676: Alisha Spent 16 Years In Salons - and Distilled it all Into One $7K/Month Product

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1:03Welcome to Little Empires, brought to you by the team at Founder. At Founder, our mission is to support the next generation of e-com founders. So while you may know us for interviewing some of the world's most successful entrepreneurs, this series is a little different. Little Empires shines a spotlight on the builders inside our own founder community, the entrepreneurs who are in the trenches taking action, learning, and building their businesses in real time. These aren't overnight success stories. These are real journeys, real lessons, and real founders creating their own little empires one step at a time.

1:36This podcast is proudly produced by the founder team to give our students a platform to share their experiences, wins, challenges, and honest realities of building a business from the ground up. Now, let's dive into today's episode. Welcome to another episode of the Founder Little Empires podcast, where we feature founders from our founder community who are building and growing their incredible e-commerce brands. I'm your host, Leah Finch, Community Manager at Founder, and today I am joined by Alicia, the founder of James Jade Hair Care. So if you are building a brand in beauty, wellness, hair care or the personal care space, you're going to get a lot out of this conversation and we are going to dive into Alicia's journey, how it all started, the lessons she learned, the challenges she overcame and how she has grown her brand to this point today.

2:36So Alicia, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here. Very, very keen to have you on here. So what I would love to know, Alicia, to get us started, let's talk a bit about what your career was like before launching an e-commerce brand. So you've got a background in hairdressing. I am a hairdresser by trade. I started my apprenticeship at 15 years old, so I actually dropped out of year 10, went straight into doing hair. I did my apprenticeship and from there I was a senior hairdresser and started my own salon at 20 years old. I had a salon for about eight to nine years working for myself.

3:16And from there, I learned all things hair care, which I absolutely loved. So I had already such a big background in hair health and hair knowledge. Did you have any e-commerce, marketing, product development experience? None whatsoever. I wasn't even good on a laptop. So this was very, very new for me. I, yes, had to learn everything from scratch. Um, that is actually how I came across Founder and I started the Start and Scale course. Okay, cool. And I'm going to dig into that a bit further because I want to know how you really, uh, what you got out of the course and how you leveraged it to start your brand.

3:58And so you, you started out as a hairdresser when you were quite young, right? Yes. So you've been in the industry for some time. Did you mention about 15 years? Yes, so I was a hairdresser from 15 years old and I had a salon all through my 20s. And it was about at 29, I decided that I just, it wasn't for me anymore. The stress, I was overworked. I was tired. I was thinking there just must be something else out there for me. But hairdressing was all that I knew. I actually wanted to be a Redken rep in the hair care world. So I loved product. I loved selling you the right product. I love when clients would have a result of, you know, finding the right product that helped them with their hair.

4:48So I thought that my journey was actually going to be becoming a rep. And that's when I thought maybe I could create my own hair care line, which I had no idea on where to even start with that. And so what gave you that feeling inside that you could actually start your own? haircare brand. I think this is when Instagram was becoming quite... All right. And you knew that you wanted to stay in your space, right? You could see that bringing a haircare product and a haircare line to the world was the space that you had experience in, right? You came from a hairdressing background and it was time to launch your own.

5:33So let's talk about the idea and the problem that your product solved. Let's talk about how that got started. So this actually started. So I knew that I wanted to create hair care, but at this point I didn't have the idea of what kind of hair care. So I actually sold my salon and I went traveling. and when I went traveling I took away so many different products and during that time my hair actually got worse and I was overusing ingredients and I just thought there must be an easier way like why do we need all these different products why can't they be put into one bottle and this is when I started to get the idea that we didn't need to have all these different products for different reasons that if we just took the right ingredients and put them into one bottle to simplify the hair care industry, that's when I started to become really passionate that this was what I was going to make.

6:34Okay. So it came out of your own experience, right? Yes. Yeah. And when we're traveling overseas, we can oftentimes come across the water is different, right? It can be harsher. It can be harsh on our hair and our hair can come out looking and feeling different and it can be damaging and a totally different experience whatsoever. So you notice that you had maybe at the time, like what, four or five products? Oh, I had my shampoo, my conditioner, my leave-in treatment, my serum, my heat protection. I had a mask as well. I had my bond repair and I was doing everything that I had learned in the industry to do.

