Daisy Kelly, the visionary behind Glow For It, has created a remarkable vegan and cruelty-free lash and brow growth brand. With a dedicated following of over 100k on TikTok, GlowForIt has become a truly viral sensation, leaving beauty enthusiasts in awe. Vogue beauty journalists have been buzzing about the incredible results! Let’s delve into her inspiring story and uncover the valuable lessons we can learn from Daisy’s path to success!
Welcome to FireFortuna Daisy!
Table of Contents:
- Can you share the story behind Glow For It? What inspired you to start a brand focused on lash and brow growth serums, and later expand into lip oils and blush sticks?
- How did you go about identifying and understanding your target audience? Please give us some tips on how to go about researching your customer demographic!
- What were the challenges you faced in the early stages of building GlowForIt, and how did you overcome them?
- The beauty industry is highly competitive. What strategies did you use to make sure Glow For It stands out from other brands in the market?
- You started with a niche product (lash and brow growth serums) and later expanded into other areas. What motivated you to diversify your product range and how did you decide on what products to introduce next?
- Scaling a business can be a complex task. Can you share with us the strategies and resources you’ve used to effectively scale your brand, Glow For It?
- Here at FireFortuna.com we focus mainly on solopreneurship: It would be great to get some top tips on building and managing a team!
Can you share the story behind Glow For It? What inspired you to start a brand focused on lash and brow growth serums, and later expand into lip oils and blush sticks?
Glow For It started in 2020 during lockdown – at a time without beauticians, salons, and importantly, lash technicians. As someone who has suffered in the past with lash picking, this led me down the road of getting eyelash extensions and by the time we hit lockdown the little eyelashes I had left were short, sparse and unhealthy.
My university degree was cut short due to the lockdown, so I was left with some time and an opportunity to explore different careers and avenues. After trying to find a lash serum to grow my natural lashes, I found that the majority were out of my budget as an emerging student. The few that I did find within my budget were mainly oil-based and ineffective. There’s also been a big shift away from extensions and strip lashes to a more natural look. So, after doing some research I found there was a big pool of people who wanted to start investing in their natural beauty.
I invested the remaining thousand pounds of my student loan into formulating a lash serum. The first Purchase Order that I put through with my manufacturers I had to borrow the money off my mum – so it took a lot of convincing, and luckily the risk paid off!
Daisy Kelly, Founder of Glow For It
“I can’t talk about starting Glow For It without mentioning TikTok and the vital part this played in my business’s growth. As TikTok was starting to take off, so was my business and I decided to document my entire journey on social media which allowed us to grow at a rapid speed.”
Daisy Kelly, Founder
We started with the lash serum and sharing my genuine results from using that formula is what sparked our following/interest on TikTok. I wasn’t alone in this! We were receiving messages and images from customers on a daily basis showcasing their before and after journey. The buzz around our product and its efficacy began to spread.
We were receiving so many DMs asking if they could use the serum on their brows as well that we began exploring extending our product range to offer a brow serum, too. This became the perfect bundle as people who cared about their lashes tended to care about their brows also, and we wanted to be part of that whole growth journey.
When it came to extending our product range to lip oils and blush sticks, this was very much directed by our customers and their requests. When I started Glow For It, I didn’t intend to launch a range of blush sticks, but it was so heavily requested by our customers we of course had to explore that opportunity.
How did you go about identifying and understanding your target audience? Please give us some tips on how to go about researching your customer demographic!
The power of social media has had a huge influence on Glow For It and it allows us to instantly find our target audience through people commenting, tagging us in videos and sending us DMs. We’re able to speak directly with our consumers, and this really helps us to understand what they want from us as a brand and what they want to see from us next.
Our target audience does however differ across social media and that’s important to be aware of. Our following on TikTok is quite a lot younger than our following on Instagram, and we do adjust our content accordingly.
“An important thing I was told quite early on is that you are your brand and your consumer will buy into you as the brand owner,”
So, I’ve always made it my mission to be transparent with our followers so they feel part of Glow For It’s journey and they really invest in who we are.
What were the challenges you faced in the early stages of building GlowForIt, and how did you overcome them?
