KIKI World: More Than Make-Up
KIKI World: More Than Make-Up
The definitive case study on a next-gen beauty brand that's pioneering community-led commerce with the help of Web3.
KIKI World, a next-gen beauty brand, is pioneering a new, Web3-enabled business model with community and co-creation at the core.
Why is this interesting?
It’s the first consumer brand that’s entirely community-led and participative, offering a glimpse into a future of brand building.
We’ve analyzed the case and spoke to the founders. Spoiler: What they’re up to is remarkable.
In this article, we’ll look at:
Who’s KIKI World?
KIKI World’s Web3 journey
Performance Assessment
Why Web3
What’s Next & Take-Aways for Brand Leaders
Ready? Let’s jump in.
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KIKI World: A Community-Led Brand
KIKI World is flipping the script on traditional beauty.
Founded in May 2023 by Jana Bobosikova, Ricky Chan, and Brendon Garner, KIKI World is the new kid on the block among beauty brands.
The difference? Coming out of a16z crypto’s start-up school and funded by prominent crypto VCs, KIKI World experiments with a Web3-first approach, radically focusing on co-creation and community.1
“We decided our mission would be to empower consumers by helping them create what they want, not what an industry says they need,”
says Jana.
Central to KIKI World's ethos is co-creation, inclusivity and personal empowerment — a departure from traditional, top-down, product centric beauty offerings.
Through this model, the community has considerable influence, voting on everything from product features to new concepts.
This ensures that each product is a collaborative result of the collective creativity and zeal of its user base and that products truly reflect the desires and needs of its users.
Sounds great, right?
Hold tight: KIKI World is more than just co-creation, it’s flipping the script on community-led commerce.
KIKI World’s Web3 Strategy
What’s “Web3” about KIKI World?
At first glance, not a lot. You won’t find any Web3 jargon on their webpage, nor do they have a presence on Discord or “crypto twitter”, unlike many other consumer brands in Web3. However, a closer look reveals a different picture: KIKI World is built with Web3 at its core.
In their lite paper, they write:
“Customers, content creators and corporate collaborators are all on an equal playing ground, with equal opportunity to stake products being made through voting, and in product ownership by owning virtual assets that correspond to physical product sales.”
Sounds exciting, right? Let’s untangle this.
Power to The Consumer
Co-creation is the core of the KIKI World experience. But before we jump into how this looks like, a short timeline of events.
Timeline
November 30, 2022: KIKI World was selected out of 8,000 applications to join a16z's crypto accelerator, Crypto Startup School.
May 24, 2023: KIKI World demos at a16z’s Crypto Startup School (CSS) Demo Day, and shares its announcements on WWD, Highsnobiety, Forbes, and Vogue. It officially launches as “the first beauty platform powered entirely by the community.”
July 15, 2023: KIKI conducts its first cohort of members and onchain votes. This culminated in the Pearl Pretty Nail Graffiti launch, accompanied by an exclusive collectible NFT drop for its users.
September 8, 2023: During the New York Fashion Week (NYFW), KIKI World was featured in Elle Magazine and Vogue. It also launched an activation called the Fashion Week House Party, decked with a dedicated makeup station and the KIKI World Lab Sample Briefcase.
November 11 2023: KIKI World debuts Chipped, alongside Gossip, the world's first NFC-chipped manufactured press-on nails, at SheFi Summit Istanbul with Disco and Enso Collective. winny.eth, who heads Gossip Protocol, was able to present the product to over 200 crypto natives at Devconnect, process over 1000 data points, and garner over 1 million impressions on Twitter.
January 23, 2024: In collaboration with Cosmos Labs, KIKI World announces the Skin Development Kit (SDK), its first community-created skincare product. The SDK allows members to vote on a number of products (what could result in over 130,000 formulations!) within the skincare category, such as the glow balm, moisturizer, serum, and face oil.
Product Lineup
In its inaugural year, KIKI World released an impressive line of products, including:
Pretty Nail Graffiti A standout product that allows users to express their creativity with an odorless, peelable nail polish,
1 Night Strand vibrant, 1-day temporary hair paint which washes out in one wash
SOS Stickers patches that reduce the appearance of blemishes overnight
Chipped the world’s first-ever NFC press on nails. Each set comes with 2 press-on nails with an embedded NFC chip . Users can complete their KIKI profile, filling in their social details, which can later be shared by holding their (nail) chip to the top of a phone.