7:15And I thought if I'm feeling like this, everyone else must be feeling this way too because as a hairdresser, this was just normal to me. But this and being in Australia as well with our summer and climate, like we're always in the sun, we're always outdoors. And not only that, like things for women being stressed that can dry your hair out. So I've also heard with clients that they were what vitamins to use, what hair care to use. Why is my hair feeling dry, but I'm using this. And I just I just thought it doesn't need to be this complicated. and I think during my time being a hairdresser I worked with so many different women so many different hair types and along that journey there was products that I felt worked really well but I still had to use five different items so I kind of started to research the different ingredients of what was working for my clients during that time and what was working for my hair and that's when I took those ingredients and decided to put them into one bottle that way you could simplify your hair care, not have so much product waste, save time, less money spent and not having the overwhelm of having a shelf full of beauty products, really.

8:25All right. And so there's a lot in that, right? You had that experience when you were traveling of taking all these different products, which I was kind of laughing in my head when you're listing all these different hair care products that were important to you to take when you might have like a 23 kilogram suitcase, right? I'm thinking there are absolutely people that are happy with the hotel shampoo and conditioner. And then there are the people that absolutely need their six plaques to take care of their hair when they're traveling for a few weeks. So there is something for everyone. And you identified a gap and a need that was a need personal to you.

9:05But coming from the hair care space, you've seen enough clients and you've seen enough people to know that they do really care about the health of their hair. They care about this list of maybe four, five, six different products, or at least what those products achieve. Hair is very, very important. If you have good hair, you feel good as a woman as well. And I felt there was a lot of people struggling for all different reasons. And just, yeah, they were getting prescribed so many different products, especially with Instagram coming in, you know, there was a new product every week. Of course, of course.

9:41And so you started researching ingredients in terms of the ingredients that worked best for your clients from hairdressing. Yes. So over those years, even being in the salon, there was a few products that I was religious on that I would use all the time. So when I was finishing someone's hair, there was probably about five products that I would put into the one client's hair. And that's what started the spark as well to be like this this doesn't need to be five products why can't these best ingredients go into the one bottle and so from working on clients and then having my own experience we were all feeling the same way so that's when I started experimenting with the ingredients themselves right and so you got your hands on some samples like I want to learn a bit more about the validation right because there's there's a lot of founders that we come across that they want to go out and find these people.

10:37They want to find, say, 30 people to validate their product idea so they know that it's a viable one for the market. But you were working with these clients and you had been for years. At the time, sorry, I already had 16 years of experience. So by the end of that, I was using the same product. So I already knew what products worked. I already knew what I wanted my product to feel like and what started it was I started to well I did the start and scale course and this is when I started looking into working with a cosmetic chemist because obviously I couldn't formulate it myself so I looked for one and then I found one in Sydney and I pretty much wrote a description of what I want it to be like what I want it to feel like, what ingredients I wanted to have in the formula.

11:26And we went back and forth with samples until I felt that it was absolutely perfect. Lucky for me being a hairdresser, I was able to have a lot of clients trial it before I had put it on the market. And I had such good response from it. I would say 10 out of 10, loved it. And I knew I was onto something really good here. Wow. Okay. So how many rounds of samples to get the right sampling to desk clients? So this will shock a lot of people, but we got it perfect on the second trial. Oh, okay. Because I imagine a formulation like this and somehow combining ingredients so that you're doing the job of five to six different products with one product.

12:14I imagine there'd be like 30 different formulations but you got it on the second go and that goes to show the experience that you had with these ingredients it was the experience being a hairdresser and working with those ingredients for so long I knew what each ingredient did so I knew exactly what I wanted in the formula and the fact that we got it right on the second go is pretty wild it was actually the scent that was the hardest part was choosing a scent um so yeah I I was quite surprised because I felt making the formula was quite easy for myself because I knew what I wanted as well. Okay.

12:49And so how many different ingredients go into the formula? So we have five main ingredients. So we have an ingredient that's lightweight for hydration. We have an ingredient that's for repair, heat protection, shine, and then detangling. So the thing with the leave-in conditioner, I would say that's our hero product. And it's very lightweight because a lot of leave-in conditioners can be quite heavy. So we had to make sure that part was perfect to not be greasy or heavy on the hair. So that was fine-tuning that perfect ingredient. Yeah, I would say the leave-in conditioner cuts down on at least five different products.

13:30Okay, and it's so clear what it does, right? The detangler, the heat protection, they all serve a purpose combined into one product. Yeah, because usually when you have your hair care range, you have your shampoo, you have your conditioner, and then everything that follows along. Something for frizz, something if your hair's breaking, something for heat protection. If you like to wear your hair quite natural, people with curly hair, they also felt like they needed a styling product. So it's just also teaching people as well that if you have the right ingredients, your hair will sit how you want it to sit and feel healthy and look healthy.

