The Story Behind Briogeo’s 9-Figure Founder

0:00Hey, business besties. Welcome back to the Female Founder World Podcast. It's Jasmine. I am the host of the show and the creator of the Female Founder World Universe. I am so excited about today's conversation. I feel like I say this every week, but you guys, this is a really good one. I'm chatting with Nancy Twine. She's the founder of a business called Briogeo. You probably know it. If you're based in the US, you definitely know her business. She bootstrapped it for six years, this clean hair care brand, and then she brought in some institutional investment. And over 10 years, she built Briogeo into a nine-figure business and then exited to Weller.

0:43So she's somebody who has just this full circle view of what it takes to build, scale, and sell a company, which is so rare to find. She's someone who has clearly really reflected on this experience and has a lot of insights that we can pull out that I think will be really helpful for folks. For anyone who's in that scaling phase, I think this conversation is going to be really helpful for you, but also people who are earlier on who want to kind of design a business that is going to be able to scale to that level to maybe one day be able to exit. I think learning from people who have been through the whole process is just so, so valuable.

1:21Okay, let's get into the show. You are now entering female founder world. with your host Jasmine Grinsworthy. Nancy, welcome to the Female Founder World podcast. It's so good to have you on the show. I've been trying to line this up for such a long time. Very excited. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here. I want to start with the origin story. For people who don't know what it is that you have built at Briocheo, how do you explain it for someone who's new to the brand? Yeah, for sure. You know, I get asked this question pretty often, And I think people tend to assume that I was a former hairstylist or a cosmetic chemist for starting a hair care line.

2:03But I'm actually neither of those things. I started my career in finance almost two decades ago, which is crazy. And when I started my career in finance, it was actually the start of the 2008 financial crisis. It was a really crazy and very difficult time to be working on Wall Street. and unfortunately halfway through my career I lost my mom pretty suddenly and that was really a moment for me to stop and really rethink sort of how I was spending so much of my life which was in a career that I wasn't totally passionate about and I ended up going on this soul-searching journey to figure out what it was I was actually passionate about because I wanted to create a life of more intentional purpose.

2:54And during that process, I kept thinking back to these childhood memories that I had with my mom. My mom was a physician and a chemist. And growing up, we used to make so many of our own beauty products from scratch using very simple, natural, clean ingredients, different oils and extracts and butters. And we would turn them into these, very simple but functional beauty products. And I absolutely loved doing that as a kid. And when I was trying to think about what I wanted to do next, I was starting to see the shift that was happening in beauty with more of an emphasis and focus on clean. And again, this was over a decade ago, so it was still so early.

3:35The beauty industry looked completely different than it does now. But I really set out to do exactly that, to pour myself into this passion project by creating a clean hair care product line, leveraging natural active ingredients, very similar to how you think about skincare, and also creating a product line that caters to all hair textures and types. Because for so long, I feel like the hair care category has been the beauty category that's been most segregated based upon your hair texture type, because there are so many nuances to all the textures out there. And instead of separating people, I wanted to create one brand that would unite all hair texture types and one in which people felt was, you know, uniquely for them.

4:24And so that's what's really, you know, was the inspiration behind me starting Briogeo. And this was back in 2012 that the business first kind of launched out into the world, which was really early for people who are listening, who maybe, you know, we have a lot of like Gen Z women in their early twenties. Clean beauty was not a thing, let alone like clean hair care in 2012. So you were definitely very early on in this trend and this movement. I'd love to know how you were kind of getting that funding together to get the business started in the early days, because I imagine it would have been still like quite a hard sell at that time to kind of communicate to people and buy them and get them brought into your vision?

5:07Yeah, I mean, it definitely was a hard sell because you're right. Clean Beauty was so new, but also you didn't really have the dynamic that you have today with so many VCs and PEs actually being active in beauty in a way that they just weren't, you know, over a decade ago. So the first six years of me running my business, I actually bootstrapped my company. And I know bootstrapping is really kind of this hot topic. I also have a content site at nancytwine.com, and our article about bootstrapping is one of our highest viewed articles. And for those of you that don't know what bootstrapping is, essentially it's using your savings, credit cards, your own funding to support the needs of your business.

