How MANSCAPED Created a New Category and Scaled to $300 Million in 3 Years

0:00You don't say, I'm growing grooming. You say manscaping. The brand actually defines the entire category.

0:12Paul Tran always knew he'd be an entrepreneur, but he never expected to redefine an entire category. After launching multiple startups, he noticed a white space in men's grooming, specifically below the belt where no one dared to go. That insight sparked Manscaped, a bold direct consumer brand that broke taboos and built an empire from scratch. We've evolved into a lifestyle brand, so it's not just trying to get every single conversion possible. Manscaped scaled from zero to 300 million in revenue in just 36 months and exploded into a global business serving over 15 million customers across 39 countries.

0:43We were spending close to$60 million in marketing and awareness. So we were very confident that we were going to drive doorstrings. Paul joins me now to talk product innovation, embracing AI, and the latest in influencer marketing. When we look at who we work with, we want to redefine masculinity for the next generation. Welcome to Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and scaling a business. I'm your host, Adam Leventer. Paul, welcome to the show. Adam, thanks so much for having me. What an intro. What an intro. It's impressive, man. I mean, it's incredible. When you reflect back, are you surprised by the trajectory of Manscaped?

1:19I don't think anyone could have anticipated that. So I was and still am amazed at our growth, our scale, and how the customers that we serve react to the brand. So rewind back to 2016 when you are tinkering with this idea. At the same time, you're tinkering with a couple of other e-commerce businesses. So what happens? Yeah. So back then, this was, I would say, the heyday of kind of D2C and direct response marketing. It was a great time to be an e-commerce brand. We had started multiple companies during that year, and it was all under the presumption of figuring out how to get e-commerce to work.

2:00This was Facebook before it became meta and before influencer marketing was really a big thing. And we were just experimenting with a couple of different ideas. it was this epiphany of realizing that there was white space in this category because there was no brand before Manscaped that kind of occupied the mindshare of men for this area of the body. Below the belt. Below the belt. Below the belt in between the thighs. Got it. And nobody talked about it. You know, so the hypothesis there was, are men actually doing this? Are they grooming themselves there? Or are they, you know, are they not doing it, right?

2:45Why are the big CPG firms out there, the big conglomerates, why is there no brand that represents that area, that category? So it was either they didn't do it or they are grooming themselves there, but they're either too shy or ashamed to talk about it. What we did was like, you know, let's test this out. So we created a trimmer. We really researched on what brand we wanted. We went through so many different names to decide on Manscaped. My background, I love collecting domain names for some reason. Like people have stamp hobbies, but I love collecting domain names for future brands. So I got really good at acquiring domains.

3:27So when we picked then the name Manscaped, that was so synergistic. And remember back then, it didn't really mean as much yet. You know, after you spent over half a billion dollars branding something, that's when it really sticks. And when you say now that I'm manscaping, you know, we're kind of like the Kleenex of the space. You know, you don't say I'm groin grooming. You say I'm manscaping. Whether you're shaving your chest or your groin or your legs, you say I'm manscaping. The brand actually defines the entire category. And I was so deliberate in making sure that we got the domain and was able to brand it.

4:05But back then, to answer your question in a long way, back then it was trying to figure out if men were doing this and they're too ashamed to talk about it or not. So we kind of just blew the gates wide open and we just started talking about it. And I think that gave men permission to openly talk about, yeah, I groom. There's nothing wrong with it. Fast forward to now, we've expanded way beyond the groin. We're in skincare, face shaving, got body wash, shampoo. It's a part of the whole men's hygiene routine. Yeah, we've evolved into a lifestyle brand. You know, it's an interesting stat that I came across that back in 2005 or something like that, only 6 % of men were manscaping.

4:48Fast forward to today, I think it's something like 70 % of men are doing this. Back in 2016, were you watching any of those market trends? We weren't. No, no. It was really just having a hypothesis and going after it. We think that there is a white space. And that was really because, and I think a lot of founders go through this, right? You experiment on yourself. You find a pain point, right? And then you start talking to your friends about it. That was how we got into it. Okay. So what is the product market fit test at the time? Like you have the hypothesis, right? You registered the domain.

