This week Oren broke down last year’s Black Friday strategies of Alo, Represent and more, and debuted news of Adobe’s new grant and scholarship programs, while Clayton goes into the Fossil archives.

And just a reminder for our London friends, Clayton’s Sprezza popup shop is this Saturday!

In this HYPER edition, we talk about mastering influencer marketing, break down every decision that goes into making an exciting garment, and feature an interview with Aliyah Marandiz about starting her brand, Sugardoh.

Let’s begin.

How to master influencer marketing

Our friends at Superfiliate just dropped one of the dopest educational resources you can get your hands on right now.

They teamed up with Superbloom to create the Influencer Marketing Field Guide. Real talk: this is an incredible resource to help you build and scale a successful influencer program internally, and it's now available for free.

Here’s what you get:

• 24 video-first chapters with expert advice

• 200+ mini video highlights packed with practical ideas and tips

• Proven lessons and insights from influencer marketers from brands like Athletic Greens, Oura Ring, and Fenty Skin

• + more!

Whether you're a content creator, brand, or agency, you need their Influencer Marketing Field Guide this month.

Standout Garment Checklist

Last week, Oren talked about all the decisions that go into making a great hoodie. Here is our cheat sheet for all your decisions to make a standout garment below.

What to consider:

- Fabric: the material and weight, including finish and lining
- Treatment: washes, dyes, waxes and pattern prints for visual effect
- Pattern: The actual actual and fit - boxy, corpped, oversized, or anything unique in construction
- Grading: How dues the fit and cut change as it goes up and down on the size chart, there is often quite a different in XL’s between brands
- Strings & Aglets: Whether to use them or not, and what to finish them with
- Trims: zipper pulls, buttons, or stitching additions
- Pockets: Size, do they connect, their opening types
- Ribbing: type and size of ribbing on bottom and wrists
- Embellishment: Prints, embroidery, type of ink, printing before or after the wash
- External add-ons: silicon tags, exterior tags etc
- Tags: size tag, care tag, hang-tag
- Final: Shipper bag and any included extras

Quick note

We’re thrilled to share the story of our friend, Aliyah Marandiz, founder of Sugardoh, a personal care brand based in Austin, Texas. Aliyah quite incredibly started the brand from her living during COVID, and it’s safe to say she’d built a loyal fanbase.

We chat with Aliyah about how she started, what it means to build a bootstrapped business, how they approach brand and content as a team, and where they’re headed.

Tell us a bit about your journey of starting Sugardoh?

I like to joke I tripped and stumbled into starting a multi-million dollar business. I was simply frustrated with the harsh and wasteful hair removal options on the market and was determined to find something better.

As someone with a darker complexion, coarse hair, and sensitive skin, I felt like everything on the market was promoting hair removal at all costs and my skin was collateral damage.

I made my first batch of what is now Sugardoh in my freshman dorm room kitchen. It was after a particularly brutal waxing session where I left with painful, red, irritated skin, and had to ask myself: “Why did I just pay $60 to come out looking like my face went to war?” 

Enough was enough.

After extensive research, I discovered sugaring, a gentle alternative to waxing popular in the Middle East. Using simple ingredients, I made my first batch. It was sticky, messy, but it WORKED. My skin was soft and smooth, not red and inflamed.

It was half the pain of waxing, lasted longer, and left me with fewer ingrowns and less hyperpigmentation. Over five years, I played kitchen chemist and perfected my recipe.

During that time I started my career. The business of Sugardoh rose from the ashes of a tech burnout. For years, I did grunt work for minimal pay at an emerging tech marketing agency.

But that exposure to innovative startups led me to study bio-based materials at Parsons. Around that time, my husband suggested I sell my sugaring paste, a sustainable alternative to plastic razors and wasteful wax strips.

At the time, sugaring kits were sold either at a professional salon or as a DIY project at home. You couldn’t walk into your local target and get a jar of sugaring paste (you still can’t but we’ll soon change that). I realized I had all the skills to bring this product to market.

In summer 2020, after successful R&D with friends and family, I found a manufacturer that could scale my stovetop recipe and launched Sugardoh in September.

A few TikTok tutorials later, I had my first viral video and sales snowballed from there.

Now, we’ve bootstrapped the business from my garage to 1,300 Ulta Beauty stores in three years.

How would you describe the brand's customer?

We’ve designed our Sugardoh products for coarse hair and sensitive skin, resonating with Black, Hispanic, and Middle Eastern populations, but our market is any human with hair. Since going viral on TikTok, we’ve found older Gen Z and younger Millennial women repeatedly purchase from Sugardoh.

However, some of my favorite customer stories are cross-generational. I’ve heard repeated stories of mothers and daughters discovering Sugardoh together and bonding over sugaring.

Customers are drawn to a few things.

• First, we are the first sugaring paste brand in mass retail, introducing a new form factor that looks like candy.

• Second, we make the hair removal process less intimidating and, dare I say, fun with visual instructions and video tutorials.

• Third, this brand is made for one hairy girl to other hairy girls – customers feel that and see themselves in the brand ethos.

What’s shifted (shifting) in the body/beauty space from a consumer habit standpoint? How have you adapted?

The major shift seen across the beauty industry is a focus on clean ingredients.

We’re lucky that our product is inherently a clean beauty product, and that was before that was a clear and explicitly stated trend. We’re adapting our content strategy primarily to compare and contrast our clean ingredients vs those in the incumbent brands.

Along those lines, we’re seeing a trend towards simplification: simple ingredients, fewer skincare steps, and multi-benefit products. I believe this is a response to the overstimulation in our lives—we don’t need our beauty routines to add to the stress.

What are your biggest struggles as a brand in personal care/beauty right now?

Shrinking wallets.

The economy has been hard on consumer spending generally, which means that consumers are scrutinizing their desire to purchase products more. Beauty is a perceived necessity, but when the dollars are tight, people are pickier about what they buy and how often they buy it.

Personal care still has legs in a tough economy but still feels the effects.

When Sugardoh launched, we were at peak COVID, people were getting stimulus checks, and people couldn’t go to salons or spas for the hair removal services: essentially a perfect storm for launching a DIY product.

We’re working on products that reflect shrinking wallets and giving people access to their everyday essentials at a more comfortable price point.

How does the team approach content for your brand?

Our team approaches content with a strong focus on education, given the learning curve associated with our product. We prioritize tutorials and eco-friendly content, while also incorporating trends and lives to show the people behind the scenes.

The four Sugardoh content creators and I are primarily the ones who are creating this content. We also collaborate with influencers monthly, who post on their own channels, and we repurpose this content across our platforms.

sugardoh.co

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Moving forward, we're planning to increase employee-generated content, showcasing the team's personalities and Sugardoh's journey.

Sugardoh content creators and influencers will continue to concentrate on creating educational tutorials, while we balance it with more personal, behind-the-scenes content to create a well-rounded brand presence.

Parting thoughts

Hyper Reports

Check out our market reports. We spend many hours researching markets, categories, and brands & products within the consumer space so you don’t have to.

• How to Source Blanks 101 — HERE — a guide to finding and producing your own merch

• Reports on Running, Golf, and Tennis — HERE — a guide to each sport, the market opportunities, and how to launch your own brand

Inquiries? Shoot us a note here: [email protected]

We’d love to chat!

Oren & Clayton ❤️ you