5:52And so I mentioned that I had a finance career before starting my business. So fortunately, I was able to have a bit of a savings to be able to do that for a while. But, you know, bootstrapping is risky because you're putting all of your own money on the line. And, you know, there are so many unknowns when you're navigating a business for the first time. And so that's why after six years of bootstrapping, as the company was scaling and growing and just needed so much more, I decided to de-risk by bringing on a private equity investor. And you built the business into, I was reading, you know, as I was doing some research into what you've built into a nine figure company in 10 years, which is amazing.

6:39But I want to understand before we kind of talk about the scaling phase and the exit phase as well, I want to stay in this early kind of time and understand how you got that traction early on from a marketing perspective. Like what were you doing to get the business and the brand out into the world that really worked back in 2012? Yeah, it's a great question because just like the beauty landscape has changed, so has the marketing landscape. And one of the unique things about when I launched my brand is actually back in 2013. It was actually the rise of the beauty subscription boxes. So the birch boxes and Ipsys and FabFit funds of the world.

7:24And yeah, and it was quite a phenomenon because for the first time, especially people who live in parts of the country that maybe don't have easy access to a Sephora or an Ulta, were able to learn about sort of the newest and hottest beauty products by subscribing to these boxes. And we were the new kid on the block at the time, and we got a lot of interest from these boxes. and sampling became such a primary and very effective marketing vehicle for the brand. And especially when it comes to something like beauty and hair care, people really want to try it before they buy it. They want to make sure that it actually works for them before they invest in purchasing a full size.

8:08So that became a really smart and successful marketing vehicle for the brand early on. And then also a few years later, there was this other phenomenon, which was the rise of the YouTube beauty influencer, which I remember so vividly. It feels like ages ago, but that was such a game changer for the beauty industry to be able to really connect with authentic fans of your brand and leverage their audience as a way to really sort of amplify education and the brand story and the products to their audience. And so we were really smart about it. We worked with influencers who were already fans of the brand because we feel that authentic influencer partnerships are the right way to go.

9:00Not only is it the most authentic way to show up, but it also really helps to make sure that there's a genuine connection between how the influencer talks about your brand to their audience. So, you know, the combination of those two tactics were, you know, probably some of our biggest, you know, marketing lovers at the time. What were some of the early signs that made you think, okay, this isn't just, this isn't just an idea that I want. This is something that's going to be really big. Looking back, are there, are there a few things that you think you can pull out that were signals that what you're building was going to work?

9:38Yeah. So our first major retailer was Sephora. And at the time, their hair care category was so small, but we were really gaining traction, you know, especially against some of the bigger, more established brands in the category. We started rising through the ranks and, you know, had the number one hair mask and the number one shampoo. And, you know, When we launched Scalp Revival, totally. Scalp Revival launched back in 2017 was a game changer. Briogeo was the first prestige brand to launch a scalp collection in hair care. And we really became a pioneer of the skinification of hair movement. And that really put us on the map with the beauty editors.

10:23And it was really after that launch of Scalp Revival that we started winning more awards. and, you know, press started actively, you know, seeking us out as a leader in hair care. I saw that you launched into Sephora, I think it was in 2014, which is a very quick turnaround from launching your DTC and actually launching the business into getting into Sephora. Not many brands are able to do that. How did the partnership come about and what lessons do you have from kind of that first enter into Sephora? Yeah, so the partnership came about very organically. I met the buyers at Sephora at a big trade show right before I launched Briogeo.

11:05And it was very evident that what we were doing from an ingredient standpoint, catering to all hair textures and types, our focus on diversity was certainly something that was really going to fill a white space opportunity for the retailer. And I always tell other entrepreneurs, you know, when you're pitching to retailers, make sure that you can really articulate sort of that white space that you fill, what makes you different from the other brands on shelf. And how does that translate into, you know, sort of more consumer buy-in for the retailer. And, you know, because we were so unique and because we were filling that void, Sephora decided to take a bet on our brand.