5:26How are you testing whether or not you're right? That's a great question. It was buying a small, small quantity. We had the lawnmower, right? That's what we call it. It's very crop themed. Any Manscaped fan knows the lawnmower. That's the hero product. That's the hero product, yeah. And that line is the below the belt line. Started with a lawnmower 1.0. We had researched and looked for kind of the best blade that was going to keep you safe. I don't know if you guys have ever had it, the listeners out there, but if you've ever nicked yourself in that area, it's a bloody mess. And it's a horrible experience.

6:02So we were looking for the best blade that was going to be skin safe, which is a term that we've trademarked now. Well, we're moving here very effectively. So the lawnmower was this repurposed, very small trimmer that we launched. We bought units, we run media, and we'd sell out within two weeks. We'd be dark because now we're remanufacturing. You know, we've got to ramp up production. And then we quickly evolved into the Lawn Mower 2.0, 3.0, 4.0. And now, currently, we're on our fifth generation of a Lawn Mower product. How do you handle the product design side of things? So you mentioned that none of the traditional players, i.e.

6:40Gillette or Schick, were in the category at the time. You have this hypothesis, but you have no experience in product design. How do you find the right manufacturer for version one of, say, the lawnmower? So the advice I would give to any entrepreneur out there is you just got to go figure it out. That's what entrepreneurs do. They problem solve and they figure out the solution, right? So for me, it was just finding the right manufacturer. And it was going on Alibaba. You know, my wife helped. She was phenomenal. She actually found the manufacturer that we're still using right now. We found the right manufacturer and then we started working with them.

7:16That just took a lot of time and research and phone calls, you know, factory visits. But it's out there, you know, and you can do it. It's not rocket science. Anyone that's listening and you're contemplating an idea, a problem to solve, just go do it. Go figure it out. But if you get it wrong, specifically in this case, it's like a high risk situation. Oh, that's why you test on yourself. You're always the first guinea pig. So that's what you were. Oh, yes. Heck yeah. You said that back in the day, this was sort of like the heyday of D2C. What made it so? Was it because traffic was so cheap at the time and say your cost of acquisition relative to your average order value was so healthy?

8:03Is that what was happening? It was a time where the Facebook algorithm was really just starting to take shape and be really good. This is before Apple released the iOS update, which made it much more difficult for advertisers to track you across different domains and different sites. The entire industry saw a decrease in ad efficiency after that update rolled out. During that time, there was less competition. People didn't really understand e-commerce as well as they did now. You know, influencers, now every influencer is getting behind creating their own product. There was less competition at that time, which just really means different challenges.

8:46The landscape has changed. I wouldn't say it's gotten better or worse. It's just, it's changed. What did you do strategically once that iOS 14 update hit? Did you know you needed to diversify marketing spend? And how did you do it? For us, we knew at a very, very early stage that we needed to diversify marketing. We were one of the first advertisers on TikTok. This is before TikTok even had any platform. It was an insertion order. It was like, here's$100 ,000, sign here, and we're going to run you on TikTok. Because there was no bidding system. There was no software behind it. We were going advertising on TikTok through insertion orders.

9:27We diversified outside of platforms very early on. We sponsored the UFC. We work really closely with Testicular Cancer Society. We've done a lot of stuff that's out of home, that's not traditional platform, you know, D2C marketing. How do you measure the efficiency of some of those endeavors? So if we take just meta, for example, very easy to measure efficiency on ad spend, right? Yep. Not so if you're just, I don't know, slapping Manscaped logo across a subway station or a billboard for brand awareness. Was it important to measure the efficiency of how you were spending that money in these different ways?

10:10Oh, that's challenging now to today. There's no company out there that absolutely can track every single metric of their marketing spend and be really accurate. You know, there's mixed media modeling, there's attribution, last click attribution. It's so hard. If you are just relying on Facebook, I still remember I used to be in platform managing the Facebook ad accounts. I remember there's always a toggle switch. There's this meta asking you, do you want to advertise for conversion or for reach? And the reach button was never to be touched. because as soon as you click it onto the reach button, whatever Facebook can spend, they will spend on those impressions and there's no conversions, right?

