On this episode of Honest Ecommerce, we have Shaina Rainford. Shaina is a CEO, a mother, and the woman behind the viral haircare brand Bask and Lather Co. We talk about discovering a homemade remedy to restore hair health, ensuring business stability before becoming a full-time CEO, building a brand story and launching with impact, and so much more!
A few years ago, Shaina, CEO of Bask and Lather Co’s younger sister lost ALL of her hair to a ringworm that spread across her scalp and was misdiagnosed as dandruff. Dermatologist told her mother that her hair may never grow back after months of having a smooth, shiny scalp.
Out of desperation, her mother took things into her own hands and created a scalp oil to stimulate growth, which is now the company's #1 best selling product and a viral sensation.
Shaina, who is also a licensed Nurse Practitioner, helped her mother perfect the formulations and ensure that the ingredients were all natural and safe.
In addition to running the now 8-figure company, Shaina is a mother, fiancee and real estate investor.
In This Conversation We Discuss:
Resources:
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Shaina Rainford
I think the one thing that's more important than skill, because you can teach skill and certain knowledge to people, you have to have people that care.
Chase Clymer
Welcome to Honest Ecommerce, a podcast dedicated to cutting through the BS and finding actionable advice for online store owners. I'm your host, Chase Clymer. And I believe running a direct-to-consumer brand does not have to be complicated or a guessing game.
On this podcast, we interview founders and experts who are putting in the work and creating real results.
I also share my own insights from running our top Shopify consultancy, Electric Eye. We cut the fluff in favor of facts to help you grow your Ecommerce business.
Let's get on with the show.
Welcome to the Honest Ecommerce Podcast, the first one on location at eTail West.
Shaina, how are you doing?
Shaina Rainford
I'm doing great. Happy to be here.
Chase Clymer
All right. This is wild. We've got 2 camera setups. We're doing it with the new microphone.
First of all, how do you like the conference so far?
Shaina Rainford
Amazing. This is actually the best conference I've been to. I'm getting a good mix of feeling like I'm on vacation, but also working. It's so relaxing here.
Chase Clymer
I mean, the weather here is amazing.
Shaina Rainford
It's beautiful.
Chase Clymer
Also, the vacation part, they're putting out like beer at 11.
Shaina Rainford
Exactly.
Chase Clymer
And I'm like, hey, this is a little interesting.
Shaina Rainford
I love it.
Chase Clymer
I want to be cognitive of your time, so let's just dive in there.
So for the people that don't know, you're the CEO and founder of Bask & Lather. What is that, if I'm not familiar? What are the types of products that you guys are selling?
Shaina Rainford
Yes, so Bask & Lather is a haircare brand dedicated to helping men, women, and children all over the world grow and keep hair that they love. Our hero products are oil-based products, they're all-natural ingredients with powerful essential oils that are scientifically proven to help with hair restoration and growth.
We've now expanded to a full line of products that not only help with growth, but moisture and length retention as well.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing. So take me back in time.
Where did the idea for this product come from?
Shaina Rainford
Yes, so eight years ago, my younger sister lost all of her hair due to a ringworm. She had flaking in the scalp. It just looked like excessive dandruff. My mother kept taking her to the primary care doctors and they were giving her dandruff shampoos.
Eventually, her hair started to fall out in clumps. Months later, the issue wasn't resolved, and hair started falling out. So my mom took her to specialists and they finally properly diagnosed her with ringworm.
She took the antifungals and her hair completely fell out after. She had a big crop circle, no hair at the top. She ended up losing all of her hair and it stayed that way for months, even after the infection cleared.
And at that time, we were living in Pennsylvania and my mom took my sister to specialists in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania. They did scalp analysis and they said, “We don't see any growth or any activity in the follicles. We're not sure that her hair is ever going to grow back.”
My mom became really desperate and created her own concoction, which is our scalp stimulator oil. But it was never meant to be like a product or a line to share with anyone.
