Meet Ceilidh MacLeod | Co-Founder / Co-CEO

How did your career path lead you to OEM? What was the creation process like?

I always felt drawn to entrepreneurship. At a young age I ran cookie stands, decorated denim for my fake fashion brand, sketched out designs, played with mock money, ran a fashion blog, an accessories business, directed movies with my friends. So when I finally went to college the clear path was business school. I very quickly determined that finance wasn’t my strength and fell very naturally into the marketing route. Marketing allowed me to apply creativity to business, to connect with the consumer, to use psychology and visuals and copywriting. Ironically, it was in growth projections, reporting, and data analysis that I found much of my strengths and career growth.

In my last year of college I picked up three jobs — a digital marketing role for my college external marketing department, an internship at a digital ad agency, and a marketing internship at Quiksilver Canada. These experiences opened my world up to digital marketing since any education on this in school was extremely minimal in those days. This also allowed me to pick up a job at a tech startup upon graduation. Working at a startup was one of the most valuable experiences I could have gained at a young age — being a dev heavy team, they threw me into the deep end and gave me full reigns over their marketing efforts. I dove deep into the world of Growth Hacking, digital advertising, email marketing, and even UX design. The startup environment also allowed me to work directly with the execs to prove my value and get promoted. After spending a few years there as VP of Growth I went looking for new challenges.

After the startup I spent time at a much larger 500+ employee e-commerce company expanding my skills in digital advertising and then move to Los Angeles to work for a vastly different business. It was at this streetwear brand that I was able to explore the value of storytelling and community building. This contradicted a lot of what I had learned in digital marketing (quick wins, a/b testing, optimizations) and forced me to slow down my marketing funnel, to connect with the customers, and to truly understand the psychology behind brand loyalty.

Throughout my career my long-term boyfriend (now husband and business partner) had followed a parallel path. His education was also in marketing, however, he went down a more creative route working as a graphic designer and art director for fashion brands and artists. We always knew we wanted to merge our talents to create something new and in 2019 we decided it was time to take that leap together. That’s when we decided to create OEM.

It took us about 2 years to fully develop our go-to-market product line — a restoring ointment, soothing cream, nourishing lip balm, Hinoki hand sanitizer, and rehydrating drink. It was important for us to launch with all of these products and not just one because we wanted people to see us as a drugstore alternative and not just a beverage company or a lip balm brand. This, of course, was extremely challenging and perhaps it was our naivety and lack of experience in the cosmetics and beverage industry that was what allowed us to charge forward with the idea. We quickly discovered the importance of network and connections as many labs and production facilities wouldn’t work with a nobody — we were lucky to get intro’s to some of our partners today and we worked closely with them to develop custom formulas for every product. It took countless iterations, frustration, joy, dismay, and drive to finalize the products you see today.

We remain a small 3 person team because we are fortunate to be able to utilize the range of skills we developed over the years to cover day-to-day operations and marketing. My husband designed the branding, packaging, website, and all external facing marketing materials you see today. Just having this in-house has saved us an enormous amount of money. I focus my efforts on the operations and marketing, whether that’s rolling up my sleeves to do in-store demos, sponsoring tennis events, or dabbling in the comfort of my digital marketing world. Combined we are a powerhouse team. We are also extremely grateful for our extended network of artists, labs, and manufacturers for all that they do to create the vision that is OEM.

We have just uncovered the very tip of the iceberg with OEM and we are so excited to share the incredible depths of what we have planned for the future — a world where care runs freely between loved ones, friends, strangers, and all those in between.

Image of all products — Colin Young