Who goes to the United States to conquer the American market without speaking English?
Probably only someone crazy enough.
I was.
Anyone who still has a recording of our first Synergy Call knows exactly what I mean.
My English was not bad.
It was practically nonexistent.
I believe it was 2016 when I placed an advertisement in Los Angeles:
Assistant wanted.
But only if she also speaks German.
Seta responded to that advertisement.
More than ten years later, she is still with us.
We held our first interviews at one of my favorite hotels in Los Angeles, Casa del Mar.
I spoke German.
Seta translated everything into English.
That was how our American adventure began.
Not with a large US team.
Not with an American agency.
Not with a perfect presentation.
But with a German who wanted to conquer America without speaking English – and with Seta, who made sure anyone could understand him at all.

Then Came Venice Beach

In 2019, I moved into my house in Venice Beach.
In November, we held our first influencer event there.
Our plan was clear: we wanted to build the American market the same way we had built Europe.
Through retail.
Through influencers.
Through selected spas and estheticians.
It was a reasonable plan.
Then Covid arrived.
Suddenly, nothing was reasonable anymore.
The world closed its doors. Spas shut down. Beauty studios fought to survive. No one knew what the next few weeks or months would bring.
We still tried to build Oliveda through spas and estheticians.
But it was completely the wrong time.
No esthetician invests in an unknown new brand in the middle of an existential crisis.
We could believe in our products as fiercely as we wanted.
The market was not ready.
So once again, we had to question everything.
Not the products.
Not the olive trees.
The path to the people.

Then I Discovered Direct-to-Consumer

I discovered direct-to-consumer.
For the first time, we understood that we did not have to wait for a retailer, a spa or an esthetician to open the door to the American market for us.
We could walk through that door ourselves.
Directly to the people.
In 2022, we made the decision.
We would build America in a completely different way.
Not through the structures that already existed.
But through a new movement of Waterless Beauty Consultants.
Or rather:
Pioneers.
At the beginning of 2023, we published a press release that many people probably considered completely delusional.
We wrote that we would build a community of more than 30,000 Waterless Beauty Consultants within our first 18 months.
We did not have 30,000.
We had a garage.

The Garage in Venice Beach

Then it began.
Seta. Beatrice. Jaqueline. Maria. And me.
In a garage in Venice Beach.
At first, 40 orders arrived each day.
We packed them ourselves.
Then it became 100. Then 200. Then 500.
The garage became our office.
Our warehouse. Our packing station. Our command center.
Products, boxes, packing materials and orders were everywhere.
We worked from the garage. We packed in the garage. We grew in the garage.
Then 1,000 orders started arriving every day.
The garage had reached its limit.
So we moved into our first warehouse.
But that was only the beginning.
One thousand orders became thousands.
And eventually the volume exploded to as many as 10,000 orders a day.
Not in ten years.
Not with hundreds of millions of dollars in startup capital.
Not with a giant American organization.
It began with five people in a garage.
With a press release that was bigger than anything we could prove at that moment.
With a vision that sounded completely unrealistic to reasonable people.
And with a German who had gone to America to conquer the American market without speaking English.

We Had No Language. But We Had a Voice.

The experts probably would have said:
Learn English first.
Build an experienced US team first.
Secure retail distribution first.
Wait for the right time.
Start smaller.
Do not promise 30,000 Consultants while you are still working out of a garage.
But if we had always waited until we were ready, we would never have begun.
We were not ready.
We were convinced.
That was stronger.
Covid had destroyed our first plan.
So we built a new one.
Retail had not opened the door for us.
So we built our own.
We did not have a giant warehouse.
So we began in a garage.
I did not speak English.
But the story of the olive trees did not need perfect pronunciation.
It needed people crazy enough to believe in it.

40 orders.
100.
200.
500.
1,000.
10,000 a day.

A garage in Venice Beach became a movement.
Consultants became pioneers.
And a crazy German olive farmer became someone who truly began to conquer America.

Happy Birthday, OLIVEDA.