Each product features SmartPen technology, enabling users to connect their product to their mobile device and earn rewards with every use, enhancing the engagement and co-creation experience.
Consumers as Co-Creators
The process is simple. Customers sign up with an account, enter their name, phone and email and get access to daily votes. When they vote, they’re rewarded with points and digital collectibles (NFTs):
Here’s how a member’s Web3 journey in KIKI World might look like:
Sign Up: Users can sign up with their phone number email, without having to use a wallet like MetaMask. (+100 KIKI Points)
[Optional] Minting the KIKI World Pass: Members mint a non-transferrable, soulbound token (SBT) on Polygon that is linked to each member’s “Dynamic Profile”. This profile is contains off-chain, personal data on the users that’s shared when interacting with products (e.g. scanning a chipped finger nail). As of now, the KIKI World Pass is the piece of the KIKI World experience that lives on-chain. The rest of the data is stored off-chain and is linked to the member pass. The pass gives holders the right to vote and earn rewards.2
Link to Dynamic Profile: The Dynamic Profile, stored off-chain, is linked to each users’ email, and gets updated after each action is performed on the KIKI platform, whether through voting, engaging with the brand’s platform, or using the product.
Participate in Voting: With the KIKI World Pass, each member can participate in off-chain voting processes to influence the future of KIKI’s product line (e.g moisturizer or lipstick) or attributes (e.g color, fragrance, etc). First-time votes get 50 points, and each successive vote gets 5 points. Every SBT holder will be eligible to vote, and the weight of their vote will scale based on the other KIKI World NFTs held in their wallet.
Earn Rewards: By participating in these voting sessions, each member earns KIKI points and digital collectibles, which may be used for various benefits within the KIKI World platform, such as free products and special discounts, or even generate royalty revenues from sales.
The KIKI World experience is all about giving power back to the consumer by rewarding them for their engagement.
Zooming out: Voting to co-create products is hardly something new.
However, KIKI World uniquely combines this with gamification, digi-physical experiences, on-chain data, and digital ownership.
Let’s unpack this.
From Participants to Co-Beneficiaries
KIKI World wants to make consumers co-owners and co-beneficiaries. These are terms that are thrown around loosely so let’s break down what this means:
Previously. Brands used third-party channels and creators / KOL to market their products; the creators’ pay was capped, without having a stake in the brands’ success.
Platforms captured the value of consumer attention and engagement, charging brands for access and leaving customers unrewarded.
Similarly, consumers were passive, transactional buyers with no stake in the product and/or brand
Now, KIKI World aims to integrate consumers and creators into a unified, participative brand experience and let them benefit from its success by rewarding them with KIKI points, digital collectibles and revenue for products sold.
In short: Consumers (and creators!) not only become the most important participants of KIKI World’s value chain, they also benefit.
Gamified Loyalty
We all know that loyalty pays off.3
Traditionally, beauty brands like Sephora’s Beauty Insider and Ulta’s Beauty Rewards program rewards customers with points for purchases, offering access to exclusive promotions, gifts, and discounts. Members progress through tiers based on annual spending, unlocking greater benefits as they spend more.
No business can make money on customers who are chronic switchers. Loyal customers spend more, more frequently, and for longer. This is why businesses essentially reward repeated transactions (retention).
(Read our deep dive on loyalty here).
KIKI World knows this. But instead of betting on transactional relationships, KIKI World makes the brand and product experience gamified and participative.
Members not only receive points and digital collectibles for voting, but also for using the KIKI World products.4
“We wanted to create a more fluid, digital-physical brand where it would be normal to play with it online and then also find in-store”,
says Jana Bobosikova, Co-Founder of KIKI World.
This creates a loop of rewards and engagement that’s not necessarily tied to a product purchase, but brings members closer to the brand.
