When Jodie Patterson and Benjamin Bernet met through mutual friends in early 2013, the co-founders of the beauty site DooBop found exactly what each had been looking for: a like-minded partner in the quest to serve the non-Caucasian market.
“We were both seeing that beauty was being marketed ethnically, and that wasn’t really making sense to us,” says Patterson, 44, who ran a Nolita salon and boutique, Georgia, until 2010. “Women prefer to shop by needs.”
Within weeks of their first conversation, the duo had sketched out plans for a site curating the best luxury hair care, skin care and makeup for women of color, and set to work raising money from angel investors (CEO Bernet) and scouring the international market (Patterson, DoBoop’s chief creative officer).
“We looked at products from Africa, from Israel, from Brooklyn,” says Patterson, who relied on 100-plus “multi-ethnic, opinionated” focus group members to help her handpick the best.
By the fall of 2013, they’d moved into a Soho office, and — even before the December launch of their site — won a fan in Oprah Winfrey.
“We had gifted her a body cream from an Italian brand,” explains Patterson. “The next day, she ordered two cases for her home.”
Winfrey posted a glowing endorsement of DooBop on her website the day the beauty e-tailer went live — and the impact was immediate: “We had all of her believers buying the product,” says Patterson of the $56 body butter, which they sold “in the thousands.”
“We not only sold out, we had to bring in an emergency container from Italy,” adds Bernet, a former L’Oreal marketing exec.
That auspicious debut was only the beginning. A roster of 80 brands (up from 25 at launch) and a steady stream of “customer love notes” is confirmation they’re on the right track.
“They’re saying exactly what we want to hear: ‘Thank you, I finally have something that works,’” says Patterson.
*Tip: To stay in touch with its demographic, the team still runs focus groups. “We rely on them to find out what women are loving — and what they aren’t,” says Patterson.
Glamour on the go
With their on-demand beauty app GlamSquad, Victoria Eisner and Jason Perri are determined to make your bad hair days a thing of the past.
Their Chelsea-based company, which launched in January, links freelance hairstylists with New Yorkers in need of a professional blowout — with as little as an hour’s notice.
“We want to make the whole getting-ready process a lot easier,” says CEO Eisner, 29, who dreamed up the idea after she couldn’t nab a salon appointment on New Year’s Eve in 2012.
The former holistic coach shared her vision with pal Perri, 37, then a private equity exec — and soon the pair were drawing up a business plan.
“We knew that on-demand apps [like Uber] were really trending and we both were shocked that no one had brought that technology to beauty,” explains Perri, GlamSquad’s executive chairman.
Eisner and Perri tapped Giovanni Vaccaro — formerly the head of training at A-list salon Frederic Fekkai — to curate GlamSquad’s menu of nine styles and recruit stylists.
They then exhaustively tested the service ($50 plus tip) on friends and family to make sure the quality was perfect. And when they rolled out GlamSquad to the public earlier this year, they were ready to meet the demand.
“We have thousands and thousands of customers, and nearly half of them repeat book,” says Eisner.
And with a full-time staff of 11, a new $75 makeup service launched in July and plans for Los Angeles expansion in the fall, Eisner and Perri are only just beginning.
“We knew from the start this was going to be much bigger than blowouts,” says Perri. “We set out to build a brand.”
*Tip: Take your time. Instead of scrambling to get in the game as soon as possible, Perri and Eisner took a year to raise money and perfect a long-term plan for what they hope will one day be an international business.
From Seoul to the States
When BB creams made their US debut in 2011, the all-in-one Korean cosmetic ignited a craze for innovative Asian beauty products. And Cindy Kim and Alicia Yoon, co-founders of the Garment District-based e-tailer Peach and Lily, wanted to fill the demand.
“We realized the US market was ready to explore more Korean beauty products,” says Yoon, 32, a former management consultant.
Together, the duo hatched the idea for Peach and Lily, an e-commerce site that introduced hard-to-find Korean and Japanese brands to American beauty junkies. And after a few months testing their business theory in mid-2012 — Kim, 29, gauged interest from the Korean brands she was then working with; Yoon conducted consumer interviews back home — the pair threw their personal savings into the venture and started securing brands.
“We want to make sure we’re finding the best product in every category,” says Yoon, who sources products on trips to Korea.
Convincing brands to sign on with the newbie retailer wasn’t easy, but by January 2013 they’d locked in four high-end labels and had their site up and running.
“It all happened really quickly — it’s a testament to the fact that the market was so ready for it,” says Yoon.
With sales steady from the get-go, the women expanded into B2B distribution and have negotiated deals with retailers including Urban Outfitters.
And the ranks of dedicated customers continue to grow.
“We have a repeat purchase rate of 25 percent in a 90-day period,” says Yoon.
Now, with almost 20 brands in its portfolio, Peach and Lily is hitting its stride.
“We’re working really hard to keep up with demand,” says Kim. “It’s a good problem to have.”
*Tip: When Kim and Yoon feel overwhelmed, they remind themselves to take one step at a time. “It’s not rocket science,” says Kim. “Stay organized, keep hustling and move forward.”