Birchbox, the wildly successful monthly subscription beauty sample business was valued at a reported $485 million in April when it snapped up a further $60 million in second round venture funding. Their much-imitated subscription box brings together a way to discover new products with an online presence that works like a shoppable glossy magazine.
Customers love it, even when they don't love it that much - “Do I personally LOVE every item?' comments Jamie Mishell on this month's box. “No. But, the point is getting a little surprise/pick me up each month, trying new things, and discovering new products you love that you may have otherwise never heard of. How rad is it that you can try small versions of things before you buy a full size version and decide it's not for you?”
It's a shared sentiment if Birchbox's 800,000 subscribers are anything to go by. Not bad for a company that began life four years ago while its founders were both at Harvard Business School with zero connections in the beauty industry.
Here, cofounder and co-CEO Hayley Barna, shares how cold-emailing CEOs of huge global beauty brands drove the idea from business plan to industry upstart.
“We didn’t just want to write a business plan,” says Barna. “We were sort of fearless about it - we didn’t have any background in the beauty industry or any connections so we cold-emailed the CEOs of our favorite brands.”
The succinct email had a simple ask – do you have 10 minutes to talk to us about how we can solve ecommerce for beauty?
Critically, “we made sure that that first ask - do you have 10 minutes - was an easy one to say yes to,” says Barna.
The duo knew that perfecting an buzzy online presence would be key to selling beauty brands who were frustrated that they hadn't found an ecommerce equivalent to their traditional heavy spend on glossy magazines.
“When we first started Birchbox one of the first things that we did was make sure that we had good content and good brand voice,” says Barna. “Our first hire was our editorial director which isn’t a typical move for a startup but we knew that was an important early investment.”
“The online beauty community is incredibly dynamic and involved,” she says. The team filmed beauty videos and put them on YouTube where bloggers were hanging out. They were there early when Pinterest and Instagram launched, so now they're as adept at attributing revenue to a myriad of different channels as picking out a new cult mascara or blush.