11:47And we launched with Sephora in 2014. They became like our largest retailer. And that relationship was so paramount in helping to build brand awareness, helping us think through our innovation pipeline, and to really sort of learn more about who our core consumer was at the time. And I also read that you were profitable very quickly and that your retail partnerships were profitable specifically very quickly. How, how did that happen? I know a lot of people that we speak to on the show who are kind of launching into these big retailers are kind of like, it's a five-year plan until we're, this is actually going to be financially beneficial for us.

12:32I want to understand how, what you were doing differently in the business or how you were thinking about things that it was able to be so sustainable so early. Yeah, I think that's where, you know, know, my background in finance, I think certainly helped, you know, from the get go, I was very conscious and aware of our input costs and our margins and, you know, sort of how we would need to price our products to be able to invest in hiring people and marketing. And I think being really smart about the margin aspect was a big part of that. And for many years, too, we were pretty lean. And I think, you know, a lot of entrepreneurs, you know, are challenged with that aspect of trying to remain lean, but also making sure that you have the resources to invest in your company, which can be a really, really tricky thing.

13:24And you have to get creative, you may not be in a position to have full time employees in every role, you know, in some positions, you may have interns, you may have consultants, you may have part time employees. And so it's really been being very creative about making things work with what you have and just being mindful not to overdo it because you have to be aware of your burn rate. And it's so easy to spend, spend, spend, but profitability certainly is a sign of a healthy business. And it's really important to have a good understanding of your costs. Something I'm really curious about is that inflection point of when businesses go from kind of this smaller scrappy thing that's getting some traction through the scaling phase where you're professionalizing all of your processes and you're you're knowing what what's working and you're doubling down there I and it's such a hard question to phrase because how do you kind of like wrap that up into like one neat answer I feel like it's impossible to do but what kind of lessons can you pull out from that stage of basically taking the business from that small kind of brand that was getting some traction through the supporting it as a leader as it's kind of like scaling up through retail and scaling the d2c like what were some of those like pivotal kind of things that you were doing during that stage yeah I think a couple of things I think you know obviously the landscape by which so many companies operate.

14:59It's just different now post-COVID. There are a lot of businesses that are running virtually. Briogeo is now running virtually. But prior to COVID, one of the pivots that we had to make was moving out of our teeny tiny WeWork office space. And we ended up getting a two-floor office so that we could create really a comfortable community for our employees to thrive and to make sure, too, that we just had a space that people could be creative in. and that we had our own dedicated conference room. So little things like that really made such a big difference for us as we were scaling the business. But ultimately, I think probably one of the best decisions that I ended up making was really just knowing that it was time to bring on an institutional investor for a couple of different reasons.

15:50I think for me, because I had been bootstrapping for so long, I think it started at some point to start impacting my decision making around the brand. It's a lot harder to take risks when all of your money is on the table. And so bringing on institutional capital allowed us to be actually even more creative and to test and learn and try things that maybe we didn't try. And I think that was really helpful for the culture also. And also, you know, when you bring on an institutional investor, it also helps to signal credibility with your business that an investor is willing to put their money on the line because they believe in your future.

16:35And with that comes the ability to hire just even more senior leadership, right? Because when you're hiring senior leaders, they have to make a decision on whether or not to leave their great career to come to your scaling startup. So definitely having that sort of institutional investor backing really helped to get people over the finish line when they were making that decision to come to Briogeo. And that was a really pivotal point for us, being in a position to really professionalize the organization and create just more of a framework for leadership that really helped to scale the business but also enhance our company culture.

17:17are. Okay. So the institutional investor came in, I think that was six years in the, you said earlier on in the chat. And then when, when was that point just to help people kind of like figure out what the timeline is here of how you're building it? When did you move from that kind of like we work space into your own office? Yeah. So that was probably three years in, we were, you know, and we were scaling up even in our we work spaces. We went from like a two person space to a four person to an eight person. And then that actually starts to get really expensive too. And so probably like three years in, we transitioned from, you know, the shared office space to our own dedicated office.

18:00And something that you've kind of hinted at that that we haven't spoken a lot about yet is that hiring and team building piece, you know, you mentioned before about having freelancers and contractors. And I think a lot of folks in the community are kind of like at that stage where they're piecing together their team through part-timers and contractors and some agencies. When did you start kind of bringing in those full-time hires and how did you think about when to add the right people through this, the trajectory of the business's growth? Yeah, I always tell people, I mean, there's no sort of golden playbook for when to do it.

