Inventing “Shower Care”: How Hello Klean Turned a Hidden Problem Into a Global Business

0:00Karlee Zhang:If I hadn't met Omer, I probably wouldn't have suffered with so many hair and skin issues.

0:08Omer Ozener:What if the most important step in your beauty routine starts in the shower? Karlee Zhang and Omer Ozener built Hello Clean by tackling a problem millions of people were experiencing, but completely ignoring. The devastating effect of hard water on both hair and skin.

0:23Karlee Zhang:No one has the exact same symptoms, but you are able within our collection to find the solution you're looking for.

0:31Omer Ozener:Starting with a single sleek shower filter, they didn't just build a hardware startup. They invented an entirely new category called shower care. I think a lot of the first time founders underestimate the marketing needed to educate the customer and really to get the initial reach they need. They're here today to share the realities of managing high-profile investments, selling over a million units, and closing a landmark partnership. Welcome to Shopify Masters, your companion for starting and building a business. I'm your host, Adam Levinter, Carly and Omer. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having us.

1:05Omer Ozener:You know, it's a pretty unique product. It's a unique category. Before you jumped into Hello Clean, what were you both doing professionally? My background is actually in more technology. I was in different tech startups from e-commerce to marketplace, mostly around product management. And just before starting Hello Clean, my last job was at one of the largest e-commerce players in Europe, mostly around fashion and beauty, when we first had the idea to start Hello Clean back in 2019.

1:43Karlee Zhang:So for me, my last role was social media manager at Huda Beauty, a color cosmetics company based in Dubai. And before that, it was just various roles across marketing.

1:56Omer Ozener:When you founded the business, how did you and Omar connect?

1:59Karlee Zhang:Well, so Omar and I connected back in 2015. And I would say that if I hadn't met Omar, I probably wouldn't have suffered with so many hair and skin issues because we met in New York when I was living there. He was in Istanbul, met at a bar and decided a long distance relationship. So all of these years was us just constantly trying to move closer to each other and eventually build a life together. and it's throughout all of these moving that I also experienced what hard water firsthand does to my hair and skin but you know it's been like 10 years 11 years now and um Omer and I are partners in life business partners but we are no longer married anymore in terms of like the business.

2:53Karlee Zhang:He, Umar is good at everything I'm not good at. Like he's amazing at finance. He looks after operations. He's super reliable and he's like very analytical. So he takes over the entire performance, finance, operations of the business, all the backbone that keeps us standing. And for me, it's very much about like the look and the feel and the product development within, you know, the business?

3:23Omer Ozener:Yeah, I would say that's one of the key things why our partnership was successful is really like this amazing distinction of our skills and how they are very distinct so that we trust in each other in our own field. So there's not too much of involvement in each other's area. And, you know, and also, you know, like there's so much trust to each other. I leave everything to creative and I have full trust in her and the other way around. Was this a product category that you were personally experiencing a challenge with or were you addressing a market challenge more broadly? How were you thinking about evaluating the problem?

4:03Karlee Zhang:So it stemmed from my own personal struggles because for the last 10 years or so, I kept moving around, you know, in different places. I was living in New York for a bit and then moved to London, Paris, and then Istanbul and Dubai and eventually Berlin and then back to London. And I found that every single time that I had moved, I was suffering like hair and skin quite a lot. And what was really very interesting is that the symptoms were quite different. For instance, when I was living in Dubai, I was experiencing a lot of hair loss. Whereas when I was studying in Paris, I had a really dry patch on my leg that wouldn't go away.

4:51So I think, you know, for like most of our customers experience this too,

4:57Karlee Zhang:the first place I looked at is changing my beauty products. So I tried to change my lotions. I tried to change my serums. And then eventually I went to a dermatologist. And I was like, oh my God, okay, something is maybe wrong with me if I'm losing that much hair every time I shower. And, you know, eventually after doing research, and it was actually on Quora, that I had learned that it was the water composition, which was varying between the different places, and hard water in particular that was causing all of these hair and skin issues. and that was an aha moment for me because I found like okay there is an answer to all of this but it's also like coming from like marketing and also working in beauty I was like there's so much opportunity to really address this problem because I can't be the only one who's suffering with this.

5:55Omer Ozener:Omer for you were you evaluating what other products were on the market that we're addressing this? When we first had the issues ourselves, the struggles ourselves, our first reaction was to go down and look for other products in the market. So we realized actually in Korea, shower filters were quite popular products for years, talking to labs, talking to manufacturers there, trying to understand how this product works, how the iteration works and how it is used in Korean households. Carly, you're the marketer. So part of marketing is just the ability to educate the target market, right, to educate your consumer.

