How The Longhairs Went From $30K To $50K/Month Revenue In One Year
This is a follow up story for The Longhairs. If you're interested in reading how they got started, published over 5 years ago, check it out here.
Hello again! Remind us who you are and what business you started.
We are The Longhairs, a community for guys growing their hair. We publish original content, advocate for hair equality and celebrate men’s long manes with hair whips and high fives.
Our flagship product is Hair Ties For Guys, the finest hair ties in the world, offered alongside superior hair care products and accessories for men and boys with hair.
Launched in 2014 as a side hustle, today The Longhairs is making $50k/month in revenue with over $1M in lifetime sales.
Tell us about what you’ve been up to! Has the business been growing?
As promised in our first appearance on Starter Story, The Longhairs hosted The Great Cut, a charity hair-cutting event where we broke the Guinness World Records title for the most hair donated to charity, raising nearly $50,000 for Children With Hair Loss.
Later in 2019, we launched Epic Cleanse & Ideal Conditions, our shampoo & conditioner which became the #2 product in our revenue mix after just six months.
We’ve also taken time to work on our business, following the EOS Model described in Traction, by Gino Wickman. Using this book we have developed and refined our core purpose and values, differentiators and proven process, with a 10-year target, 3-year picture, and a realistic 1-year plan.
We had our biggest 5-day stretch in history over Black Friday / Cyber Monday 2019—an increase of 64% from the previous year—capping a record month in November and kicking off a white-hot December.
Lastly, we announced the final push in our campaign to raise $50k for Children With Hair Loss. With over $40k raised on our GoFundMe we’re at 80% of our goal, trying to crack $50k by the end of the year.
What have been your biggest lessons learned in the last year?
The Great Cut was certainly the great achievement of our business and our lives. We put so much into it we really put our business on hold for a solid three months. It took everything we had to pull it off, but we found away.
It takes a lot of time and patience and doing things the right way.
The lesson here? Work your ass off and give your money away. Haha, j/k. But if you want to get noticed, do something worth noticing.
The other painful lesson we’ve learned for the fifth time this year is to never run out of inventory, especially your best-selling products. You can’t sell them if you don’t have them, and it hurts every time you’re sold out.
What’s in the plans for the upcoming year, and the next 5 years?
Over the next year, we are going to focus on the membership, the guys, and what it means to have long hair. Deep down we are a community—a fraternity, really—and that’s what makes us different from any old hair tie company.
We’ll continue developing and releasing new products and publishing original content (we’ve now published a blog post for over 260 consecutive weeks!. We’re shooting for $1.2M in revenue for 2020. In three years we aim to be making $3M a year.
In 2024 we will host The Great Cut again, enough time for every guy and gal to start growing their hair out now. Who knows what the record will be then, but we’re going to need a lot of folks to donate their hair.
Have you read any good books in the last year?
I mentioned Traction by Gino Wickman. It has changed our business.
Advice for other entrepreneurs who might be struggling to grow their business?
It takes a lot of time and patience and doing things the right way. It was three solid years before we took a dollar in salary.
Also, and this is from Mark Cuban’s book: win the battles you’re in before taking on new battles.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
Not really, but we could always use a really good writer to help us out.
Where can we go to learn more?
- Website
- The Great Cut
- The Long Hairs
- YouTube
- Podcast: Let It Ride by The Longhairs on iTunes and Google Play
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
- 4,818 founder case studies
- Access to our founder directory
- Live events, courses and recordings
- 8,628 business ideas
- $1M in software savings