10:55And I remember a day where my, at that time, my head of marketing called me and said, hey, I'm really sorry. I'm like, why, what's going on? We just blew$18 ,000. And I was like, what? And I was, what happens? You know that reach button? I clicked that reach button just to test it out. And I started spending so much money. It hit our daily max. But that was early on where$18 ,000 over a few hours of spend was ridiculous. Now we actually flip that toggle. we do spend on reach because we've grown to a scale now where consideration and brand awareness is really important to us. We've made that shift from just performance marketing into really brand marketing.

11:54And there's no way that you can attribute every single dollar how much it returns because it's so hard. We believe that the partnership with the UFC was phenomenal, But there's no way to track how much it actually earned us in terms of revenue. But our goal is to try to build the next generation, you know, that's the next lifestyle brand. So it's not just trying to get every single conversion possible. The UFC, the NFL, NASCAR, partnerships with celebrity influencers, of which you've had a few. How do these partnerships come about? I mean, it's incredibly impressive to look at this list. There's so many people watching or listening that are wondering, like, how do you knock on the door of the UFC and make something happen there?

12:41I truly believe that by building a world-class team, you're going to build a world-class company. So it really starts with a team. So our marketing team is just phenomenal. We started out with a very small marketing team. It was just myself and Ryan, and we grew it from there. And now we have influencer marketing, email marketing, partnerships. It starts to be specialized as you grow. And as you build a brand, as you actually build a recognizable brand, those partnerships become easier. You know, when you're calling on a celebrity and they've heard about your brand, their agent is much more open to talking to you and figuring out if there's a deal that can be done and how it can be win-win for both sides.

13:26You said something earlier that I want to come back to, this idea of moving from performance marketing to brand marketing. And at some point in the company lifecycle, priorities will shift. When does that happen for a company? And for you, was it, say, the sub$10 million revenue threshold where you were focused on performance marketing only, and then you started to focus more on brand at$20 million or$30 million? What did that shift look like? I would adjust that even higher, depending on the TAM. So the TAM is total addressable market, right? The bigger the total addressable market you have, the more that you can squeeze out the efficiency from performance marketing.

14:07Of course, the smaller the brand, what ends up happening is you exhaust your core customers. I remember standing on stage and talking about Manscaped. And to really interestingly, this time, an audience of really old men, All investors, LPs, they just didn't get it. They couldn't, they couldn't, what are you doing? Why would you want to do that? That was an eye-opener because you realize that there is a core demographic and your core demographic for us lived online. They were younger. You know, they were, you know, 16 all the way to 35. And when you get to 55, it's a different audience. It's a different generation.

14:47For us, we've grown into that because we've been around long enough and we've ran enough marketing, made this cool. When your kids start telling you what they're doing and having products around you, you start adopting. So for us, that has expanded. But yeah, that's kind of how we see marketing. You were telling me about a story, this very fortuitous moment where Conor McGregor falls in the middle of the UFC octagon on the Manscaped logo? Yes, yes. Is that what happened? That did happen. Roke his ankle or something? Yeah, that was a crazy fight. And so the partnership with the UFC was a great partnership.

15:29We've done a lot of really fun and interesting things when it comes to marketing and branding. But that was a fight. It was an incredibly anticipated fight. For those of you that have not seen the UFC, there are logos on the ring. And it's kind of like roulette, you know, even with boxing. The UFC, there's a lot of, you know, it's mixed martial arts. So there's a lot of grappling, a lot of wrestling on the mat. And it is a little bit like roulette. If they land on your logo, it just gets televised and it goes viral everywhere. That was a special moment. You know, NASCAR was another special moment.

