Makeup Artist Katie Jane Hughes Talks Investment, Working with Your Husband, the Founder Group Chats that Save Her Life, Her Top Skincare Tip, and More

Fat Mascara

The episode explores the entrepreneurial journey of makeup artist Katie Jane Hughes, tracing her path from working with Butter London to fou

Key takeaways

• KJH.Brand focuses on subtle innovation rather than gimmicks, such as their custom pine-cone shaped micro mascara wand.
• The brand was self-funded for nearly three years before moving into a 'friends and family' investment stage.

Main topics

• Beauty brand entrepreneurship
• Product innovation and design

Notable quotes

I don't think we're really self-taught in anything. There's always somebody that helps you learn.

Conclusion

A deep dive into how authenticity, education, and community can drive

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:06) Hey, everyone. Welcome to Fat Mascara. I have the incomparable Katie Jane Hughes on the show today. Gosh, I met, and we'll talk about it on the show, but I met Katie when she was doing nails for Butter London. Then I remember she was coming to New York. She was doing makeup. Now, you can catch Katie Jane Hughes at Sephora with her massively successful brand. touring the world with Dua Lipa, one of her top clients, and continuing to grow her audience of over 1 million followers by really breaking down the essentials of beauty. So she really is somebody who I think prioritizes teaching, educating, and connecting with her audience first, which is why I wanted to bring her here one-to-one with you. I really hope you enjoy this conversation I did. Let's take it away, Katie. Speaker 2 (1:01) Chris Welton, people call you Katie Speaker 1 (1:02) Jane. They just call you Katie. Nobody calls me Katie Jane ever. People either call me KJH Katie or Katie Jane Hughes. They're like, oh my God, it's Katie Jane Hughes. Oh my God, hi, KJH. They Speaker 2 (1:13) do say your full name. I know people always say to me, Katie Jane, you know who you should have on? Katie Jane Hughes. It's a whole mouthful. Speaker 1 (1:20) It is a mouthful. But no, I think my name when I was a kid was just Katie Hughes. When I started to search for my domain name, katiehughes.com was taken. And so I just thought, let me throw my middle name in there and see if that domain name is available. And it was because there's another makeup artist actually called Katie Hughes in the UK. And so I think she had. Yeah. Speaker 2 (1:38) Well, that's unfortunate for her right now. Sorry, Katie. That's hilarious. Well, maybe she's getting some traffic. Maybe, yeah. We'll look into Katie Hughes after this. But I thought that I would be talking to you from your home in New Jersey. Speaker 1 (1:53) Yeah. Sadly, I'm not in my conversation pit in the woods with the bears and the deer. I'm in our Brooklyn studio apartment because my sweet husband's been there hankering down with the dose of COVID, with the bout of COVID. So he's been there all week. He's like, I don't want to get you sick. You have to travel next week for fashion week. I was like, oh, but I miss him so much. And I've been so bored and not knowing what to do. Last night I watched Apex. Oh my God, have you watched that film? It's so freaky. Speaker 2 (2:17) I haven't watched a movie since 2020. Speaker 1 (2:19) Charlize Theron, Taryn Edgerton film, where she's like an extreme outdoors person and she finds herself in situations. And his character in this film is wild. I mean, I love him. I think he's such a good actor. Speaker 2 (2:32) I still have Knives Out, Glass Onion on my queue. That's how far behind I am. No, really, this is not. I used to watch every movie that came out and now it's, my lifestyle is a little. little film challenged right now. But I have to say, I loved when I heard and I saw that you were moving to New Jersey for weekends and part of the time. I don't know. I'm from New Jersey. I live in New Jersey. Where do you live? I live in Hoboken. Speaker 1 (2:58) Ah, cute. You're like in the Manhattan of New Jersey. Yeah. I mean, we keep thinking about that. We keep saying, do we want to move to Hoboken? Because it's a little closer to the house. We probably Speaker 2 (3:07) use Speaker 1 (3:08) the house more if we live there. I Speaker 2 (3:09) love your house. I love when you show it. I love the conversation piece. It is difficult to find a mid-century modern that is still preserved that way. But when I saw it again, because I was looking at your ad, what do you call it? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The one, Speaker 1 (3:24) the mascara, the micro-scara campaign. Yes. And Speaker 2 (3:27) I'm like, she's filming it at her house. Speaker 1 (3:30) Well, you know, the thing is, we really want that house to become a location house. It is actually listed on location department, but it hasn't had any big bookings just yet. Explain what that is, because not everybody knows. A Speaker 2 (3:41) location Speaker 1 (3:41) house is where films and TV productions will use the house as a set. So we actually had a guy come and do a scouting for a movie. that was taking place largely in denville which is where our house is and he was like the kitchen of the era is just too big the era that they were shooting in was the 50s and he was like the the kitchen is too large for the thing but i'll keep it in mind for the project so we're waiting so then when me and my team at kjh brand were like thinking of creative for this shoot i was like can we shoot it in the house i