Hairtamin, the formerly direct-to-consumer hair-care and supplement brand founded by TV personalities and entrepreneurs Lilly Ghalichi and Leyla Milani, has found its first retail partner.
The brand will launch at Ulta Beauty, with the hero product, Advanced Formula, going into all doors. The rest of its lineup, which includes a shampoo, conditioner, gummy vitamins, an immunity supplement and a postnatal supplement, will be available on Ulta’s website. Prices range from $20 to $30. Industry sources estimate for its first 12 months at Ulta Beauty, the brand could bring in a wholesale sales volume between $8 million and $10 million, although the retailer and the brand each declined to comment on the estimate.
The retail expansion comes at a time of growth for Hairtamin, which benefited from consumer’s skyrocketing interest in self care and health. “The pandemic has really put a focus on a brand like ours that focuses on overall improvement of health,” Ghalichi said. “It’s been a really expansive year, we’ve had so many customers discover us because the pandemic has been so long.”
Both Ghalichi and Milani said they’ve been approached by multiple unnamed retailers in the past, especially as social awareness of Hairtamin grew — between their own social media accounts and the brand’s, their reach nets out to almost 5 million followers — but Ulta’s brick-and-mortar footprint made it an ideal partner. “We’ve focused primarily on our d-to-c [channel]. As our social grew and product awareness grew, we had so many retailers come knocking. When Ulta approached us and presented the opportunity to be in store, we saw they were the best option because they have so many locations,” Ghalichi said.
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Integral to growing their business is their relationship with consumers, Milani said. “Our decision has always been very thoughtful in that we really wanted to crawl before we walked, we really wanted to understand our core customer, who she is and what’s important to her,” she said, adding that the brand’s database of over 700,000 customers is a goldmine of data and consumer insights. “You can’t really gain that sort of data in a retail space. With our business being primarily d-to-c, we really wanted to use that.”
Similarly, Hairtamin’s universal appeal attracts a wide range of shoppers, one that even surprises the founders. “We initially thought the brand would be for women between the ages of 20 and 40 who were interested in beauty, women who followed us on Instagram,” Ghalichi said. “But she’s everything — young and old. It’s not even always a ‘she,’ plenty of men use our formulas.”
One thing that the consumers have in common, however, is devotion to the products, which are vegan, cruelty-free, gluten-free and made in the U.S. without preservatives or binders. “Our customer-retention rate really speaks to the appeal at 61 percent. That just really speaks to the efficacy of the product,” Milani said.
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