18:38I think that's why it's really important to, you know, develop strong intuition to kind of know what the opportunity set is for your company and where it's going. And, you know, as the business started scaling, one of the things that starts to happen is like, as your business grows, the level of demands also increase, you know, more money means, you know, more need for creative content and assets and more photo shoots and more marketing campaigns and more store visits. Everything is like more, more, more. And so it's really important to just be in tune with sort of those needs and also be in tune also with how your team is feeling.

19:23Like they'll tell you, you know, when they feel like it's too much and they need some additional help. And so just being willing to listen and also being very futuristic about knowing where your brand is heading will help you determine when it's the right time to start bringing in full-time people. And for me too, it was really helpful when I got to the point of actually bringing in leadership because all of those decisions weren't just on me anymore, but my actual divisional leaders were doing a lot of that planning themselves. And so I do think it's a bit of an organic process, but I'm just a big believer in, you know creating that balance of not hiring too fast so that you don't have a bunch of people who are sitting around with nothing to do and also not being too too lean where people can't do their best work because they're just completely overloaded how do you think about becoming a a better leader yourself I mean you look at where the business started where the business ended up and I I look at that and I'm like there's so much professional and personal growth that must happen for you in that process.

20:34Were you doing anything formally to kind of up level through all of that? Or was it just an intuitive, you're growing as the business is growing kind of process? So I think so much of that has to do with, you know, really being a good listener, being open to feedback, both good and constructive feedback, and really developing a strong sense of awareness. I think so much of my evolution of leadership has just come from being able to observe what people need and everyone is different. And that's why I think it's so important to get to know your people. Because as a leader, you have to be able to sort of flex with the different needs of people who exist within your company.

21:22And some people are going to need more, some people are going to need less. And that's why I think, you know, as a leader to being able to cultivate that flexibility, not being so rigid, being able to understand the needs of your people, making yourselves available, and also just cultivating an environment where people feel comfortable talking to you. I think that's so important because I know some leaders that almost cultivate the sense of fear around their people. And when you cultivate that sense of fear, you're basically losing the opportunity to learn what your team needs and, you know, to cultivate a space where people can openly express their ideas and feedback.

22:05And so I think leadership is just sort of a lifelong, you know, development and exploration. But I think the more that you can listen, you know, the more that you can make yourself accessible and flexible to the needs of your people, the better leader that you'll develop into over time. And so then in 2022, I think it was a huge moment in the business, the Weller partnership came about. Can you talk me through what that process was like for people who are now building a business that one day they hope to have an exit like that? And that's kind of their goal. What lessons do you have now looking back on on that process?

22:45Yeah. People ask me a lot about, how did you know it was the right time to exit your business? And similar to the question around, how did you know it was time to build your team? It's one of those things that sort of just organically you start to get a sense of. I was scaling Briogeo so quickly. We had brought on our first institutional investor. And the thing is, as you start continuing to grow your company, the one constant is that you're going to continue to need money, right? And sometimes people continue to just raise money. They'll do series A, B, C, D. And before they know it, they hardly even own any more of their company because they've given it all away in the process of fundraising.

23:30And so that's why a lot of people consider doing an exit, because it allows you to have the capital foundation that you need to continue to grow and scale, while also being able to maintain sort of your equity throughout that process until you sell it. But actually, it goes beyond just that. And for me in particular, I knew that so much of our ability to grow and become sort of the next phase of Briogeo was going to entail us moving beyond consumer retail, but to eventually launch into professional. So that's one of the unique things about hair care is that it's not just the Sephoras and Altas of the world, but it's also about whether or not you want to serve that salon stylist client.

24:17And for me, that was such a big dream to be able to do that. But I knew that at Briogeo, we didn't have the infrastructure, the expertise to really tackle that channel. And so one of the things that was really important to me when I was thinking about a potential home for Briogeo was finding a partner that already had a really good core competency and professional that could really help us to take that next stage. And that's why, you know, the Wella partnership made so much sense for us. When you think about what your life is like now versus maybe what it was like in the first two years of building the business and then in that scaling phase, can you talk me through just for you personally what that experience has felt like?

