Nancy Twine, the founder of Briogeo Hair Care, shifted from a finance career to create her natural hair care brand after a personal tragedy. Inspired by childhood memories of homemade treatments, she faced funding challenges as a Black entrepreneur in a predominantly white industry. Despite initial struggles, her determination led to a remarkable partnership with Sephora, launching a line that now generates $100M in annual sales. Twine’s journey highlights resilience, innovation, and the importance of family support in achieving entrepreneurial dreams.
Nancy Twine's personal tragedy fueled her transition from a promising job in finance to launching a successful natural hair care brand, Briogeo, using homemade hair treatments as inspiration.
As a Black entrepreneur, Nancy faced challenges in raising funds and garnering interest from investors in the predominantly white male beauty industry.
Nancy's determination, strategic marketing efforts, and persistence in securing a partnership with Sephora played a crucial role in Briogeo's growth and success.
Deep dives
Finding a Niche in Natural Hair Care
Nancy Twine, a former trader at Goldman Sachs, ventures into the beauty industry with the goal of creating a line of natural hair care products. After extensive research and formulating, she launches the brand Briojio, which focuses on using high percentages of naturally derived ingredients. The brand stands out in the market, as there are few players in the natural hair care space at the time. Urban Outfitters becomes one of the first retailers to show interest in Briojio, leading to an investment from Phil Palmetto and the ability to scale production.
Making Strides in the Beauty Industry
To promote Briojio, Nancy hires a PR agency and goes beyond email pitches by meeting editors face-to-face to tell her story. This strategy yields press coverage from major publications like Allure and Marie Claire. However, Nancy's ultimate goal is to get her products into Sephora. After researching and finding the contact information of a senior buyer, she reaches out to set up a meeting. While the buyer eventually passes the conversation to a junior buyer and mentions Sephora's lack of focus on hair care, Nancy remains hopeful for future opportunities.
Pursuing Opportunities and Overcoming Challenges
Despite the initial discouragement from Sephora, Nancy remains determined to land a retail partnership with the renowned beauty retailer. To further showcase Briojio's potential, she prepares a press book with all the brand's coverage and plans another trip to meet with Sephora. Nancy's persistence and the uniqueness of Briojio eventually pay off, leading to a successful partnership with Sephora and an impressive growth trajectory for the brand.
Navigating the challenges of starting a beauty product company while working full-time
The podcast episode explores the journey of Nancy Twine, the founder of Briojio, a natural hair care brand. While working at Goldman Sachs, Nancy decided to pursue her passion for beauty products and started researching hair care contract manufacturers. Despite facing numerous rejections and struggles to find a manufacturer willing to produce sulfate, silicone, paraben, DEA, and dye-free products, Nancy eventually found a small contract manufacturer in the Midwest who was willing to work with her. Balancing her full-time job and her side project required careful time management and dedication.
Overcoming challenges to launch Briojio and secure a partnership with Sephora
Nancy focused on creating a diverse assortment of hair care products with limited resources. She ultimately decided to start with four products: one shampoo for all hair types and three conditioners for specific hair textures. Nancy faced the challenge of securing funding and raising awareness for her brand. By partnering with a beauty sampling box called Ipsy, she was able to distribute samples of her products to hundreds of thousands of potential customers. This sampling program proved to be successful, leading to a partnership with Sephora, initially for online sales and later for in-store distribution. Briojio's collaboration with Sephora helped propel the brand's growth and success.
In 2010, a tragic personal event changed the trajectory of Nancy Twine's life. Suddenly, her promising job at Goldman Sachs no longer seemed fulfilling; she wanted something more.
Drawing inspiration from the homemade hair treatments she once made with her mom, Nancy created a line of shampoos and conditioners that catered to all textures of hair without using harmful additives. But as a Black entrepreneur pitching beauty products to white, male investors, she had a tough time raising money.
Finally, in 2013, with an investment of $100K, Nancy launched Briogeo and eventually landed it in Sephora. Today the company’s sales revenue is $100M a year.
This episode was produced by Casey Herman, with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei.
It was edited by Neva Grant, with research help from Daryth Gales. Our audio engineer was Josh Newell.
