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Devanshi Garg is founder of vegan and cruelty-free skincare brand Motif.
How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in retail? I’m on a mission to improve skin health.
One thing we can’t guess about your job from your LinkedIn profile? I almost had a career in food entertainment. I was the host of a food show and I’ve been cooking since as far as I can remember. In many ways, entrepreneurship is like cooking—taking the resources you have available to you to create a unique vision, often in service of others.
What’s your favorite project you’ve worked on? Formulating our award-winning Abundance Plumping PhytoCeramide Cleanser. I was a first-time mom and my daughter was only six months old. I had recently gone back to work after being on maternity leave. We were in the midst of Covid and had moved out of the city, our home for the last 12 years. I was working with our dermatologist and these were calls I usually took in the evening after everyone was asleep. I remember holding all these doubts about whether or not I could build a meaningful beauty company. And I remember receiving our very first submission from our lab one evening. I tried it on and my face felt like it had never felt before—so soft, plump, and healthy. I quit my job the next day.
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Which emerging retail trend are you most excited about right now, and why? The role of social media in retail is not a recent trend by any means but we’re definitely seeing an acceleration in the extent by which it influences our purchase behavior. It’s hard to deny the value of word of mouth in giving and receiving recommendations. I am most excited to see the power of the “typical” influencer normalizing and being displaced by true content creators who have a genuine relationship with their audience and an authentic desire to give back. They are the ones truly driving real movement and conversions in retail.
What’s your go-to coffee order? Small decaf cortado.
Worst piece of advice you’ve received? “Don’t start a skincare company, the market is too crowded.” I always attempt to give productive advice. A saturated market is a known fact that might be helpful to share; however, there have been enough times that a challenger brand entered a highly saturated market and succeeded. I would have rephrased this worst advice to “Skincare is saturated. Make sure you are building something truly unique and impactful.”
What was your favorite retail product when you were 15, and what’s your favorite retail product now? When I was 15, I was obsessed with music and fragrance. My favorite retail products would have been a CD (yes, I’m giving away my age) of my favorite band or an interesting perfume. Today, my favorite retail products are sustainable, thoughtful, and well-designed kids’ toys.