amazing to see women who had spent their whole careers in beauty, some who had built and sold brands, and just be aligned on this same messaging that like we need to give women back their power and we need to empower them versus make them feel lesser, which is a lot of what the beauty industry has told us. So I I was a little nervous walking in, but I was so I felt so excited walking out. And I do really feel like there will be so much follow-up from that event of like, how can we work together to move this industry forward?

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Yeah. And has the your founder, has Pamela been in one of those talking circles with Gloria before? No. Oh, hopefully, maybe some collision could happen and you guys can do something together. That would be iconic. Yeah, it literally would. I love that. All right, so I want to get back to you and I want to talk about I find your kind of journey into beauty and how you started so interesting because it's very different from the typical path into beauty. And I loved reading about how you started a recycling center or recycling club at your school and high school, and then they had to shut it down. Um you tell a little bit about that story.

SPEAKER_01 4:37

Yeah. So I was 16 and I actually was taking chemistry for the first time. And I had this amazing teacher, which I again, for me, it's always about the people. So I'm gonna keep coming back to like these figures in my life. But she was so into the environment and really into this concept of, you know, like what can you do where you are today, which I think really resonated with me because I had these like crazy dreams. I was gonna start a beauty company at 16. And I was like, okay, but how can I do something today? So we actually set up the eco club at our high school, and we did this electronic scrap drive, which I don't think people realize how much electronic waste is produced every year, but it's a lot. And um we wanted to do something, so we partnered with this local um group who would recycle electronics, and essentially we did um two of these. The first one was kind of small, like it was like just the people who heard about it was great. We filled up like a little shed on our high school campus, and then the word got out that we had done that, and people were like, wait a minute, you guys should do another one. I told my friend, you know, etc. So we ended up filling up an entire gymnasium, and the school couldn't host gym classes in there, so we got a lot of trouble. Canceled because changing the world guys. Yeah, it was we got in so much trouble. And then essentially we had to have like tractor trailers come. We couldn't process with like the local facility because it was too much for them. So yeah, it was kind of a mess, but it also really opened up my eyes of like, oh my gosh, like obviously you can start small and you can do something and have an impact on your community. But that's that was one of the things that I was like, wow, sustainability and like what we do with our things when we're done with them is actually a huge problem. So yeah, that was my first foray into doing something environmental.

SPEAKER_00 6:39

I love this. And then obviously, chemistry class stuck, right? Because you started an amazing career, um, still very young, maybe not 16, but close to it, right? And had a really interesting, sustainable beauty brand. And you were, in fact, part of the Sephora Accelerate program, which is a huge honor to be a part of. And from what I gather, you learned so much going through that. Obviously, from my end, we help brands once they're in, right, sell through. But what did you learn going through that program about what it means to be on shelf for Sephora, what you should be preparing for as a founder or anything along those lines?

SPEAKER_01 7:20

Yeah, I think, well, first of all, going through Sephora's Accelerate program is obviously helpful. I don't think it necessarily prepared me for everything that you get yourself into when you go into a Sephora. Um, and we launched my brand in 2021. So it was five years ago now, which I think even Sephora has shifted so much, right? But really, when we were going in, um, I think Sephora was a good brand builder. I think today you need more brand equity when you enter into doors. But back then Sephora was still very much looked at as you could build your brand with them. And something that I just was not prepared for was like how quickly that can move. We entered Sephora, we sold out our launch and we could not restock fast enough, which again, it was great, but then it was really not great because we got took off of all of the marketing calendars. Um, you know, we were planning to launch in store, like we just couldn't hit any of those timelines anymore. And so it completely threw off our business.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

And what's interesting is I've I've heard stories like this before about, you know, independent brands getting the shot that we all jump up and down about, right? It's like, yes, I got Sephora, or it's not even just Sephora, it's any big retailer, right? And then the reality of operating within the retailer almost hinders your operations. And I've had other brand founder friends almost go out of business because of because they weren't prepared.

SPEAKER_01 8:53

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, knowing, like obviously the launch is so exciting, but like knowing how to maintain that momentum and continue to scale it is so critical. And also having the right partners, having the right educators on your team to educate Sephora staff, like there's so much that I think smaller brands don't think about, especially if they hadn't done it before. Um, and we had launched Credo, we were in store with Credo. I was able to go to a lot of the Credo stores, meet the staff, do training, do virtual trainings. And at that volume, it's very doable to do as a smaller brand. But Sephora is just like it's it's such a larger animal. You've got to be ready for it.