16:06What happened at NASCAR? Oh, NASCAR is just to see your car in NASCAR. The logo on the car itself. The logo on the car itself. That was a special moment. A lot of really, really fun things. I'll tell you some of them. I remember talking to Rob Gronkowski and his then-girlfriend, Camille. The NFL player. Yes, yes. Gronk. This is through COVID. And, hey, let's do some content. Let's create a commercial. This is full lockdown. We had to get all the special permits and everything and hired a local crew to go to their house and shoot. That was a really fun one. We took over Penn Station in New York.

16:43As you walked into Penn Station, you could not have missed Manscaped everywhere. We got a billboard that you have to drive past as you leave JFK Airport. And the billboard says, for smoother landings, dot, dot, dot. And then a picture of our lawnmower. That we think did really well. So everything that I'm telling you right here is outside of performance marketing. It's to build a brand. But it's really hard to develop the guts to spend that money. This is big dollar territory, right? These sorts of endeavors. Yes. And also, you just don't know when they're going to return. You know, with performance marketing, you spend a dollar on Facebook, you know what your ROAS is.

17:25You know, your Amazon, you know what your ROAS is. Whereas brand marketing, you just, you really don't know. Yep. ROAS, return on ad spend for folks that want to understand. Exactly. that acronym. So today, you're well represented, not only online and across these various partnerships, but you're in a number of retail outlets. How many doors are you in? I think last count, I don't quote me on over 20 ,000 doors. We're in 39 countries. Luckily, we have great partners at Target, at CVS, Best Buy, Walmart. Who was the first? The first was actually Dillard's. Wow. Yes. Very early on, we had a wonderful buyer at Dillard's that believed in us.

18:08We weren't that big of a brand yet. And this is a great story. Called us and said, hey, I need product for the holidays, but you got to get it to me in October so I can set it. It was like August. Two months is not a long time to get tens of thousands of units. So what we ended up having to do is we had to get to the factory, have the factory create all these products, build all these products. We're talking about tens of thousands of units. I had to figure out how to get those products here on time. So we actually chartered two 747s to fly our product from Shanghai to Long Beach to make this order.

18:48How much does that cost? At that time, I think it was like$150 ,000. Yeah. Wow. What makes for a great retail partnership these days? I'm going to speak from both sides because the brand wants the retailer to give them as much shelf space as possible. The retailer, in turn, wants to have the best sell-through as possible. And as a buyer, their focus is on how to maximize every square inch of that retail shelf. It's a little bit of a cat and dog kind of game. For us, we knew that we did not want to go into retail and jeopardize or put our retail partners at risk until we were very confident that we were going to drive door swings for them.

19:34And Target was our first retail partner. When we went into Target, we were spending, I believe, close to$60 million in marketing and awareness. So we were very confident that we were going to drive door swings. Target customers were going to come into Target specifically looking for Manscaped products. And we were going to blow out their sell-through expectations. And that's exactly what we did. What is the split now between D2C, retail, and any other channels that you are selling through? We're pretty even. It's about a third, a third, a third. These days, you cannot discount Amazon, right? So it's D2C is a third of our business, Amazon is a third of our business, and retail is a third of our business.

20:18And which is the fastest growing at this point? You know, at this point, it depends on which metric. During COVID, of course, D2C was the fastest growing, followed by Amazon. But now we're seeing a return to retail. I think consumers are pent up, so they have been going back to retail. So we're seeing tremendous growth at retail. What is the role of retail vis-a-vis creating brand legitimacy in the market? So you're online only versus, say, pure omni-channel and you're physically in stores. Do you feel like that is a contributor to brand, brand equity? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, we had a six-foot end cap at Target, and that definitely lends legitimacy.

21:04It tells you that a big retail partner like Target, like Walmart, believes in you, trusts you, has qualified your products to be there. If you can get into retail strategically, meaning you have to make sure that the sell-through is there for the retailer, because it's a double-edged sword. If you don't drive the sell-through, it can be very detrimental to your business. What is the role of influencer marketing these days and how has that changed over the last five or 10 years? You mentioned your partnership with Gronk. You also have been partners with Pete Davidson, I think. Yep. How do you select the appropriate influencer for the brand?