just need to do something in the house that's fun and creative that's of a story and we did it and it was so much fun so Speaker 2 (4:16) Okay, we're going to talk about the micro mascara, the actual product in a second. But I need to tell you, I was screaming when I saw that. I'm not literally screaming, but kind of. The closest I can, you know, when people say I'm screaming and they're not. I was kind of almost there. Oh, Speaker 1 (4:30) good. Speaker 2 (4:31) So here's the story, the true story. And you can vet this with Jen Sullivan, okay? Okay. When Jen and I were creating Fat Mascara, this podcast. We're just putting different words together and everything. And I was like, well, at the time, and I just recently told the story and I never tell the story, so it's annoying. I just told it to another guest like two weeks ago. But it was mascara wars. And do you remember how freaking big all of the big commercial brands' mascaras were getting? It was like blimps, right? Yeah. And then I said, I don't know where my mind was going. I was like, but... I feel like it's going to be like you go to the grocery store and you pick up a mascara and you have to open the trunk to like put it in. And then Jen and I just kept on riffing on with each other and laughing about how crazy the mascara was. Yeah. And then we've never talked about it ever again. And then I was like, Katie Jane Hughes, just, it was like, this is the funniest thing I've ever seen. I mean, you pick up the giant wand and you put, it's like, you're doing your lashes. I was like, this is genius. Speaker 1 (5:37) It Speaker 2 (5:37) was Speaker 1 (5:37) a Speaker 2 (5:37) lot of fun. Speaker 1 (5:38) It was so much fun. I mean, we found a girl on TikTok who makes fabrications of large, oversized products. We were like, can you make us a large mascara one for a shoot? A week and a half. She was like, I can do it. And we commissioned her to make it for us. Is she an artist or is she a props person? She's like an artist slash props person, I think, on Instagram, on TikTok. And she does all these videos. She'll verbatim take a Tarte product and copy it. in giant form. It's really, really cool what she can do. So we've, Hannah on my team found her on TikTok and we were like, let's reach out to this girl and see if she can do this for us. That's awesome. Speaker 2 (6:10) Does she just do beauty stuff? Speaker 1 (6:11) Mostly, yeah, but I'll find her on TikTok and send it to you. Speaker 2 (6:14) Is she like a pop artist, right? Okay, so. Speaker 1 (6:16) I mean, Speaker 2 (6:17) yeah, I'm like, Speaker 1 (6:17) can you do something to my conversation pit in New Jersey? Because we keep getting contractors fall through left and right. Because we want to do a little. edit to the conversation pit and make it wood and cushions and stuff. Because right now it doesn't contrast from the rest of the stone floor throughout the entire house. You'll have to show me a picture. I don't really know what you Speaker 2 (6:32) mean. Speaker 1 (6:32) I'll show it to you. But yeah, we need a set designer to do that. Speaker 2 (6:35) I have heard about that from everyone who has work done in their home in this area, that finding a contractor, it's like once you find their name, it's like you keep that so... Why are they... We'll talk about your brand in a second. Why do they keep bailing? Like, don't people want... a job? I Speaker 1 (6:52) don't know. I think, Speaker 2 (6:53) I Speaker 1 (6:54) really don't know. I guess our situation is that it's a small scale project. It's not the whole home reno. It's like me, right? If I get a job for one day with one person versus 10 days with another person that's traveling, I have to take the 10 day, you know what I mean? Yeah, of course. So maybe it's that kind of thing that's happening to us. Who knows? Speaker 2 (7:14) Okay. So let's go back to the mascara. So You created this mascara. This is part of the KJH brand. How many products have you done right now? Because you're not rolling out what I love about your brand. You're not... We're not overly producing product. Yeah. We Speaker 1 (7:28) have seven categories and about 29 SKUs, I think, off the top of my head. We have like a highlight product. We have a lip and cheek product. We have a lipstick product, a contour product. We have brushes, mascara, brow gel, and that's about it. But the main sort of core of the inspiration of this was that, well, for me, As a founder and as a product developer, I just always want to try and innovate somewhat because it's so hard to innovate nowadays because if it's innovative, there's a big chance it's also going to be a gimmick. There's a fine line between just producing more of what's already out there and producing a gimmick. That sort of sweet spot of innovation, I think, needs to be just almost subtle differences on things that already exist or just more thoughtful versions of things that already exist that aren't copycats of other things. Upon launching Sephora, that was one of the things that I was afraid of. I was like, are you encouraged from your Sephora merchants to just produce more of what sells well from other brands? And thank God I've not had that experience. But that's, I guess, a different type of conversation. But I was like, why is it that the industry thinks that a bigger mascara wand equals bigger and better lashes? Because bigger actually doesn't give you as much precision and control than a small wand does. For example, if you use this brush for your foundation, which you could if