Naturalicious’ Gwen Jimmere on understanding your customer to grow your business in the hair care market (episode 118)

by Chloë Thomas

Gwen Jimmere is the founder and CEO of Naturalicious home of the Hello Gorgeous Hair Care System which is all about helping ladies get their hair looking awesome, quicker. After launching in 2013 Naturalicious has become one of America’s fastest growing haircare brands and now ship around 400 retail orders a month, and 130 wholesale orders per month, and a couple of big pallet orders to distributors too.

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About the business

Listen to learn why Recurring Orders, Crush.pics, and Wheelio are Gwen’s favorite widgets.

Getting Started

Gwen got started in eCommerce by accident. Though she had always had the idea of wanting to own her own business, making it her sole income was not intentional.

She started making her own hair care products in her kitchen when she was unable to find a hair care system that saved her time, worked well, and was organic and natural. People started asking her what she was using on her hair because it looked amazing and was growing beautifully, so she began to gift the products to her friends and family. Then people her friends and family knew began asking them what they were using on their hair, leading them to give out Gwen’s information, which caused her to begin getting requests from people she didn’t know.

At the time, Gwen was working a regular job and didn’t have time to be taking phone orders all the time, so she was forced to set up a website where people could place orders on their own.

Listen to learn what your QBR is and why you should never outsource it.

The VIP Club

Gwen didn’t intend to have a subscription service, but she was in the Shopify app store one day and noticed Recurring Orders as a featured app. She likes to try things that seem like they make sense and see if her customers are into it. They were really into Recurring Orders. She calls the subscription service customers the VIP Club.

The VIP Club offers benefits to the customer by giving them 15% off for subscribing and eliminates their need to have to think about restocking their shampoo and conditioner supplies. They can cancel or change their order at any time, and can even pause it if they like.

Most Awesome Thing Right Now

The most awesome thing at Naturalicious right now is that they are fulfilling their mission. Their mission is to create solutions for women to help them get this whole beauty thing done quicker. For most women, it is important to us that we look good and feel good, but the vast majority of busy professional women cannot spend time having their life revolve around their hair care, skincare, or body care.

Naturalicious only creates products that save their customers time. They are very customer-centric and customer-focused, and Gwen is proud of the fact that despite all the saturation in the beauty industry, they’ve done a really good job of maintaining focus and making sure they are serving their target customer.

Tips for Finding Your Market and Maintaining Focus

It is very important to understand who your customer is. Niche it down. Naturalicious is in the beauty industry, the subset is women, the subset of that subset is busy professional women. Niche it down as far as you can, but make sure wherever you niche to is a big enough market that you can actually make money in it.

Know your customers’ demographic and psychographic. Know your customer better than they know themselves.

Listen to learn what breakfast has to do with it.

After you’ve found your target customers, be creative in how you market to them. Get away from spending a ton of money to market and using the finances as a crutch to not be creative. If what you’re doing is unique and different and remarkable, then people will be willing to remark upon it in the digital space. If it goes viral, you’ll get a lot of attention for a lot less cost.

eCommerce Book Top Tip

eCommerce Traffic Top Tip

  • Facebook ads, but don’t assume all Facebook ad types work for all businesses. Find the one that works for you

You can hear about all this on the podcast, for free – right now…

Tool Top Tip

  • Help Scout for customer service

Start Up Top Tip

Start where you are with what you have. Many people think they need more resources, more money, more connections. Stop waiting around and just start.

Interview Links

  • Business – if you are interested in becoming a customer
  • Business – if you are interested in becoming a retailer or distributor