14:05and especially with curly hair that was such a big one that it's all about hydration the the right hydration will make your hair not be frizzy sit a lot smoother um and yeah I felt like it's creating the right leaving conditioner um can do wonders to your hair with the right ingredients and I think that's what a lot of people well I'm trying to teach people that it's not needing all these different products it's needing the right ingredients and the right one for you you make me want to try it now I'm like I'm gonna I'm gonna place an order after this I'm excited to try it uh okay so now I want to get into some of the numbers with this manufacturing manufacturing process so you contacted the cosmetic chemist in Sydney you achieved the right formula in your second set of samples.

14:59Can you talk us through minimum order quantities for your first batch? So it was actually the packaging that was the hardest part. So at first, the minimum order quantity was 10 ,000 units, which as a startup was not something that I could do. So we negotiated at 5 ,000 units. So I was not going to fill 5 ,000 units. I was just going to get the packaging here because it was all custom made. We went with an airless pump and not many products have an airless pump due to helping with the waste. So it's getting the last bit out. So because we did the custom formulation, that's why we had the minimal quantity of 5 ,000 units.

15:48As for the formula, for my first run, I did 1 ,000 units, which was huge. I believe for your first time filling 1 ,000 units, I was definitely scared, but I'm glad I did it now. Yeah. And so this is the thing about something in the personal care, beauty, wellness space that you've got to consider, right? It's like the packaging and then getting the actual product into it it's like Nathan had an episode recently with Tori Gill you guys should check out that episode son and daughter the the sunscreen brand and so over over time she's had lots of different challenges to overcome in terms of yeah the formula then the packaging you've got to consider two different things yes yes so five thousand uh five thousand units for the packaging for the first run and then a thousand units of the formula for the first run.

16:44Yes, so I filled 1 ,000 bottles. Okay. And so do you remember what the cost of each of those bottles filled with the leave-in conditioner were? Yes, it was$15 per unit. $15 per unit was the cost. That seems really high to get started. Yes, because due to the formula being the ingredients were premium, it wasn't a cheap formula because they had so many different types of ingredients in it. That's what made the startup quite expensive for the first run. And because obviously the more you feel, the cheaper the bulk production gets. But because it was such a premium formula, that was the cheapest run.

17:30Of course that's what I'm thinking like you've come from years in the hair care space and to develop this product and to know all of these ingredients and how they interact and to have have one product perform what six different products do I'm I can imagine you had to be a stickler for the quality of the product yeah so yes at the same time it's like No wonder it costs$15. This is 15 Australian. Yes. 15 for one filled bottle of formula. Yes. So you could imagine why I was a little bit anxious to fill 1 ,000 units. It wasn't a small startup. Yeah, it was quite – it was heavily invested in, definitely.

18:15Okay. And so how about the timelines in terms of that first order for the packaging and the formula? What were the timelines like? So it took quite a while. We had probably five delays to launch. I would say between the packaging and the formula, it took a year and a half to have it on the market, maybe even a little bit longer. So just under two years, I would say that it took to get it ready. Okay. And so we see this a lot in our community, right? We see members developing their idea, validating it, contacting a manufacturer, and then waiting and waiting for that first batch. Tell us, I don't want to jump in too far, but tell us a bit about what did you do in that waiting period?

19:11So I had the salon up until I was 29 and at that point I was saying to myself okay it's time to sell I want to do a full life change career change I can't do this anymore so I sold the salon I had went traveling I came back and that's when I started researching the product putting things together I went back to hairdressing I freelanced and so I was still working with clients and during that time during the two years I was developing the product the formula the brand how it's going to look how it's going to feel the core message and all those things in between it's not something I rushed I was still working and I was still developing it I would pretty much do hair and then pay for an invoice and slowly slowly was going through all the different things that you do during that time yeah a bit of a waiting game but really making the most of that time as well and developing the brand and the audience as well, which I'll get into.

20:11Can we backtrack a little? Because I know there's going to be a lot of listeners that love to get into the nitty gritty details. And this podcast is to demystify the process of building an e-commerce brand and this experience. So do you remember overall what it costs you to get that first batch of formula and bottles that first run just the formula and bottle bottles I spent for my first run I think it was around seven thousand dollars for the packaging and the boxes that the bottles were going to come in because it comes in a beautiful blue box and I wanted a certain look So it was about$7 ,000 for the packaging.