Naivety is one of the biggest challenges I faced in the early stages, but it is also an advantage. When I started Glow For It, I was just 21 years old with no real understanding of what it is to own a business. But, I think that naivety is what got me through! I’m not sure I would’ve had the same sense of blind self-belief if I were to start it older.
“When you start a business, you are the Finance Manager, the Social Media Manager, you’re packaging orders, you’re replying to customer queries. You really have to do it all! I quickly learnt where my skillset lies, and I think this is important to recognise”
I realised very early on that customer service was taking up a huge proportion of my time, so the first thing I invested in was a Customer Service Manager to ensure we were giving people the best service possible. This Customer Service Manager is still with us three years later!
Another area that became overwhelmingly time-consuming as we grew was packaging orders. It was simply unmanageable and I had to rope in family and friends on a daily basis resulting in many all-night-ers to get products shipped in time. At the time, moving to a fulfilment centre was a huge investment but it was something I knew I needed to do to give myself the space to think about the bigger picture for Glow For It. It’s easy to be absorbed by the day-to-day running of a business, but as a CEO/Director, you need to think above and ahead rather than just thinking in the present.
“Never underestimate the importance of your team and hiring the right people. Don’t feel rushed to hire people because you’ll quickly realise if the wrong people are in the wrong positions. That can then have more of an effect on your business than if you wait for the right person”!
The beauty industry is highly competitive. What strategies did you use to make sure Glow For It stands out from other brands in the market?
There is no doubt that the beauty industry is oversaturated. Therefore, we put a real emphasis on building a sense of community so people aren’t just buying into our products but also our brand and our vision. Again, it’s important to recognise the importance of TikTok and social media in allowing people to get to know me as the brand owner as well as the products we have available.
If you build a strong sense of community, they will trust in you and the products you release and therefore you have a pool of people who have already bought into your product before you’ve even marketed it. We also try to highlight what sets us apart from other competitors, and that has to be our genuine results and the efficacy of our formula.
You started with a niche product (lash and brow growth serums) and later expanded into other areas. What motivated you to diversify your product range and how did you decide on what products to introduce next?
Quite simply, we follow the direction of the customer’s wants and needs!
The essence of Glow For It is to “let your natural beauty glow”, and while that started with lash and brow serums, our product expansion has always had that message at its core.
One of the products we’re currently working on was requested over two and a half years ago and we’ve been working on it since to get it perfect. We keep note of every product ever requested and our team are always looking at ways we can facilitate this within our brand vision.
Scaling a business can be a complex task. Can you share with us the strategies and resources you’ve used to effectively scale your brand, Glow For It?
Surround yourself with specialists in their area. For example, I used to run all of our ads personally but I reached the limits of my own understanding. I then began to outsource this and we saw a huge increase in our revenue. Obviously, this is not something you can do at the start when you don’t have the budget available, but recognising the areas of growth and bringing on the right team to fill in those gaps is so important.
Moving to a fulfilment centre gave us a huge opportunity to upscale.
Although I loved packaging orders by hand and having that personal experience with a customer and their order, it doesn’t allow you to scale to deal with 2,000+ orders a day.
We’re now in a fulfilment centre in the UK and the US and have been able to open ourselves to a huge market that we wouldn’t have been able to had we not taken that leap.
Here at FireFortuna.com we focus mainly on solopreneurship: It would be great to get some top tips on building and managing a team.
If you’re setting up a business by yourself you need to be prepared to start off as a solopreneur! But there does come a time when it’s vital to bring on a team to support you. As I mentioned previously, I quickly recognised that finance and logistics were not my speciality. Therefore, curating a team who were able to manage this aspect of the business gave me room to explore the more creative aspects of the business.
Creating a well-rounded team is essential. If you just surround yourself with creatives, you’re likely to come up with so many incredible ideas without actually being able to implement them. So, it’s important to have “ideas” people, and “get it done” people.
Managing teams can be one of the most challenging tasks, and finding that balance where everyone feels valued and comfortable is key. It’s important to create an environment where there is mutual respect, yet the ability for everyone to feel comfortable to explore and challenge each other’s ideas.
Thank you so much Daisy, for taking the time out of your very busy schedule for this interview!
Start your Glow For It journey to longer lashes and thicker brows at https://glowforitshop.com/firefortuna15 and don’t forget to get 15% off with code: FIREFORTUNA15
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