Ulla, 49, founded Elephant and Moon from her kitchen with no business background, just a mental health crisis that taught her something most ecommerce brands never learn: people don’t want another five step routine, they want permission to stop.
We talked to her about building a skincare brand on trust, TikTok Lives, and a refusal to run a single affiliate campaign.
“I’m Not Trying to Change Your Life With a Jar of Skincare”
Ulla is 49, has ADHD, and describes herself as “slightly menopausal.” She’s building Elephant and Moon entirely alone, from her kitchen, with what she calls “no real business experience other than life experience.” The brand grew out of a personal collapse a few years ago.
“Having experienced my own mental health and wellbeing spiral a few years back, something in me woke up. It made me ask, what the hell are we doing? When did we forget to pause?”
Her every product is built around what she calls a ritual, not a routine.
“A routine is something we do because we have to, its mundanely robotic, rushed. A ritual is a moment we choose, slowly, gently with intention, for ourselves.”
She’s blunt about the goal: it was never really about skin.
“I’m not trying to change somebody’s entire life with a jar of skincare. I just want to make their world a little gentler and a little softer for a while.”
The Hardest Part of Selling Skincare Online? You Can’t Let Someone Smell It
Ulla does all her own photography and writes every product description herself. She can’t hand someone a jar through a screen.
“I do all of my own photography. I don’t pay somebody else to create it for me because I think it’s important that the imagery feels like Elephant and Moon.”
The copy follows the same logic, written less like ecommerce copy and more like a message to a friend.
“I write the way I would talk to a friend or my partner about something I’ve created and genuinely love. We’re surrounded by polished marketing all day long, and sometimes I think we’ve forgotten how powerful it is simply to be human with each other.”
But the bigger challenge, she says, isn’t describing the product. It’s staying visible without becoming the noise the brand is supposed to be an antidote to.
“Being loud isn’t Elephant and Moon. So I’m learning how to stay present and reach new people without becoming part of the noise I’m actually encouraging them to step away from. I think that’s probably the hardest part, being heard quietly.”
No Affiliates Or Gifted Product. On Purpose.
Most DTC founders treat influencer seeding as table stakes. Ulla has deliberately turned it down.
“I don’t want to send somebody a free product simply because they have a large following and ask them to sell it. If somebody talks publicly about Elephant and Moon, I want it to be because they’ve discovered it, experienced it and genuinely connected with what I’m trying to create.”
Even her email list gets the same treatment, closer to correspondence than campaigns.
“They’re more like letters to a friend. I want somebody to open an Elephant and Moon email in the evening with a cup of tea and actually enjoy reading it.”
13,000 People Watch Her Sell Skincare and Talk About Her Childhood
Ulla’s TikTok following has grown past 13,000, and she says the Lives, not the polished posts, are where trust actually gets built. She sells product, explains the rituals, then drifts, by her own admission.
“I have ADHD, so do I stay perfectly on topic and talk about Elephant and Moon for the entire Live? Absolutely not. I’ll suddenly be talking about something I remember from childhood, something I’ve done with my partner or my son, or asking everybody what they’re doing that day. But I think that’s part of why it works. It’s human.”
She’s watched that community stick around long-term.
“Some of the people in my TikTok community have actually been with me for years. They’ve seen the ups and downs, and they’ve watched Elephant and Moon grow from an idea into something real.”
Her Best Content Isn’t the Pretty Stuff
Ulla has posted product demos, ingredient breakdowns, and behind-the-scenes footage. What lands hardest, she says, is the unpolished founder story, including the recent news that she left her job as a teaching assistant to go all in on the brand.
“When I talk about feeling overwhelmed or needing to take a moment for yourself, I’m not talking about something I’ve read in a marketing book. I’ve lived it.”
She doesn’t edit out the bad days either.
“There are days when I’ll come onto TikTok and essentially say, ‘Do you know what? I’ve got nothing to give today.’ And that’s okay. I’ll take the day, practise some of what I’m constantly encouraging other people to do, and come back tomorrow or the day after.”
The Buying Pattern: One Jar Builds Trust, the Collection Closes It
It’s early days for Elephant and Moon, but Ulla’s seeing a clear pattern in how people buy.
“People will often discover us through one or two individual products first. They’ll try something, realise they genuinely like it, and then come back and explore the larger ritual collections.”
That insight led directly to a new product: a low-commitment sampler called the Ritual Discovery Collection.
“I realised that asking somebody who has only just discovered us to invest in several full-sized products is quite a big ask. This lets them experience the different rituals, discover what they love, and then decide whether they want to return for the full-sized products.”
The full collections, meanwhile, have quietly become a gifting category.
“They’re not simply gifting skincare. They’re gifting somebody permission to stop for a while.”
Her Biggest Mistake was Believing More Is Always the Answer
Asked what she’d tell other founders, Ulla points to a mistake that’s almost ironic given the brand’s whole message.
“The irony isn’t lost on me that I’ve created a brand telling everybody else to slow down and stop putting so much pressure on themselves, while at times I’ve been sitting behind the scenes putting enormous pressure on myself to make it work.”
Her fix is one filter question, applied to every decision.
“Does this feel like Elephant and Moon? If the answer is no, it doesn’t matter how well it might be working for somebody else. It probably isn’t right for me.”
What’s Next?
Ulla wants to expand into the UK and eventually overseas, but she’s explicit that fit matters more than reach when it comes to potential stockists.
“I’d love to see the products stocked by other businesses, but they have to be the right businesses. I’m quite protective of Elephant and Moon and I think I always will be.”
A physical shop is on the long-term wishlist, imagined less as a retail counter and more as an extension of the brand’s whole premise.
“I don’t imagine it as simply somewhere you walk in, buy a jar and leave. I’d want people to walk through the door and immediately feel what I’ve been trying to communicate online, a safe, welcoming and comfortable space for everyone.”
And she’s clear about what she isn’t chasing.
“I don’t want global domination. That’s never been the goal. I just want Elephant and Moon to reach the people who need what we’re creating.”
Our Take
Refusing affiliates while building a business is either discipline or a ceiling. Probably both.
There’s something genuinely rare in Ulla’s approach. Having a founder that’s turning down a growth lever most DTC brands treat as table stakes, and doing it consistently rather than as a one-off talking point.
The bet that unpaid, unscripted trust compounds faster than paid reach is unproven at scale, and Elephant and Moon is still small enough that we can’t call it validated yet.
But the instinct behind it, that authenticity is a genuine constraint worth protecting rather than a marketing buzzword, is exactly what’s missing from most founder interviews we run. Whether it survives contact with real growth pressure, when a stockist deal or a bigger platform comes calling, is the actual test.
For now, Ulla is proving you can build an audience on TikTok without performing for it. Keeping that up while scaling past one person in a kitchen is the harder chapter.
Make sure to check out Elephant and Moon on:
https://www.tiktok.com/@elephantandmoon?_r=1&_t=ZN-98NmT6XbVL8
