“There is no way you are going to make a company out of redheads, it’s not possible.”
Early feedback to the founders on their business plan
Founders Adrienne and Stephanie Vendetti were born natural redheads. Growing up, they loved beauty products, but struggled to find the right ones for the sensitive skin and difficult hair that redheads often have. They had to buy hundreds of “redhead-friendly” items to get it right.
One day in high school, they looked at each other and said, “We know how to be redheads!” The name stuck.
In mid-2010, shortly after Adrienne had graduated from college and Stephanie was finishing her senior year with degrees in business, they sat down in a small cafe in Boston and planned everything out. On January 11, 2011, they launched the website howtobearedhead.com with the intention for it to be a positive, supportive environment for redheads that also provided beauty and fashion advice. The site hit a nerve and within 6 months had grown into full-time jobs for them.
“We wanted to create a place where redheads could go and feel beautiful,” says Stephanie, “something we didn’t have when we were teenagers. It can be tough being a redhead. It’s almost like you’re a minority because you look so different.”
How To Be A Redhead is an excellent example of how to build a modern, thriving business by knowing your customers and the problems they face, being passionate about how you deliver value to those customers, and the power of building a brand based on those core precepts.
Lesson #1: Build A Strong Brand
"The brand has always been #1 for Stephanie and I. We evaluate everything we do through the lens of our brand and ensure that whatever we do enhances its image in the market while at the same time being very careful to steer clear of anything that might damage it."
-Adrienne Vendetti, Co-Founder, How To Be A Redhead
[caption id="attachment_18051" align="alignnone" width="262"] How To Be A Redhead Brand Infographic
(click for full-sized image)[/caption]
In the beginning, Stephanie and Adrienne wanted the brand to be at the forefront while they worked quietly in the background. However, it soon became clear that the market demanded the presence of the sisters who knew “how to be redheads.” About 8 months after they launched, they became brand ambassadors for their first big sponsor, L'Oréal Paris, which forced their faces into the picture. Today you can see the sisters all over their website and in their social media channels carrying the message in both subtle and not so subtle ways of beauty, self-confidence and, most important, having fun with who you are.
Since that time, the brand has continued to be at the forefront of the company’s success. When companies want to be sponsors, Adrienne and Stephanie ask themselves whether they can stand behind the company and its products as they don't want to promote anything but the highest quality products. Their offices are piled high with health and beauty products, but they won't feature any product or accept any sponsorship until they have crowned a product "redhead friendly," the moniker that they use to indicate products that have gone through a rigorous testing on redheads that they themselves conduct.
The sisters are acutely aware that in a social-connected world, especially for a company that has so many social followers, one wrong step can easily blow up on you and tarnish your brand and your business. In the early days they encountered a situation where a discussion emerged in one of their social media channels that one of their sponsors had been associated with animal testing, a hot-point issue for their audience. In this particular case, animal testing had happened many years ago and the company no longer employed the practice, but it provided them a valuable lesson about just how careful they needed to be. For this reason they are obsessive about really understanding the companies they are associating with, doing lots of research and extensive interviews with prospective sponsors to ensure that they can stand behind those companies and their products 100 percent.
When you look at their site, their products and services, and social media, it is immediately clear that the brand is central to everything they do. The brand clearly articulates the message that it's OK to be a redhead; in fact it is FUN to be a redhead. Don't hide it, flaunt it!
Arguably, the brand is their most valuable asset and one that carries a message and point-of-view that its target audience relates to. The power of the brand they have built is what has provided them the engine to expand their business in multiple directions. When you visit their site or social media accounts, it is immediately clear that they stand for something, have a perspective, and have built a growing and vibrant audience that relates to the brand and its personality.
The brand has become so powerful that the business has grown organically without ever having to spend on external advertising or promotion.
Lesson #2: Find a Niche Audience
“If you look at the stats, 1%-2% of the population are natural redheads. Our audience is made up of natural redheads as well as redheads by choice, but that is somewhere between 7-14 million people that beauty companies are missing out on.”
-Adrienne Vendetti, Co-Founder, How To Be A Redhead
"There is no way you are going to be able to make a business out of redheads, it's just not possible," was right, but it was the right advice for 10 years ago. Today with the reach of the Internet and the network effect of social media, building a niche audience is not only possible, it just might be the future of business. I have two redheaded sisters. As I was writing this article I asked both of them whether they had heard of How To Be A Redhead and both had. If you are a redhead, you probably have too.
Building a business that taps into the needs and desires of niche audiences requires a deep understanding of that audience. That is why we are starting to see so many successful businesses that are based on the interests and passions of their founders. Stephanie and Adrienne aren't just aggregating a customer base, they are aggregating an audience that shares their interests and passions. The business is an extension of an aspect of themselves.