SPEAKER_00 9:36

Yeah, it's a beast. So when you close down your brand, instead of figuring out, like, okay, am I gonna launch another brand? I'm gonna go work for a brand, instead, you decided to give access for biotech for emerging brands. Like that phrase alone. I'm like, nobody was doing this, right? It's like beauty founders and biotech are not necessarily like lockstep, especially when you were starting out. And it's such a necessary need, right? When we talk about biotech, sustainability, et cetera. What did you realize when you did this? What were you thinking about and realizing that the access could change for founders and the industry in particular?

SPEAKER_01 10:15

First of all, I noticed right away I sat in a really interesting niche. There were very few people that had launched a brand that had a background in chemical engineering or chemistry, had really understood.

SPEAKER_00 10:30

Like we were great at chemistry. That's right.

SPEAKER_01 10:35

Like there, I just I hadn't really met many people like me. And so I was working with this group that I helped set up, which doesn't exist anymore, but it was like the Science of Beauty Collective. And so there were a lot of like scientists, people who wanted to start brands or who were working with brands that were thinking, like, you know, how do we change this industry? And so I started kind of like informally mentoring, and then that turned into formal advisory. And then, you know, I worked with contract manufacturers, laboratories, biotech companies, raw material companies that were global, like just really understanding every bit of this landscape. And then obviously on the brand side, especially as it relates to product development. So I just really noticed very quickly that, you know, the scientists, the chemists, even the salespeople, most of them had never sat on the brand side. And the brands had no idea what questions to ask because they weren't ever developing their own products. It usually was going to contract manufacturer, formulator. Maybe they had a product development consultant. And there was such a disconnect, not only in the way that they used language. Like I say, I always say I speak seven different English languages because I can speak to so many different people. Um, but it's true. You know, I can go pitch to an investor, like you name it, I can talk to them. But um that's a superpower writing their galley. Right. It is. And so honestly, when they were having these conversations and I was sitting on the phone, I was like, it's not only that they're speaking different languages, there's like no chance that they're gonna understand each other. And so I started Cyndo, you know, to connect the dots. Um, and I didn't want to just build another product to your point. I really wanted to build a space for other brands to have access to do the right thing that was actually better, and have someone they could come to that understood how to do it better. And there was kind of like, you know, no BS, I can give you everything you need. And um, so Sindeo was born, and honestly, it's expanded to also having fractional support, advisory, product development, operations, super like $2,500 a month, because most of these brands could hire like an intern or you know, someone really junior for that price. But this gives them so much more value and really understanding how to build differently, even before they go to market. So that was a really important next step in my journey for me to set up to know that like I provided the infrastructure for other brands to do it right.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

That's huge. Your phrase you just said, providing the infrastructure for other brands. Like very few people stop to think about that for literally paving the road, paving the way, building the bridges. Why is that so important to you?

SPEAKER_01 13:35

It's so important because I think it's like one of these things. Like I always lead by example, right? Like I would never tell you how to go about starting a clean, sustainable beauty brand if I hadn't done it before. And I feel really um connected to that. I think like you have to experience it. And again, I spent three years just bouncing around different fractional roles, seeing the perspectives from all of these different shareholders that are involved in innovation, only to be able to lay the groundwork to then make it scalable, right? Make it accessible. And I don't think you can do that unless you've sat in those seats and you've seen it from their perspective, right? Like obviously there's so many great advisors and and ex-founders out there. And I always like have this question of where do founders go next, you know? And I think for me, this was just like the obvious how do I make the industry better? Because my whole goal was like clean up the beauty space.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

So I love this. And now in addition to Sendeo, you're also the CEO, like we mentioned, of Sansi Skincare, which is not a small, it's not like a little small side job. So yeah, no full-time roles. I'd love to talk about the fact, you know, right now we're seeing kind of the counter reaction to celebrity-backed brands, right? Yeah. You know, they can be dismissed as surface level marketing, but obviously, under your leadership, you were fractional with them and you really built them very strongly on scientific credibility. That was a really big deal for this brand, of course. And, you know, conviction of what they believe in. And then, of course, Pamela, the founder's belief, you know, in skin and representation, especially for women over 40, right? What does it mean for you to build for women in this industry, right? That some systematically women are underestimated after they get past the age of 30, right? What has that meant for you to build this type of brand?