21:42So we've worked with so many different influencers and we have this definition of masculinity and what the brand represents. And so internally, we've always held on to this line where we want to redefine masculinity for the next generation. And so when we look at who we work with, with in terms of influencers, there is a kind of a stereotype that we kind of look at. We're not the polished, the best a man can get. That's the chiseled chin kind of look. We're more of like the everyday man that does good and has a dad bod. That's your target influencer. Yeah. We want you to help make your day a little better so you can go out there and make the world a little better.

22:34For companies that don't necessarily have access to these A-list celebs or influencers, but want to start testing the micro-influencer market, how should those companies go about doing that? Every brand that's starting out always asks that question. I'll go back to just grit and work. It's reaching out. Don't be shy. It's really a numbers game. If you're targeting a celebrity, an influencer, just keep reaching out. And if you don't have money, give free product. You know, sooner or later, you'll find someone that believes in your product, believes in you, and has a passion for it. And they become your partner, and they'll grow with you.

23:15Let's shift gears and talk about generating lifetime value in the business. I know subscription has been a big component for you guys. Talk a little bit more about what is the subscription strategy at Manscaped. It has evolved tremendously. You know, we have hundreds and hundreds of thousands of, I'll call it members. Originally, our strategy was to just get you a replacement blade because the way that our blade is designed, it's designed to be gentle on your skin. So it has a ceramic blade next to a metal cutter. It makes SkinSafe possible, promotes the skin safe, but it also wears down. So our first subscription program was just getting you a new blade every three months.

23:55That evolved into, okay, now we have all of these consumable products. We have the Crop Preserver, which is the first of its kind ball deodorant. We invented that category where it was a multifaceted product. It wasn't just a deodorant, but it was anti-chafing without baby powder. We saw athletes loving it. When you're running a marathon, your thighs chafe and it can be really painful. So we started a program that allowed customers to choose which products they want in their subscription. And then that now has evolved into our MORE program, which is MOR, you know, membership only rewards. And it's a rewards program that now incorporates points for purchases in addition to allowing you to choose which products you want in the subscription.

24:38What's the primary value proposition of the membership program? Is it the points that people really are after? Is it the exclusive events or the discounts that they want? Like there's got to be that initial sort of anchor benefit that draws people in to the membership. For you, what is it? Yeah, we build so much value in the membership that it's hard to pinpoint exactly which one it is. Having choice is a big portion of it. Collecting the rewards points is a big part of it. And being the member, getting discounts is a big part. And then actually extending your warranty is another big part, right?

25:16So those four components kind of play together. And it just says, you know, if I'm already buying Manscaped products, I should just become a member and just get my shampoo, my deodorant. all my stuff on subscription. It's a better value. And I get points for it. And also I get additional warranty on all of my hardware products. Paul, you're a software guy, if I'm correct about that. Before all of this, before e-commerce, you're deep into software. These days, AI plays a huge role in the trajectory of software and tech more broadly. I know that you guys are leveraging AI in a lot of different ways.

25:52Any that you can share that might be helpful for companies that are starting out? Internally, we've been developing our own large language model. And this is on the content and creative team. They've been doing a phenomenal job creating our own internal manscape large language model. And so the version one wasn't very good. But now we're on version 26. And on version 26, we have five virtual actors. And we can write a prompt that, you know, something that's like crazy. Use virtual actress number one running on the beach in a polka dot bathing suit holding a watermelon and the chairman pro. And it would generate a five-second B-roll of that description.

26:44This is an internal model that you've built. This isn't leveraging like any of the off-the-shelf chat GPTs, Grox, or otherwise. We've trained our model. And because the thing is, generalized prompts on chat GPT, Gemini, Nano Banana is really great right now, which is a Google Gemini product. Getting your product to look right. So all the details of your specific product, it's really hard for the AI engine to get right. So, you know, we kind of focus on our products. We focus on our virtual actors, actresses. That's how we train the model. And this is, I think it's going to evolve. It's going to get better and better.