One of the biggest values in building niche audiences is that they are "sticky" for the most human of reasons: we are social animals and we all have a desire to continually build and maintain connections with others. As companies start to emerge that share their customer's passions, interests, concerns, and so forth, those customers develop something of a "personal relationship" with that company. For the audience of redheads, the sisters have done just that. All you have to do to experience this firsthand is to go on to their site and social media pages. Immediately you will see something more than a just company or its products, you'll see human connection.
Lesson #3: Use Social Channels Wisely
“Because redheads are different, they are constantly bullied about their hair. Stephanie and I were bullied about our hair when we were growing up, so we wanted the platform to empower young girls to log on and feel confident about their looks. We keep that in the forefront of our minds, recognizing that a significant percentage of our audience is young. Lots of girls write us to say that if it wasn’t for our social media, they wouldn’t be able to go to school.”
-Adrienne Vendetti, Co-Founder, How To Be A Redhead
From the beginning, social media was integrated into the sister's plans and today has grown to be a key driving factor in all of their business initiatives. Each of the social media channels provide a distinct audience, ways to interact with that audience, and different ways that channel delivers value to the business. The overriding objective is to ensure that their followers are engaged, by mixing it up a lot with articles, empowering quotes, celebrity photos, and so on. They successfully differentiate their social media streams by making sure what they are posting is engaging and fun.
- Facebook with 12,000 followers is the #2 source for driving traffic to any articles they run on the website.
- Twitter with 9,000 followers is more of a conversation with their audience. It is always happening.
- Instagram with 88,000 followers is where they connect with their younger audience. This is the audience that buys. They make most of their revenue when they post a new item for sale. Instagram is so powerful that when an item is posted they will often sell out of that item overnight.
- Pinterest drives the most traffic to the website. It is the smallest audience with just over 6,000 followers, but is by far the most active in driving clicks. “That just proves how powerful Pinterest is,” says Adrienne, “Our pins get re-pinned, so we are constantly getting traffic.”
- YouTube is a channel that is still in development. There are a half-dozen tutorials on it and there are plans to build it up over time, but for the moment it is more exploratory in nature.
[caption id="attachment_18054" align="alignnone" width="600"]
Providing a sense of self-confidence to teenage and preteen girls is an important goal of the social mission[/caption]
Lesson #4: Diversify Your Revenues
“We get approached all the time by companies asking to advertise on our website. We're a business and the income would be great, but we believe that there are better ways then having streams of ads on the site.”
-Adrienne Vendetti, Co-Founder, How To Be A Redhead
One of the advantages of building your business on the Internet is that the costs for publicizing and marketing your products can be close to zero, outside of the time you put into it, and with results that can be measured in real-time.
Instead of advertising, the company has successfully found a number of unique ways to generate revenue.
- Branded Products. Their online store sells clothing with a redhead theme along with a number of hair accessories that the company has developed and manufactured specifically for redheads. The products are shipped from their own warehouse rather than using a drop shipping service because they are very conscientious about exactly how each of the products is packaged and presented. (It's the brand again!) [caption id="attachment_18053" align="alignnone" width="614"]
A sampling of products available on their online store.[/caption] - Product Giveaways. Every other week they hold a vendor sponsored giveaway that works like a sweepstakes that they promote on social media. Each giveaway attracts a lot of attention for the vendor and drives thousands of entries.
- Rock It Like A Redhead events. The events are the most lucrative part of the business. The first event was held in early 2013 and was such a success that they decided to take it on the road with 5 events planned in 2015. Once again leveraging the power of the Internet, they have started a Kickstarter campaign to raise the funds necessary to produce the events. [caption id="attachment_18055" align="alignnone" width="611"]
Rock It Like A Redhead Event[/caption]
A sampling of products available on their online store.[/caption]
Rock It Like A Redhead Event[/caption]The Future
Right now the focus of the business is on launching the 2015 Rock It Like A Redhead tour. Having produced one event already, Adrienne and Stephanie know just how much work each event is. But one thing is clear: by adding in-person events for what is today a virtual community holds the promise of really taking this business to the next level in its evolution.
So far, the business has been self-sustaining and has not needed to raise external funds. The Kickstarter campaign for the tour will be the first time they are raising funds for the business. They do get inquiries from investors, but as of yet have not found an investor that really understands that the core of the business is the brand and the brand is not something that can just be bought and run with. The brand is products and services, but it is also perspective, community, and advocacy. It has a heart as its core and needs that core to continue to thrive.
Photo credits: Kara Kochalko
Some Assembly Required Businesses
This article is part of a series called "Some Assembly Required Businesses," a new breed of business model that combines inexpensive cloud-based services, modern product development validation techniques, the far reach of the Internet, and the maturation of social media to quickly build profitable businesses that would have been difficult, if not impossible, to create in the past.