So fast forward to 2020, I'm working as a nurse practitioner. I got deployed to go work in the hospital. I was working in an office setting and I acquired COVID, became really, really sick, to the point that I was in an ambulance on a non-rebreather mask.
I recovered and a few weeks later, my hair started to fall out in big balls and shed. I was so embarrassed and hurt. I tried all these different emergency treatments, nothing helped.
So I started using the, at this time now, we had two oils, our scalp stimulator, and then we had a hair elixir, which is like a Jamaican black castor oil that's really thick and it helps to stop shedding. I started to use those two that my mom created very consistently.
Almost instantaneously, my hair stopped shedding and breaking and I was back on the track to regrow my hair. And I said, “We have to share these products with people.” Like, it was crazy.
Chase Clymer
That's amazing.
So where was the impetus to validate this idea with other people? Did you just go out there and try to sell it? Or like, what were the first steps, other than your friends and family, to acquiring new customers?
Shaina Rainford
I had before and after photos from not only my sister, but a good thing, because it was so many years ago, my mom had documented her entire journey with her hair loss.
So every step of the way, we have photos and videos of her hair. And I just started sharing those photos and videos from my sister and also with my hair loss on my personal Instagram.
And people were like, “What is that? I want to buy it.”
So we started making batches and selling it in bottles with no label to people on Instagram. They were like cash-sapping us. It was so crazy. Then a month later, I was like, “All right, we have to turn this into an actual business.”
Chase Clymer
I mean, that's validation right there. It's like, “Okay, we have something here.”
So how was it going from like a serum that your mother kind of created herself to like an actual product that's ready for market?
Shaina Rainford
I would say, like, the first five to $10,000 of sales were in glass bottles from Amazon with no label, nothing on it. People didn't even care. They're like, “I just want this product. I want it.”
We spent about a month and a half. We got a logo made. We built the website on Shopify. We built up email lists and we did all of those things and then we got proper labels and we did a launch. So that was December 18th, 2020.
We did a lot of organic social media marketing, like on Instagram, just constantly showing that social proof and actually being repetitive. We wanted the whole world to know the brand story, so we just kept sharing that story, and people gravitated towards it because it was kind of hitting a pain point for a lot of our customers. They also have issues with their hair, right?
We launched in December 2020. And by March 2020, the business had grown to six figures in monthly revenue, to the point where it was costing me to go to work as a nurse practitioner.
By June of 2020, the business just continued to grow, and I decided to leave my career as a nurse practitioner to grow the business. And it just took off exponentially since.
Chase Clymer
I want to talk about that. There's some more stuff that I want to get into with kind of getting the business up there.
You mentioned that you spent a lot of time on Instagram. Was that the only channel that you were trying?
Shaina Rainford
At that time, yes, it was only Instagram. We were posting on our page and we were also reaching out to pages that had a related audience. Haircare pages that would post memes and quotes of haircare because they also had our target audience, and they would repost our brand story. We would pay them and they would repost our brand story and we grew, like, 50,000 followers in just two to three months that way, all organic.
Chase Clymer
If I'm a listener out there and this is a strategy that I've thought about but I don't know how to do, could you break it down really simply for me?
Shaina Rainford
I would search. What I would do, sometimes I would just go look through my followers and think, “What are they following?”
Sometimes I would do, like, #naturalhaircare or #naturalhaircarepromopage. And I would find a bunch of pages that were relevant to our brand and our products, and I would reach out to them, “Hey, would you mind, can I pay you to post this on your page?” And they would repost whatever we sent them, and that would typically be our brand story. One slide with the befores, the afters, the full journey and a catchy headline.
Chase Clymer
And you were reaching out, typically with a pay to play type, you're like, “I'm ready to give you money.
Shaina Rainford
Yep, and I would ask them, “What are your rates for promotion?” A lot of these pages do promotion, that's why they run the pages. We would pay them and they would post the content and we grew a lot from that. We didn't run paid ads for the first year.