21:01And then the formula was, I think it was about$14 ,000 for 1 ,000 units. So it was quite huge for your first business, your first run. Okay, thank you. And thank you for being transparent with us because this is going to inspire some founders in our community. And like I said, just being really transparent and demystifying the process. Yeah. I know a lot of people can white label as well, but I think when you're custom making a formula, always double your budget. I was told that and I didn't believe it. And yeah, I think it ended up being triple my budget. Yeah. And so you learned that in the process.

21:47Yes. There can always be these things that come up. Yeah. So let's talk a bit about your marketing channels. What was the first marketing channel that consistently brought in sales and tell us a bit more about that. So I would say it was Instagram because I hadn't started meta ads or anything. It was purely organic through word of mouth, still doing hair to my clients. So my first customer was a client. I just started the Instagram. I was doing everything organic, learning everything myself, you know, talking about the product. I was actually not wanting to be the face. I did not want to do any founder videos.

22:27I was so scared to put myself out there. So I definitely learned the hard way. It was very slow to start with because I didn't put myself out there at first. I was relying that people would just come across the page and want to buy it. And it's not like that. You need to tell them your story and why they need it. So that was very slow to get started with. But being a hairdresser, being in the industry, I was very lucky because my clients believed in me and they loved the product and trialing it. So they were my first customers. then being in a salon you know all the other hairdressers then learnt about it trialed it loved it so it just slowly started to grow through word of mouth okay this is really cool so your instagram was growing your audience it was drawing in new customers the word of mouth from your existing community from being in the salon which let's not underestimate in this world right Like we get so focused on the digital world and acquiring new customers when there could be a lot of them around us in our existing network and existing community.

23:29Yeah, I think one of the best things I did was talking to people, word of mouth, doing community events definitely over, yeah, I didn't do any influencer marketing. I wasn't doing meta ads. It was talking to people. Really getting to understand your customer. Like nothing can replace a conversation and that direct contact with your customer and their actual experience of your product. Yes, yes, definitely. Customer knows best. And so let's talk a bit more about your other growth channels, right? So Instagram was the main one. How about email marketing with different offers? You know, you had community pop-ups and events.

24:13So I did not do email marketing. I do now. Um, I, I was very slow at learning everything. So I wasn't doing email marketing. I was purely posting on Instagram four times a week. I started to then do some community events. So we had, um, the world surf league come to Burley heads. I got a bunch of minis. I went out onto the streets. I gifted a lot of people products. I was speaking to them, doing interviews to learn about their hair concerns and how I could help them. That was probably one of the biggest things that helped grow my brand and give me brand awareness was doing events like that. We went into cafes, would hand out little cheeky notes to people to make them be like, oh, who's this?

25:00It was something like, hi, beautiful, I'm all you need, text me. And it was from James. And people loved that. They were like having fun texting. And it was little things like that that didn't cost anything, but people were intrigued and wanted to know what it was about. So I found that helped a lot during the process. Yeah. So this is really clever, right? These little activations walking on the street and you see founders posting A4 pieces of paper with a QR code like scan this and creating that hype and that intrigue is such a clever way of community building and getting that attention from where you think your target customer is spending their time day to day.

25:47Yeah. Right. And you left these little letters like this is from James. And so where did the name come from? James Jade. So my middle name is Jade and we have James is a family name as well. So this is when I was traveling as well. And I came across a DJ whose name is also James. and I was just so inspired and I was playing around with the names and to be 100 % honest a lot of the names in the hair care industry were family names or very you know like Redken was from two different founders putting their last names together and I wanted something quite strong that I could also grow on not just being hair care one day if there's other things that I might want to do so yeah it just came to me one day and I was like I loved it it just stuck I thought it was really, really a great name.