6:39Omer Ozener:In this case, you have, I would describe a problem unaware market versus a problem aware market, right? So at least in North America, it seems to me that consumers don't even understand that this problem exists and or how to think about addressing it. So when you say things like hard water versus soft and filtration and shower systems, generally speaking, the average consumer is just taking a shower wherever they are. They don't think about the problems this way. So has that been a challenge as you grow the business to actually educate your target market?

7:14Karlee Zhang:For sure. I think for us as a brand, what makes it quite unique and also quite challenging to do marketing is most traditional beauty brands, they talk about the outcome and what you're going to get out of using a certain, you know, topical product. Well, as for us, I would say most of our effort is educating people, what does water do to your hair and skin? So once people understand that, then it's almost becomes like a no-brainer that it's like, okay, I need this in my life because it's the foundation.

7:46Omer Ozener:It's almost like aha moments we hear, you know, people, when they understand, And they're like, of course, it makes so much sense. If you are filtering your drinking water, of course, you should, you know, filter your shower water as well. But getting to that stage takes some time. Yeah. And you've both compared the awareness of water filtration today to the early days of sunscreen. That is to say that the science or the culture hasn't quite caught up to the science. I would say that's 100 percent accurate. Is that what you're seeing?

8:16Karlee Zhang:Yeah, I think it was more of a challenge, you know, in the beginning when we first launched. And now it's definitely a lot easier for us. I think for us, trying to make this like really easy and to spoon feed and not overwhelm people by getting into limescale, water hardness levels and all of that technical stuff is actually just asking them a really simple question. Has your hair and skin felt really different when you were on vacation? because most of the time it's yes. They would notice that, for instance, if they were living in LA and they went to New York for a weekend, the way how the frizz reacts and the way how the hair feels after each shower, even though the product remains the same, is completely different.

9:03Omer Ozener:Okay, let's double down on that example. So New York versus LA. What are the differences here in terms of the water and what people would be experiencing?

9:12Karlee Zhang:Yeah, so New York is a softer water area, whereas LA and California is a harder water area. And with hard water, it is essentially water that is loaded with minerals such as calcium, magnesium, as well as heavy metals such as iron, copper, etc. etc. And, you know, even though with hard water, it's not unhealthy for you to drink, and it's not like bad or contaminated in any way, but it has a certain reaction to the products that you use. So when you're using soap, for instance, and say you're using the same shampoo, if you're shampooing in New York, you'll notice that the soap is much more bubbly, It's going to rinse off a lot easier.

10:04Karlee Zhang:It cleanses well. It also gives it that like slippery feeling. Well, as in LA, you find that you are going to use a little bit more products. And it takes a while for the soap to really lather up. And also the bubbles feel more dense than fluffy.

10:21Omer Ozener:I'm in Toronto, Canada. What kind of water am I using here?

10:24Karlee Zhang:I think you have hard water. And if Toronto is hard water, then Vancouver is the soft water.

10:31Omer Ozener:Gotcha. Okay. But the problems that you describe, I mean, these are problems that I think would feel pretty sensitive for the average consumer, right? Like dry skin, hair loss. I mean, these are, I'm feeling a little bit secure about my own hair now that you're talking about the water quality and the impact that it might have. How important has it been to outline some of these more urgent pain points?

10:55Karlee Zhang:From day one, you know, we realized that with every consumer, everyone's reaction to the water is quite different. Let's use London as an example. We have customers who are saying, oh, you know, we moved here and all of a sudden I'm breaking out, even though my products remain the same. Well, as for somebody else, it might be, oh, I have eczema, but I'm noticing that I'm getting more frequent flare-ups. And then for somebody else, it's related to breakage or hair loss. And I think, you know, for Hello Clean, what we try to address is that we understand that no one has the exact same symptoms, but you are able within our collection to find the solution you're looking for.

11:39Omer Ozener:Gotcha. Omar, let's talk about the products. So I'm on the website at helloclean.com today. You've got not only shower heads, you've got shower filters, you've got anti-breakage shampoos, you've got body washes. Rewinding back to 2020, how many products did you start with? Just one. We started with only one product. That's how we launched. Only after two years, we then decided to complement our first shower filter with our first stop care product. And then we built on more filtration, then more hair care, and then more body care. And finally, our first intelligent shower filter came. So that's how the product evolved over years.

12:21Omer Ozener:And you bootstrap the business, you inject your own personal capital. I've got a number of roughly 60 ,000 pounds of personal investment into the first iteration of the business. Is that correct? Precisely, we invested around 60K, around 75 ,000 USD. And that was the only investments we made to the business. And now we bootstrapped all the way until this year, where we announced a strategic investment from the Brita group. Yeah, I think listeners will be very interested to hear how that Brita partnership came together. But before we get there, that first injection of capital, how was that money deployed?