25:03I just think it's really helpful for people to kind of like pinpoint where they're at and kind of like set expectations about what it's like at each stage. Yeah, completely. I mean, I think in the early stages, so much of the focus is, you know, how do I build brand awareness? How do I activate more people into the brand? Especially if you have, you know, early retailers that you're distributing with, it's one thing to get the retailer to take your brand. And it's another thing to actually stay on shelf and grow with that retailer. And so much of that is like, how do you create that brand awareness flywheel?

25:39And as I mentioned earlier, for us, so much of that had to do with sampling, and it also had to do with influencer marketing. And then you get to a place where new competitors start to come into the space. So you have to kind of think about, all right, well, how do I sort of reinvent myself in ways that are true to our core DNA. So we want to reinvent ourselves without losing ourselves, right? To make sure that we're maintaining that competitive edge. So whether it's through innovation, whether it's through, you know, tweaks that maybe you make to your visual and verbal identity, to how you're activating on social, the types of influencers that you're working with, you know, you start to get into more strategic areas of the business over time.

26:26And then you may also be thinking about, so how do I want to expand distribution from here? What are the other opportunities in my home market for us that's the US? Or is it time to start exploring international opportunities? What does the data say? Does it make sense for me to start in Europe because we know that we have this consumer there that's not being met? Or maybe it's Australia. And so So I think over time, too, a lot of the decisions become a lot more data led as you have to be just more strategic about navigating, you know, some of those more complex aspects and decisions that you have to make as you scale through the stage.

27:10And then at some point, you start to navigate things like, OK, does it make sense to take on a VC or a private equity investor? And then there are decisions around, hey, is it time to actually hire an investment bank? to see what the landscape is for M &A. So, you know, those are just some of the different stages and things that you have to navigate at different points of your entrepreneurial journey. For you personally, what do your days look like now on the other side of an acquisition? So I'm still the founder and CEO of Briogeo. And I just think that as your business scales, you know, what you do as a leader, you just focus a lot more time on strategies.

27:53So bigger, you know, thought concepts, especially if you have a team, like if you have now a CMO and a CFO and a COO and a head of sales, you now have this team around you. And now you're just spending more time really sort of strategic planning, not just thinking about the short term, but planning out for the long term, whether that's innovation, strategic distribution moves, how you may look to refresh aspects of your brand over time, pricing, etc. And so I think that's really sort of that evolution that a lot of entrepreneurs go through post-acquisition. You're just spending a lot more time on strategy.

28:35Does it feel like you've hit a milestone and maybe some of that personal pressure is off? Or do you feel like now the business has just grown up and that there's more pressure and more expectation? What does it feel like for you? Yeah. I mean, I think for me, I wouldn't say more or less. It's just new. There's new pressures and new expectations. Everything is so new. But the great thing about that is with newness comes the opportunity to learn and develop in new ways. I mean, if everything is just status quo, at some point, you know, it kind of gets boring because you've seen everything. And so I think that's been sort of the unique edge for me now being a part of a larger parent company and learning how they operate and how we now operate within that, you know, ecosystem and how they think about driving a business and, you know, what we could take from that to sort of apply to our growth strategy.

29:34I think that's been sort of the most rewarding part of it is just being in a place of being able to, you know, continuously learn and develop. Amazing. That's super. Yeah, it's super interesting to hear because I think people have this idea of like, they'll get to a certain stage and then it'll get easier or I just need to get here and then everything will be more simple or I just like, and that can be as simple as or as small as making my first hire or getting my first investor check in. And I just, I feel like it's really important to hear from people who have kind of gone all the way through the process and that maybe the challenges don't necessarily go away.

30:11They're just kind of like new challenges and new opportunities and it's not less, it's just different. I think that's like the interesting thing to hear. So the last thing that I ask everyone who comes onto the show and that I'd love to know from you is if you have a resource recommendation or a couple of resource recommendations. We'd love more than one as well. And that can be like a book, another podcast, something that's been helping you really tangibly as you've been building that you think other founders should go and check out. Yeah, I love this question. So, you know, obviously it is just my nature.