Chase Clymer
Yeah, exactly. So that was your growth strategy to get new customers–it was getting in front of other people's earned audiences with a kind of paid placement.
Shaina Rainford
Exactly.
Chase Clymer
And you did that for about a year.
Shaina Rainford
We did that for about a year. Within the first eight months of the business, we grew to a million in revenue this way.
And then it was around November, just shy of a year into the business that I started running Meta ads on my own. But we did everything. We like to do things on every platform organically first before we start the paid advertising because we just built up so much more social proof beyond our own personal stories by doing it that way.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
I want to get into Meta and the growth that you saw from putting money behind the content, but I know there's entrepreneurs out there right now that have a good thing going on on the side, and they're scared to make that leap.
What was it for you? You said that, from a financial perspective, it just was hurting the business not being there.
Was there anything else going on where you were like, “I need to focus on this, this is the thing that I really…” Kind of what people say, ‘Burn the boats.’
Shaina Rainford
I'll bring it full circle. Basically, I was working as a GI nurse practitioner. Absolutely like from when I was a child I knew I wanted to always be a provider. I thought I was going to go to med school then I decided to do nursing. I actually had my son when I was 17 so he went with me through school.
Two bachelors, got my masters. Loved being a nurse practitioner. I used to get there early, stay late. Had an amazing boss and team and an overseeing physician that I worked with.
And then my superior nurse practitioner that used to oversee us retired. And the nurse practitioner that became my supervisor was from hell. She was, like, a micromanager. She just made it so that I will pull up to the parking lot during work and just be sick to my stomach. Like, “I don't wanna be here.”
I love my patients, I love providing care, but I just hated it. And then she just kept doing things constantly. I was like, “Why is she picking on me?”
And actually, before she started picking on me, the business was growing so much that I was like, I may need to ask, “Can I go part-time?” Because we were running out of products so quickly. I would get home from work and be up till one in the morning, refilling and making new products.
And then when I said, “I'm going to go part-time,” something my superior said, “Just quit.” And I was like, “I can't do that. I have a mortgage. I have student loans.”
And literally when I went against what my superior told me, she just kept messing with me. I got written up twice. I've never… I'm a grown adult, I've never got written up for being late on a PPD that you need when you work with patients. She never reminded me that I was due for it.
And then she wrote me up a second time because a patient was, like, 25 minutes late for their 30 minute time slot and I couldn't see them because I had a full schedule. And after she did that, I was like, “I'm gonna quit.”
I was closing on an investment property the weekend before Labor Day. I was like, “I'm just gonna close on this house and I'm gonna quit.” So that's exactly what I did.
I took a vacation, 10 days of vacation. I closed on an investment property during that time. I was due to go back to work Monday, June 7th. and I scheduled an email for 5 p.m., Monday, June 7th, that I quit effective immediately and basically expressed that I don't like being micromanaged. I'm very passionate and I'm a hard worker and my patients all love me and I was just done.
I didn't tell my mom I quit. I removed her access from my ring camera so she wouldn't see my car in the driveway every day.
And I quit and I grew my business. And the business, literally from June when I quit to July doubled in revenue just because I was focusing fully on the business and manufacturing more products. I got friends and family to kind of work for me full time to help fill and package and ship orders.
Chase Clymer
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Chase Clymer
Was there anything about the mental capacity of not having that other stuff on your plate that helped?
Shaina Rainford
Yeah, I think it helped a lot. I would say that this is something that's important to a lot of people, who are, like, “I'm gonna go out on a whim and I'm gonna quit and I'm gonna do my own thing.” I would have never done it if we had not for the three months prior to that consistently hit these revenue goals that were like my one year salary, and I was running it from home with low overhead.
Chase Clymer
I think that's very important to point out. You had essentially already replaced your income.
Shaina Rainford
In one month.