SPEAKER_01 15:40

Yeah, I think it's it's so interesting because we have this demo that they're literally coming from all of these brands, kind of like we talked about, that are very conventional when it comes to beauty. They've been they're the legacy brands, they're telling you, you know, you need to look youthful and glowy and all of these things, and the photos are photoshopped. And you know, I don't think AI is a real photo that they're AI, right? Like, like now they're literally they're not even photoshopped, they're AI. So I think, you know, it's also it's women getting to this point in their life when they're so confident and comfortable in who they are, they don't want to be sold. And so we always say, like, Sansie is a place to come home to. Like you really come back and you look at the brand and you just feel like yourself again. And so we really want to be that place where women come when they're like tired of being oversold and they're just so ready to just be like, this is me. I'm in my own skin, I feel amazing. And obvious, obviously, Emma is a huge testament to that. Like she has inspired me so much. Like, I used to like put on makeup to go to the gym. Like, I was that girl. So I I even feel like a shift in myself. I'm like, oh my gosh, this woman, obviously, she's gorgeous, but like she just has such a beautiful energy and she's inspired me so much. I want to bring that to more people. And I get excited about being able to just share that with more and more women. And when it comes to product, like, as you mentioned, I was fractional on Sansie before I went full-time to run this business. And I really saw from the very beginning interactions with the team to develop the products that they wanted to do it differently. They wanted to know everything. Like Pamela was asking questions that other people never gave her answers to. And I was like, I will dive in, I will tell you everything about this ingredient. I love that.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

I'd love to know.

SPEAKER_01 17:49

Yes. Literally. So I had already been diving in so much behind the scenes before I came forward um to the CEO role. And so that really also gave me so much confidence that I could deliver what these women were asking for as well.

SPEAKER_00 18:05

I love that so much. Based on your learnings from when you had your own brand, do you see Sansi making the jump from DTC into retail? I only ask because you know I love retail. But sometimes the math doesn't math. But again, you know, we do love to touch, feel, experience product in real life. How are you thinking about that? Or are you thinking about that?

SPEAKER_01 18:27

Yeah, definitely thinking about that. And early in these conversations as well. I think the interesting thing about Sonzi is Pamela obviously has global reach. So we have customers that are paying over $50 to ship a lip balm somewhere in the world for that.

SPEAKER_00 18:41

That's crazy. That's awesome.

SPEAKER_01 18:45

And it's like, you know, it's a $22 lip balm in the US. Oh, it's a $72 lip balm. Yeah. It's it's so crazy to me. And so I really feel that we need to show up for the customers that we have first. So our first step for um distribution is to expand into international warehouses so we can get those customers we're already serving, who are, you know, really investing in the brand. We can get them product faster and cheaper and just make it overall more accessible. Retail, I do think is so important. It's so important for our customer, to your point. We love to touch and feel and smell, and that's definitely a part of where we're going. Um, I definitely, based on my learnings, want to go at the right time with the right partners. And that's why those conversations need to start so early. Even with Sephora, I started speaking to them at the end of 2019 and we launched early 2021, and that was really fast.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 19:47

Maybe too fast and another learning. But yeah, that's why we start these conversations, you know, today and very mindfully and making making sure also our retail partners are aligned with our brand strategy and it makes sense for them and their customers and meet meeting some of our customers where they already are, right?

SPEAKER_00 20:06

I love that. Um cheering you on to find that right retailer just selfishly so that we can go explore and touch and play with it. So you've spent your career, right, bridging gaps, sustainability, performance, indie brands with biotech, access, celebrity brands, you know, looking at all of it together. Where do you think female founders are still walked out of like the larger conversations or infrastructure? If you wanted to end it on like this is the gap that we still need to close, what do you see?

SPEAKER_01 20:38

And I hope I can address more of this. I try to help where I can, but I do really feel like it's in funding. Not that every brand that's being built is necessarily like a venture-backable brand, but when it is and when there's good potential, I still see women struggling so much to raise the capital that they need. Um, and also having been a first-time founder, solo female, raising on my own, it was really challenging.

SPEAKER_00 21:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 21:07

Um, I don't want to say I got lucky, but in a way I did. I did look forward to the city.

SPEAKER_00 21:11

Because I'm preparation opportunity.

SPEAKER_01 21:13

So but yeah, I I hope, you know, maybe that's something that I can do more with in the future. But I think even from the side of like scientists and all this amazing work I've seen behind the scenes, the women rarely get funded. And it's much more tough for them.

SPEAKER_00 21:31

So I think that's enough gap all the time. Yes. That's true. It's a conversation for part two.

unknown 21:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 21:41

Thank you so much for joining us today. For people listening at home, can you tell everybody where to find you? Um, if they want to support you, cheer you on with all things Sansi and Sendeo.

SPEAKER_01 21:53

Yeah. So um, Sansi, you can find us at sansieskin.com and on Instagram, SonziSkin, TikTok. Sonzi. Yeah, and Cyndao is Syndeoaccelerate.com. Thank you so much, Kaylee. Thank you.

SPEAKER_00 22:08

These conversations matter because who gets to speak shapes who gets to win. If this episode challenged how you see beauty, business, or the power behind the industry, share it with someone who needs to hear it. To connect or explore more, check the show notes. I'm Susanna Dellinger, and this has been Off the Shelf.