BEHIND THE CLICK PODCAST WITH VERA DOPPLER: HOW A.N.D. BEAUTY WENT FROM A STRUGGLING BRAND TO 6,000 STORES

From pop star dreams to drugstore shelves

Vera grew up in a tiny village in rural Austria. As a child, the last line in her diary, written for years, was a plea to become a singer. She eventually did, working as a recording artist and touring, which she calls her proof point that manifesting works. Later she built a boutique personal-branding agency, among the first of its kind in the DACH region, by her account, with up to 15 people and clients such as Chanel, Zalando and H&M.

What connects all of it, she says, is one trigger: potential. She wants to give people something they love. Her agency work was creative and well paid, but it reached only a small, elite circle. She always felt the creative input deserved a bigger audience.

The 11th “no”

The opportunity came in the form of a struggling cold-wax depilatory brand. It was already in Müller stores, but it was out of money and hadn’t posted on social media for a year and a half. Her future co-founder approached her about six times, and by her count she said no ten or eleven times: wrong category, unclear vision, not ambitious enough.

He eventually reached her through her husband, with a different pitch. Everything could change, including the product, the vision and the name. The one thing nobody can build from scratch in today’s retail landscape is access to the shelf, and he had it. That was the potential that tipped her.

Seven months, from a blank page

The team locked itself away for six months and rebuilt everything: name, logo, corporate identity, products and categories. The old product left the shelves, and the new range was back in stores within seven months. The schedule was non-negotiable, because drugstore retail typically offers one pitch window per year. Missing it means waiting twelve months.

Vera is not a chemist or cosmetologist, and she sees that as an advantage. She judged products purely as a consumer. Each one has to solve a real problem or beat what is already on the shelf, because trends spark interest but not repurchase. Missing expertise was brought in from outside, and she calls the products her “babies” because each one must tick every box.

The unglamorous economics of beauty

Behind the cute packaging, Vera says, is brutal arithmetic. At this scale, minimum order quantities are not 10,000 units but around 200,000, which means huge upfront cash. A.N.D. beauty is close to profitability but not there yet. Her view is that many beauty brands fail not because customers don’t want the product, but because they run out of money before the business scales.

Her advice for young brands:

• Be honest about what you bring. Every centimeter of drugstore shelf is contested by the world’s largest consumer brands.
• Be unromantic about the product. A beautiful story and a good texture are not enough if the marketing isn’t rock solid.
• Find a numbers person. Her co-founder is the business-minded counterweight who pulls her back when she goes “offshore”, while she pushes him to be bolder.
• Skip the perfect business plan. She has started several companies and never with a complete one. Get the unit economics right and take small steps.

Surviving the copycats

The brand’s first product was a hypochlorous acid spray, which it brought to European retail first. Buying teams were skeptical (“are you selling us water in a spray bottle?”). After launch, about 15 other brands followed, and larger players undercut A.N.D. beauty by about €8 thanks to economies of scale. Vera’s answer is speed and intuition: copy her as much as you like, she says, because she is “three chess moves ahead.” Wider distribution now lets her adjust pricing. Products that underperform are not reordered, so the team learns and moves on.

Losing a team, finding a new one

The hardest part was people. Of the core team Vera inherited, everyone left, and she went to therapy over it. Her framing is generous: it is like signing up to work in a bakery and suddenly finding yourself in a boba shop. Leaving is legitimate.

Hiring in rural Austria was difficult, so A.N.D. beauty opened a second location in Vienna for its marketing team, which turned out to be the right call. Vera now hires by values rather than CVs. She asks trusted employees whether someone from their “value house” (a cousin, a sister, a friend) could work next to her. That is how she hired a colleague’s sister, and the most recent hire came through a “Netflix-style” video sent to 30 well-connected people.

She is equally open with candidates: roughly 75-hour weeks, a fast, sometimes chaotic pace, and no 9-to-5. The next challenge, planned for 2027, is building middle management so the company no longer depends on her instincts.

Personal branding is a second job

Vera’s Instagram presence is part of the brand, and she tries to show both the ups and the hard moments. She remembers being a new mother with no money or plan, feeling like a failure next to polished founders, and does not want anyone to feel that way because of her. Her best-performing post was about a severe panic attack. Posting it made the problem “legit” for her, and she says it brought colleagues and friends closer and pushed her back into therapy and into working with a coach for the first time.

She is also candid about the downsides: personal branding is demanding, the line between sharing and performing is thin, and she expects criticism to come with visibility. Boundaries, she says, are essential.

What she wants founders to remember

There is no linear path, and it is never too late to change course. Vera describes living “seven lives” and, at 40, says there is always another day and another door, whatever your age. Her milestones now include seeing A.N.D. beauty at Rossmann, expanding into neighboring European countries and, one day, a store in New York or Delhi.

Her closing advice:

• “It’s never enough and that’s okay.” Don’t wait for the perfect moment, time or setup. Whatever is on your plate now is not forever.
• Never take no for an answer. She has heard it many times, and often agreed to disagree.

Watch the full episode with Vera Doppler

The full conversation goes much deeper into rebuilding a brand from scratch, the economics of drugstore retail, hiring by values, competing with global giants and the realities of personal branding. To hear Vera explain it in her own words, watch the complete episode of Behind the Click:

You can also listen to the episode on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

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