Chase Clymer
From your side business. It wasn't that you were going from a paid job to nothing. And I think that's where some entrepreneurs may make a mistake. It's like, make sure that you can support yourself with your side hustle before jumping ship.
Shaina Rainford
Yep, exactly. And then at that time, I saw my fiance, he's a correctional officer for the city and at that time, we weren't engaged yet. But I was like, “Oh, I can go on his insurance.”
So he went to the courthouse and we actually melted the papers in because it was COVID. We got a domestic partnership and I went on his insurance. And I was like, “Yeah, this is great. The money is there. We have insurance. I'm done.”
And I just focus fully on the business.
Chase Clymer
Awesome. All right.
So let's talk about how you are finding awesome traction organically through Instagram. Tell me about figuring out Facebook Ads and starting to put money behind this content.
Did you get it immediately? Did it take some trial and error? What happened?
Shaina Rainford
I did something very smart that I didn't realize at the time. When I first created my Shopify site, I installed the Facebook Pixel on it.
So for that full year before I ran ads, my pixel, and I was getting so many sessions to my website, was collecting all of that data. Now we had already built the following, we built the social proof on social media, and even beyond social proof.
We're not only showing results, we have testimonials. We're showing the first 10 months from my home, the packages going out, et cetera.
So by the time I said, “Okay, I wanna learn Facebook ads, but I wanna learn them myself.” I don't hire anyone to do anything I don't know how to do myself. So I began to run Facebook ads, and I had all of that pixel data already. The ads were just extremely profitable from the beginning.
When I initially started running the first few ads myself, we're in like six to seven row ads. I know how to do the audiences, I did everything.
Then it got to a point when the time came to scale and optimize the ads, I started to get fatigued ‘cause I'm so busy running all ad aspects of the business. I couldn't focus and do the creative refreshes and optimizations and the segmenting of the audiences.
And if something's performing really well, pull it out and put it in its own campaign, right? So I thought, I'm causing myself to kind of lose out, so I enlisted in an agency, which I got lucky, because they're really like an extension of my team. They're really, really dedicated to our growth.
And I think that's not easy to find. I interviewed maybe three or four marketing agencies and it was kind of hard.
Chase Clymer
I think that hiring is just so hard, especially agencies, because marketing, in general, they know how to put themselves in the best light, “I own an agency. I know what I'm doing. It's a sale at the end of the day.”
But what was it about the agency that you chose that made you go, “I think this is the one?”
Shaina Rainford
My superior. I'm big, like, honestly, even now looking back, I can't tell you even really how we got to this point. I always just go with what...
Chase Clymer
Trust your gut.
Shaina Rainford
Trust my gut, what's told, and I feel like that's the easiest way, when you go against that, right? When I said, “I'm gonna go part-time,” and my superior said to quit, then I started getting picked on at work. You're going against what's meant for you. So I just really followed the flow.
Literally, it was a difficult decision because I narrowed it down to two agencies. I'm like, “All right, we have this, we have that.” And I think at one point, I don't know if I should say this, but between the two agencies, mine had one woman on their team.
But that wasn't really my decision. I had to kind of get petty because I'm like, “All right, well, how am I going to make this decision? Because they're all equally smart, same service fees, great audits, great presentations, great understanding even of the competitive analysis.”
But I just decided to go to my agency and they're really great and invested. The CEO himself was just at my office a few weeks ago. We had lunch and we did our weekly meeting in my conference room.
They understand the business as a whole and they even sometimes help beyond what their scope is. So they're really dedicated to our growth, which is great.
Chase Clymer
Awesome.
There's so much more I'd love to go into here, but I want to know what haven't I asked you about that you think would resonate with our audience?
Shaina Rainford
I guess one of the things is, we always talk about the great things, right? I've also been through hell and high water throughout this whole process. This September 2023 was our big Labor Day sale, second time doing it. And, literally, I should have been so excited. The sales were crazy beyond belief.
And that month, we made the most money ever in the shortest period of time. It was just so stressful. I literally had to spend a month myself in the back of my warehouse with the staff seven days a week and my children packing orders and doing these different things.
