Ocean-Safe Beauty Products Tested by +100 ocean athletes - Meet Christina Kuklinski founder of KOOK
In a lot of protected marine reserves you aren't allowed to wear product in the water at all. Not sunscreen, not conditioner, nothing.
So if you dive, you choose between wrecked hair and risking damage to the thing you came to see. That's the gap Christina Kuklinski built Kook in.
She's a master scuba diver who spent two years living on boats before she made a single product, and a beauty industry insider who ran the category's spend data at American Express.
We get into what "reef safe" actually means, the hundred cold DMs that changed her first formula, the $10,000 trademark lesson, and the world record she's attempting on Venice Beach in September.
In this episode
- Why many marine reserves ban product in the water entirely, and what that leaves ocean athletes choosing between
- "Green", "non-toxic" and "eco-friendly" are unregulated terms, explained by someone who used to write them for a living
- The hundred cold DMs, the 80% response rate, and the cold-water finding that sent the hair mask back to the chemist
- The $10,000 trademark lesson: priority goes to first use in commerce, not first to file
- The world's largest beach cleanup, and a Guinness World Record with no incumbent
Timestamps:
00:39 Who Christina is and what Kook makes
06:26 Why "green" and "eco-friendly" are marketing, not regulation
13:29 Testing with 100 ocean athletes worldwide
30:55 The $10,000 trademark lesson
34:52 Planning the world's largest beach cleanup
- Kook — gotkook.com
- Instagram and TikTok — @got.kook
- Email Christina — hello@gotkook.com
- SeaTrees — sea-trees.org
- The beach cleanup — Venice Beach, Lifeguard Tower 18, 19 September, International Coastal Cleanup Day https://www.worldslargestbeachcleanup.com/
- Christina Kuklinski —https://www.linkedin.com/in/christina-kuklinski/
- Recommended Startup — Brooke Buckman and Deep Blue