26:39Yeah, it is. It's really strong. James Jade just rolls off the tongue. And that's very clever and intentional what you've done there, right? It's a name that is easy to remember. But as you grow your brand, grow your community, you can expand out to different products and they don't necessarily have to be haircare specific. So very clever. So can you tell us a bit about how the brand has grown up until today? So maybe if you can just remind the listeners what date you launched up until today and and how your sales are tracking like tell us where the brand is at so we launched in 2024 and like I said that was all very organic so that was going out into the community speaking to people in salons going into salons dropping products you know we were going to Sydney to icebergs going to bathrooms leaving minis in bathrooms everywhere like everywhere that I had a nice bathroom I left a note and a mini that kind of started the brand awareness from there I had a few people that were quite big on Instagram that got onto my product that loved it then started talking about it so then that reached you know a lot more people and then pretty much we started meta ads and had to learn what worked well with the meta ads and they have slowly helped like grow the they have helped with the sales um and we are about to launch our shampoo in two weeks which I'm very very excited about doing because that was one of the things that people were asking was what shampoo do I use and the shampoo was always something that I wanted to do but I had to earn back what we had spent first before going and launching the shampoo which we did but I just found it was it it was very slow to grow but the last year it's just been blowing up our sales are doing so well our ads accounts are growing all the content that we're posting on Instagram people are really loving and connecting with and that's because again I have put myself out there explaining the product and why and I think people generally like to see that.

29:02They like to see someone real and what the problem is, what the solution is and being like, oh, that's me. I have that hair type. And it's until you really learn your core message and what you're doing and you project that, that's when you start to grow. And I think that's been the last year we've really nailed that. Yes. And being really clear on that message. And it's obviously been really well received, right? So you mentioned that the brand has blown up more recently, you're running MetaAds. How would you say, what would be your monthly sales in the past few months? So our monthly sales, we have had a few changes, but we are currently doing 7 ,000 a month.

29:41And this is on the one product still. We haven't even launched our second shampoo. We already have a huge wait list for the shampoo. As I've started doing email marketing, just sending out an email once a week, but as a hairdresser. So talking about hair concerns and just everyday hair life things that I would talk about in the salon, which I think has really helped because people are now wanting to know what the next email is going to be, what the next post is going to be. We're getting a lot more saves on our content. So I'm also learning what's working and I've taken away what I have found is working and just doing that over and over and over it again.

30:19Yeah. Wow. Okay. This is awesome. And so, if the Alicia could see the business that you're running today, what would they think and what would they say? Oh, I'm very, very proud of myself because I didn't think this was something that I could do. I didn't know how to work a computer. I am not good with numbers. I had no idea about e-commerce in general, you know, being a hairdresser by trade and leaving year 10 yeah I'm just very proud because you can do it and one of the biggest thing is community meeting other people that are doing the same thing as you or talking to people it is so important during this journey because it can be very very lonely building a community by yourself so I think what has helped as well is like meeting people that are going through the same things that build you up that you can brainstorm with but I think through there I've met so many amazing people as well so I'm just really proud of myself yeah and you can hear it in your voice so your face is lighting up when you're referring to your customers and your community and and bringing you back to the reason that you started in the first place yeah just to be able to help women I think as well seeing all the reviews and going into salon and people like oh I was doing this lady's hair the other day and she mentioned she's using this product called James Jade and I'm like oh my god that's my product and just seeing the reviews of how it has actually helped women not spend so much time on their hair not they're just simplifying their hair care routine and getting the results they're like oh my god my hair sits so much better I don't have as much frizz like what is in this formula like the the results and the reviews I'm just blown away because of how many women have been helped by this simplified hair care range so that's one of the highlights of everything really oh this is so cool this is fantastic and uh I want you to reflect personally for us how has running your e-commerce brand and growing and building an e-commerce brand how has this changed your life whether that be lifestyle wise mentally financially tell us a bit about that lifestyle wise I would say I went from being a very overwhelmed on the floor a very physical job very drained and to be able to create a brand that I'm very passionate about to help others and to be able to do that full-time it's just I have so much passion I feel alive I know my purpose I love it I love it so much like yeah it's to be able to do something that you love not everyone gets to do that so I'm so grateful but it's changed my life completely I have so many goals for the next 10 years there's a huge vision uh and it's also exciting to know that there's no there's so much potential there as well yeah this is really cool uh thank you for sharing that I always I always love to just check in on that reflection right because you've come so far you built such an incredible brand you are helping women with their hair care routine and helping them to feel better about themselves through James Jade.

33:35So Alicia, thank you so much for being on the Founder Little Empires podcast. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you for having me. Hey, Founder Fam, thank you so much for tuning in today. And if you enjoyed this episode, please take the time to leave us a review and let us know what you think. This podcast is 100 % free. We work so hard to go out and find the most successful entrepreneurs and founders in the world. Your feedback helps us grow, improve, and even bring on more incredible guests and insights. So if you have a second, please take a moment, leave us a review. It really makes a difference.

34:12Thanks again for listening, and I'll catch you on the next show.