The hardest part of business is finding good, reliable people who are gonna be there and help to support and really be dedicated. So I made major changes, like Q4 of last year, I got rid of all my warehouse staff, I outsourced to a fulfillment center, which was tough for me, because we have an 8,000 square foot warehouse in New York and we have all this space, but I just can't focus on logistics and pushing all these orders out of our warehouse. It's pulling my attention from other things.
When we're short or when people call out or they just don't show up, then I'm stuck back there instead of doing the work that drives the business forward. Got rid of all my warehouse staff, outsourced to a 3PL. I got really lucky with them too.
I interviewed so many, like, I interviewed three PLs who have robots that go pick stuff. I interviewed so many and I love this one and they've really been great. So I did the 3PL.
I also hired an executive assistant. I hired an operations manager. I got really lucky with them. They're both very smart, hardworking, dedicated. There's times at the end of the day, and I'm like, “All right, guys, I need you to start getting up from your seat, we gotta go, and we can't stay here this late every day.” But they're super dedicated to the brand.
So now, my goal is to really… that's what makes it even harder to hire, because I have a really good team that's really hard working, they're excited to be a part of the brand, and they do whatever they need to do to kind of help drive things forward. So now anyone else that we bring onto the team, they have to have that same grit.
So one of our interview questions is, when we're hiring for social media, because now we're gonna have a team of five, we asked them, “It's 4:30 on a Friday, you look at the content calendar and all of the content that you have scheduled for the next two weeks disappeared. It's 4:30 on a Friday, what are you going to do?”
If you say you're coming to me, you're not getting hired. If you say, “Oh, I'm going to do whatever I have to do until five,” you're not getting hired.
I think the one thing that's more important, even more than skill, because you can teach skill and certain knowledge to people, is you have to have people that care. That's the only way that it works.
Like, right now, if I didn't have my operations manager and my executive assistant that cared, I would not be able to be at this conference because I would be at the office running the rodeo. Like I've had to do for the past three years.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
I think as you grow a business, delegating big parts of the business is super hard as an entrepreneur, especially to get from where you were to what you're doing now and that success. You had done it all. And no one ever does it the way that you do or as good as you do it.
So that's definitely a skill I think a lot of entrepreneurs...
Shaina Rainford
As long as they can do 80%.
Chase Clymer
That's the exact number I said.
Shaina Rainford
That's something that I heard. That's something that I heard the other day, that a lot of CEOs look for someone that can do it just like them. And they said, “No, look for someone that can do 80% of it.” That's what you need, right?
Even social media. I ran our own, our social media for myself the first two years of the business. And I said, whoa, now we have five or six platforms. I have to get people who can focus on this while I focus on other things.
And again, you gotta find the right people, and when you do, it just works.
Chase Clymer
Absolutely.
Shaina, I can't thank you enough for coming on today and sharing all this. I'm gonna have you back next year because of so much we didn't get in.
Shaina Rainford
And I gotta talk to you about TikTok. TikTok is a place where...
Chase Clymer
I know. We didn't even cover TikTok.
Shaina Rainford
That's our big point.
Chase Clymer
I can tell you offline about my adventures with TikTok.
So for those listening and they were curious about the product, where do I go to check that out? Where do I find you on socials?
Shaina Rainford
Yes. So our social handles are all @baskandlatherco. So B-A-S-K and Lather L-A-T-H-E-R Co.
Our website is www.baskandlatherco.com Our products are available on our website.
We're also on Amazon. And we're in the TikTok Shop, where we have 2 best sellers.
Chase Clymer
Awesome. Shaina, thank you so much.
Shaina Rainford
Thank you. Thank you, Chase.
Chase Clymer
We can't thank our guests enough for coming on the show and sharing their knowledge and journey with us. We've got a lot to think about and potentially add into our own business. You can find all the links in the show notes.
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Until next time!