13:03Omer Ozener:Mostly marketing. I think a lot of the first-time founders underestimate the marketing needed to really like distribute their, to educate the customer and really to get the initial reach they need. For us, we knew that it was going to be challenging to educate the customers. And this category required a lot of education, marketing in the form of, you know, like building content, you know, working with creators, advertising on Instagram. That was more than 50 % of that budget. And the remaining was production, obviously working with a manufacturer, which had really good terms. So the initial investment was low there.

13:44Omer Ozener:And how did you find that manufacturer? I think initially we had a typical Alibaba surge going into manufacturers. Then we went to Korea to visit the manufacturers there and China to visit some manufacturers there. So we had on-site visits as well. We still work after six years with the same manufacturer, although now we have more than 20 manufacturers. That building relationship is actually one of the key reasons why we were able to bootstrap. because the payment terms we have with our suppliers is really helping us to preserve cash and to invest into marketing. We didn't go with a very large factory because for them, we were very small, right?

14:25Omer Ozener:They were not too much interested in innovating for us. But the small factories meant a better relationship, but also allocated more of their resources into our products. Yeah, I think you raise an important point about how important the relationship is. We hear or we elevate the importance of relationship when we're talking about, say, the founder partnership dynamic or the dynamic between the founder and the venture capital investor, for example. But nobody talks about the importance of your relationship with your manufacturer or your third party logistics company. Building that relationship can massively change your business.

15:09Omer Ozener:From payment terms, from the flexibilities you will get, from the prices you will get, it will make the biggest difference in your business. Carly, you mentioned before you bounced around from Dubai, Paris, Berlin, all the way back to London. Where was the first market that Hello Clean launched in?

15:28Karlee Zhang:That was in Berlin, Germany. I was working in Dubai and then afterwards decided to move to Berlin. And, you know, like the water isn't that great there. And I was also going through a little bit of like a career transitioning period, trying to figure out what am I going to do next. And it's just always been like a lingering idea that I had in my mind. I was like, OK, why not use this downtime that I have and just really test out this idea and see where it takes us. And so we started like everything super small, like packing the orders ourselves, shipping them ourselves, sticking on the labels ourselves, even designing the first ever Shopify with a free template ourselves.

16:12Omer Ozener:How many markets are you selling into now? We ship worldwide. But if you think about which markets we localize and we have local marketing activities, UK is still the primary market. Then EU markets, Germany, France, Ireland, Spain are quite strong. And then Middle East, we have United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia is our key markets. We just launched Canada in March. Now we have a team member based in Toronto. So we start to scale now marketing activities in Canada as well. Nice. You might have a new customer by the end of this episode. So for listeners that don't understand how to effectively, say, use influencers to elevate their brand or showcase their products at events, what could you share?

17:03Omer Ozener:What's been successful thus far?

17:05Karlee Zhang:So I think the first step is to look at each channel really differently. So we have some influencers who are purely tastemakers. So they're there when we work with them to elevate the brand image, to elevate that Hello Clean is a must have inside your routine. And then there's also other influencers where we're using for conversion. So these are the creators who have the hair and skin issues, who have the authority, who have the confidence to talk about issues that are relatable to the average audience. And then when it comes to the events, I think one of the best things that we've learned and will continuously to do is, I think when you're not trying very hard to sell something and trying to get creators to be like, post about us and just really focus on, hey, let's bring a group of community together.

18:03Karlee Zhang:And let's focus on how can we make you have the most fun and make the most value of your day. Then actually the content starts coming in instead of slapping a huge logo and putting QR codes and saying, do this, do that, snap this.

18:18Omer Ozener:So what does that type of event look like then? If you're not, quote unquote, hard selling and you're bringing a community together, what does that look like?

18:27Karlee Zhang:So last year, we decided to make a eucalyptus wreath class for creators. And for anybody who is not familiar with eucalyptus, it's a plant that if you hang it behind your shower and the steam releases from the shower, it really clears your nasal pathway. way. And it also makes you like really calm and grounded because it releases scent. When we were looking about doing this event, it was actually, we wanted to raise more awareness to our rain shower heads, which is the one that comes directly from the wall. And I think the main challenge that we have with all tools and function is that when you only talk about pure function, people lose attention and they get really bored.

19:21Karlee Zhang:So we're like, okay, instead of talking about what the rain shower is going to do and how it's going to filter your water. Let's get you to come in to create this little wreath and this bundle by yourself. So you're A, learning something really useful. B, you're connecting with a lot of people. And C, like as a brand, we always step backwards. We're not there trying to like overly mingle or trying to get them to do anything. And in the end of the day, it turns out everybody is documenting everything that they created. And then taking the rain shower home as a gift, it became a logical next step that, hey, I'm going to hang it.

20:02Karlee Zhang:Well, if I'm going to hang it, I might as well install the rain shower as well. So for us, we felt like this was a more organic way to build a conversation instead of post about this.