The Inner Workings of a Beauty Brand.

From bootstrapping a service business to $600,000 per year, leveraging that to build a beauty brand from her living room, and getting that brand picked up by Nordstrom.

How Christina did it and what’s next!

/A Thread

So this is a story of resourcefulness and it includes something that most people don’t talk about too much:

Building a cash-flow business to fund a more passion-driven business that requires cash. #30daysofthreads

Starting a business to fund another business isn't a journey most people would entertain, because it’s hard.

But when folks aren’t lining up to pour money into your dreams, you do what it takes.

Enter Christina...

Born in Houston, she always stayed connected to her family in Nigeria by visiting every year. While there she came up with an idea to start a brand selling products sourced in Africa.

54 countries in Africa, hence the name 54thrones.

Love it!

Quick story on how things played out.

First step was coming up with products. She booked flights and traveled around Africa to find raw materials.

Here’s one of her first posts on Facebook talking about her new company...

Here she is in Egypt sourcing lavender, jasmine, and other essential oils and plant extracts.

And here she is sorting shea nuts in Uganda...

And stirring shea butter in Ghana...

Had to include these to show that Christina really committed and put in the ground work to build an authentic brand in the way she envisioned.

I still remember her Facebook posts from back then.

Things were starting to take off for 54thrones but she needed to raise more funds.

So she came across one of my case studies online, started a cleaning business on the side and grew it to more than ½ million dollars a year. (Cause you know, its Christina)

She then used funds from her service business to essentially re-tool her product company.

In this thread we’ll go through a bit of the retooling and show you how things played out.

Ready? Let's get to it!

Step 1: Website Rebranding

The original website needed some work and Christina set out to change the vibe. Design is critical, and even more so with a beauty product where emotion drives decision making.

Old Site banner | New site banner

Step 2: Narrowing down the product line

Christina quickly narrowed things down to skincare/beauty but when she started her goal was essentially introducing folks to African made products. So her original product line included shoes and bags and t-shirts and other items.

Focused matters she now says.

She pivoted to beauty and skincare and then was able to connect with her audience and build out additional product lines that were more focused.

Still more products. But more focused.

STEP 3 BRANDING AND SOCIAL:

So with a more focused product, Christina was then able to create social media content that spoke directly to her audience. Here’s Christina and her sister creating images and video for Insta

STEP 4 - STORYTELLING

With the company pretty much re-tooled Christina then went about telling her story. Social of course, but she did pitch competitions, and would share her vision with anyone who would listen.

Here she is pitching 54thrones...

And as part of her storytelling she created fire video content to introduce the brand and her vibe.

STEP 5: OUTREACH

Now that Christina got comfortable telling her story, she would cold email subscription box companies that would be down to carry her products. She started to be featured in subscription boxes and their online sites. Like so...

Clean Beauty Box...

STEP 6: PRESS

Press is just story-telling at scale, and Now things were starting to get going, Christina would engage with press on social media and started to get features.

One feature led to another (Vogue, Essence, and more)

And this year, Oprah came calling and she was featured in
Oprah magazine's best of beauty 2020 .

-Best face oil

And all of this started from her living room. Dope product pics? Here's how they happened...

And this year, as a result of all this work, Nordstrom finally came a'calling!

She got into their flagship stores, sold out in no time, got a second order, and...(more stuff that I can't mention yet without getting killed lol)

So proud of you @christinategbe , folks see the outcome but I wanted to share the journey. You're unstoppable.

Read on for a few more gems and takeaways from Christina!

Christina Gems:

1. Become an expert

"I hung out every place where my target audience lived online, I built an email list early on and became a subject matter expert around my products. I learned everything I possibly could about oils, butters, African origins, and more."

Christina Gems:

2. Be future focused:

"I always treat my business as I see it 5 years from now.

This made me stay ready. I invested in good photography, and packaging long before I had anyone's attention."

Christina Gems:

3. Entrepreneurship is risk.

"I took those risks, spent money, and made a ton of mistakes, but this is all a part of any worthwhile journey. At the end of the day if you don't bet on yourself, who will?"

Christina Gems:

4. Adversity

"Early on we caught the eye of a major subscription box and signed a contract for a huge order. I was so happy, and then the company rep ghosted me. I was hurt, confused, and angry but I learned to keep my head down and do the work regardless."

Christina Gems

5. Resourcefulness:

I couldn’t always afford pro photos so I thought of creative ways to create content with images of my product. Hence random stuff like this...

Christina Gems

6. Advice

"I only took advice from people that were where I wanted to get to. Everything else I just filtered out"

Christina Gems

7. Perfection kills.

" Don’t wait until things are perfect, get started and iterate and adjust. No one notices as much as you are, no one noticed I had a typo on my labels, but I couldn't waste the money. I put them out and fixed later."

So that's it peeps, hope you enjoyed this.

If you're an investor/VC reading this, show Christina some love. She did all of this bootstrapped.

Every single trait you say you look for in a founder she has in spades.

Fund black women!

@lolitataub and @CindyBiSV , you're two amazing VCs that I absolutely love on the timeline. This might not be your space, but I still wanted to introduce you to the dopeness that is Christina.