More Data, Better Products
Each vote generates first-party data and helps KIKI World to understand and predict what consumers desire. This data is valuable for two reasons:
Open innovation: KIKI World can make this available to other brands too, creating more opportunities for collaboration within KIKI World ecosystem. In fact, product traits will be openly queryable from the blockchain.5
Time to market & capital efficiency: It allows KIKI World to inform future product development, effectively predict demand for certain products, and speed up production cycles. Thanks to robotics and AI, lead time to production is one month, which allows them to produce on-demand instead of pushing pre-produced products to the market. This saves time, capital, and (so is the hope) gives the people exactly what they want.
Performance Analysis
Compared to other brands we’ve looked at (Starbucks, Nike, Gucci, Fiat, Lacoste), KIKI World’s community-led commercial model is unique.
Plus, as KIKI World is built from the ground up, it doesn’t need to worry about execution and operational risk, damage to brand equity or figuring out how to roll out Web3 to more customers.
Meanwhile, established brands have the luxury of leveraging their existing brand recognition and customer base, experimenting on a grander scale, facilitated by bigger investments and existing distribution channels.
Strategy: What Sands Out
Unique commercial model: Regardless of its performance, combining co-creation, gamified loyalty, on-chain data, supply-chain innovation, and digi-physical experiences is remarkable on its own. With that, KIKI World has all the elements together to build a community-led brand with a business model that works.
Strong vision and principles: Coming out of a16z’s start-ups school, the founders are definitely Web3-pilled and align with its key principles: decentralization of power, ownership of data, and community. This helps them in executing on their long-term vision of establishing a new, community-led commerce model.
Staged roll-out of Web3 functionalities: KIKI World was smart to establish the key elements of the user experience (member login, voting, gamification) first and then gradually work their way towards adding Web3 functionality (e.g. wallets aren’t accessible). This allows them to target non-Web3-native users, which is the market they should be going for. Compared to other brands like Gucci who have been heavily experimenting with different use cases and platforms, KIKI World has a clear focus on one core experience: co-creating products.
User experience & design: Becoming a KIKI World member is one of the easiest Web3 onboarding flows we’ve seen. KIKI World achieves that by removing a lot of Web3 clutter. For example: hiding wallet addresses or avoiding the term “NFT” entirely.6 On top of that, they have a very extremely refined visual identity that’s distinct yet approachable enough to appeal to Web2 users.
The Numbers
All this, of course, needs to materialize to measurable results. Here is some data we’ve found or received from the KIKI World team:
Since its launch in May 2023, KIKI World accumulated more than 5,000 members and 20 voting campaigns; six week post launch, KIKI Word reported a bit over 3,000 members – a 70% growth in members in the first year.
The KIKI World Pass (its membership token) has 2,757 unique holders, which is about half of total members. Given that claiming the pass is very easy and one of the first things users do after signing up, we assume that a bit more than half of these 5,000 members are active users. We’ll investigate this further.
Over 50% of KIKI World Members have claimed collectibles
Over 50% of product sales are made by members who have voted in at least one co-creation campaign.
30% of members have voted more than two times and top members have voted more than 200 times
Ninety percent of the brand’s community is 18 to 24 years old, with a 20% male audience.
5,000 members might be minuscule for global beauty brands. But for KIKI World, that’s irrelevant at this point. Much more important is sustained member growth and KPIs around engagement that would validate their model of community-led commerce.
At this point, it feels like KIKI World is just getting started and the team is still fine-tuning the product market fit. And the numbers are promising: Voting participation is very high and translates to more sales.
The question will be: Can they sustain and scale that?7
Ultimately, exciting next-gen consumers with Web3 tech is one part; building a sustainable business model with good unit economics is another.
What’s missing: Community
For a brand that’s “community-led” we’ve encountered surprisingly little community vibes. KIKI World is (as of now) mostly a single-player experience without the ability to connect to other members – even on social media. Given that the platform launched in May 2023, other features might have been prioritized.
In our view, community — the ability to achieve status, exchange ideas and feel a sense of belonging — would be a key element for KIKI World, especially when combined with gamification.
Other brands, such as Lacoste, have done this exceptionally well. For Lacoste, community and co-creation happens in Discord and feels less “mechanical and clean” than in KIKI World.
According to KIKI World, connection to other members happens physically (aka IRL) and by wearing products the community created. And: They confirmed to launch member group chat soon (!).
