Update to this — https://share.gvine.app/uhA3u5ZEizgE6vMD7
TLDR — Dropped job offers and started a D2C personal-care brand for men right out of college. Spent 6 months on R&D, onboarded a dermatologist, scaled Instagram to 14K. A lot of unplanned stuff happened – Incredibly tough, yet worth it! :)
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Almost a few months ago, I shared a post about not taking up job offers right out of college and starting a D2C personal-care brand for men. While I was initially hesitant, my post sort of blew up here, and I received both encouraging and not-so-encouraging comments from many of you.
Honestly, the ride has been nothing short of thrilling. Although I was aware of the challenges, nothing prepares you as much as doing it yourself.
Convincing manufacturers on MOQ was the hardest part. We flew to Chandigarh, stayed in the cheapest hotels, and met over ten manufacturers before we finally found one who met our criteria. With no experience in personal care, we reached out to dermatologists, some a decade or more our senior, hoping they would help us with product development. After weeks of trials and many errors, we finally cracked the code.
We also focused a lot on creating organic content because relying on FB Ads would have made it an unprofitable business. This approach worked; we scaled our Instagram to 14,000 followers and over 5 million views in just 1.5 months. Our followers were getting behind our brand messaging & positioning, it was an exciting time tbh.
But one morning, a month before our planned launch, we found that our Instagram was permanently disabled due to being linked with "suspicious accounts." Despite this, we continued working on content, product, packaging. And I’m excited to share that we are launching four products designed to tackle common skin problems that men experience.
I didn’t want to drag this on because I know long posts can be boring, but it felt necessary to give you all a proper update since many of you have asked. To make up for the lengthy read, dropping a discount code (in comments) exclusively for Grapevine members. :)
Thanks a lot for reading and I’d love to answer any questions you all might have!
Sounds great!
Why did you endup selecting Men's grooming product over other industry? Is that decision based on market research?
How do you price your product? Did you comeup with a demand curve to select the price to maximize profits ?
What's the typical profit margin for Men's grooming products?
How do you differentiate your product from various other products that's on the market?
Men’s grooming is still skewed towards categories like Trimming, Fragnances & Body-Care. 4/5 male brands just have a cleanser/moisturiser in skincare. “Beauty” as a concept was traditionally seen less masculine but now with the exposure of social media, people have normalised it. We’re going to see more and more men having their own 4-step skincare routine in the future :) We’re betting on this thesis.
Pricing decision was simple — we wanted to make the decision of investing into “skincare” simple as it’s still an alien concept for men. Obviously we couldn’t price it at par with the likes of Beardo, Mamaearth because the quality of our Ingredients is def better.
Depends on what types of products you’re selling and the scale of it. COGS for most male grooming brands should be between 25-30% (or lesser).
As mentioned in the first point, most male grooming brands focus exclusively on fragnance/intimate care as it’s the revenue driver for them. We’re more into the “beauty” side of things. Say a serum for skin brightening, etc. We also want to simplify one category at a time, for example our current SKU revolves around simplifying skincare with only four products. We’re going to adopt a similar approach across categories (hair, body etc).
Congratulations man.. Beauty is the most growing industry today probably with highest margins. Wish you all the best.
Thanks :)
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