How we grewKiwabi
Where they were
Kiwabi brings Japanese scalp science to the US, UK and Europe: a scalp massage hair essence, a deep-sea scalp cleanser and a gray-root color brush. The products converted once people tried them, but almost nobody had. The creator budget was small and the market rate was not: influencers quoted an average of $1,505 per post, which would have bought about twenty posts a year.
What I decided
I decided to stop buying reach and build a funnel that never switches off. We gifted product with no strings attached, and creators who genuinely loved it moved up to paid deals priced by audience tier, not by their ask, at $99 on average. Each month focused on one product and the people who cared most about it: creators with visible grays for the color brush, new mothers dealing with postpartum shedding for the hair essence. Every story carried an affiliate link or code, and when creators pushed for upfront fees, we showed them what other affiliates were actually earning on commission.
What happened
Thirty-three months in, 363 collaborations have produced 268 reels and 566 stories for $31,767 in total creator spend, about $38 a post. The 221 posts we track earned 3.57 million views, and one creator with 17,000 followers reached 463,000 views on a single post. The program has driven more than $300K in affiliate and creator-attributed sales, a 10x return from affiliate sales alone, while Kiwabi’s own team ran the paid amplification. The engine is still running, and in 2026 Kiwabi asked me to take it into India.
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