Why Web3?
You might ask yourself: Isn’t everything KIKI World is doing here possible without blockchains?
Our short answer: Some of it is, yes.
However, blockchain will enable KIKI World to execute on its long-term vision of becoming a truly consumer-owned brand.
Here’s what’s possible without blockchain:
Membership portal with a member ID
Voting and co-participation
Receiving rewards for participation
What’s only possible with a blockchain:
True data ownership by the consumer: All information consumers will eventually be on-chain and be tied to their KIKI World user account. At this point, this hasn’t any benefits for consumers except that they might be able to freely trade their digital assets (e.g. product traits). However, it future-proofs for a web that’s being rebuilt with digital wallets and digital identities as a primary interaction interface and interoperable assets between brands and platforms. We’re still far away from this.
On-chain rewards for engagement: This includes engagement on KIKI World’s platform as well as for using their products; some of its products contain a chip that records its usage.
On-chain rewards for product sales: Consumers are automatically rewarded if a product is sold containing one of the traits they own (i.e. having the trait as an ERC-721 NFT in their wallet). According to KIKI World, sales will trigger a smart contract to pull cryptocurrency from a KIKI-owned treasury to the NFT-holder’s wallet.
Open trading of unique KIKI World product traits: Blockchain allows users to trade these product traits freely and outside of the KIKI World ecosystem; this isn’t yet possible, but would only be possible with on-chain assets.
Take-Aways for Brand Leaders
KIKI World is reinventing how brands engage and co-create with consumers. By combining gamified loyalty, digi-physical experiences, and on-chain data, they’re at the forefront of next-gen consumer engagement.
Tip: Recognize the signal. Find out how your brand can combine these elements more effectively to increase consumer engagement. Integrating blockchain should be a second-step and might require adapting your commercial model.
As of new, KIKI World is still an experiment, but a deeply inspiring one. Its unique approach has yet to find product-market fit and starting the brand from scratch made it technically easier to implement.
Tip: Treat KIKI World as an inspiration, not a blueprint.
What’s Next
Web3 is an opportunity to go beyond traditional incentives to foster a deeper sense of ownership and advocacy among consumers and fans of a brand.
KIKI World is the first consumer brand that tries to commercialize this at scale without appealing (and profiting) from a crowd of crypto-native supporters. And they deserve credit for that.
To achieve product-market fit, KIKI World will need to strike a balance between using Web3 to improve consumer experiences and ensuring that its messaging is accessible and engaging to a broad audience.
Unlike Web2 giants, it doesn’t have an established user base or the flexibility to pilot its initiatives among a segment of its audience.
Instead, it must rapidly resonate with and grow its community from the ground up, emphasizing the benefits of its Web3 integration in a way that is both compelling and comprehensible to its target demographic.
Co-creation at scale is hard – even the biggest brands are grappling with this. Given KIKI World’s strong vision and their freedom to experiment might give them a chance to pull it off.
And they might just reinvent community-led commerce for creators and brands at large.
Stay tuned.
– Marc
A special thanks to
for contributing to this article.__
Further Reading
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KIKI World secured backing from industry giants like Red DAO, Double Down, FirstLight, and 2 Punks Capital.
Some stats:
Keeping an existing customer is five to 25 times less expensive than acquiring a new one.
A 5% increase in customer loyalty correlates with a 25% increase in profit.
84% of consumers say they’re more likely to stick with a brand that offers a loyalty program. 3 out of 4 members of top-performing loyalty programs changed their behavior to generate more value for businesses. 64% of them are more likely to purchase more frequently.
KIKI embeds NFC chips into each product, so consumers are rewarded for each reapplication.
According to KIKI World:
KIKI member traits will be queryable from the blockchain, enabling anyone interested to understand subsets of the beauty market. This is invaluable insight for future product development and launches.
We’re investigating how KIKI World handles wallets for its users and how users could transfer assets to third party wallets.
Progressive loyalty: One approach could be tiered incentives that not only reward initial participation but also offer increased benefits for consistent engagement over time. This could help mitigate the issue of missed voting opportunities by providing a clear path for latecomers to contribute and be rewarded in subsequent rounds. Lacoste UNDW3 did this very well.
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