The Greenway Shop co-founders Flauren Bender and Hallie Lamont gave up their law careers to pursue a higher calling: bringing glam, green beauty products to their hometown of Dallas. “In our travels, we’ve been exposed to so many great products and clean beauty that we were looking for in Dallas that just didn’t exist,” shares Bender. “So, we created [The Greenway Shop] out of necessity, really.” Beauty Independent talked to the two friends about motherhood, inventory management, local Texas brands they love, ingredients they don’t and selling jade rollers to customers accustomed to getting Botox.
Why did you open The Greenway Shop?
Lamont: Flauren and I have always been a little bit ahead of the curve when it comes to the new lines that come out. We’re risk-takers. We’re also open-minded. These clean lines [are] not only beautiful and effective, they’re made with great ingredients. They actually really work.
Bender: That’s a great point. Everything we do is driven by results. We’re only carrying things that we’ve tried and we believe in.
What sparked your interest in natural products? Was it becoming moms?
Lamont: For me, 100%, it was becoming a mom. I was a big believer in natural childbirth and nursing for as long as I could, and I found a pediatrician that was more holistic, who also introduced me to different ways of how to your child, what was best for your child as far as taking a more natural approach. Then, I start thinking, “What am I putting into my body, especially when I’m nursing or expecting, and what am I putting into my own child once they grow and develop?”
It [started] with mattresses, cleaning products around the house, low VOC paints and other products. I was eating organic and my kids were eating organic and, then, that evolved. From head to toe, I bathe my kids in natural and organic soaps. I was the last person to get there myself. Ten years ago, eight years ago, seven years ago, you were really relegated to what was available at Whole Foods. I would go to Whole Foods, but I still wanted to retain a chic identity, where I could still use a Chanel lip gloss, but you would also Vintner’s Daughter. The first natural product that turned me totally was May Lindstrom’s The Blue Cocoon. That was, for me, a big turning point.
Bender: My first product was Pai Rosehip Oil. Love that. I’ve been using that for a long time. Then, maybe RMS makeup. It’s department store quality makeup — effective, good coverage, pretty and clean.
What is the mission of The Greenway Shop?
Bender: The very best in clean, curated beauty. It’s bath, body, gifts, skincare, and men and kids also.
When did The Greenway Shop open?
Lamont: We opened in September. We’re still very young, but this has been a concept that we’ve been working on for almost two years. Really, we wanted to try all these lines and narrow our focus down. We’re taking a very conservative approach. We started with 20 lines in September. We’re probably already up to 35. We’re gradually adding one or two lines a month. We both take our time with things, and I don’t know if that’s to our detriment. We really want to make sure that we nail it.
Bender: Our approach has allowed us to respond to our customers and what they’re looking for. We just brought in Honest Hazel Eye Gel and Agent Nateur deodorant because clients were asking for other deodorant options. So, we’ve really been able to be nimble and responsive by growing gradually.
Do you think about price ranges when you’re bringing on a brand or product?
Bender: We absolutely do think about prices, and we have a range. Indie Lee and Pai are both wonderful entry point ranges. They aren’t too intimidating, but they’re beautiful, effective products. Then, on the higher end, we have serums from Kypris and La Bella Figura that sell to an older client looking for more active skincare. It’s definitely a range, and we want to have the full range so all customers are able to find products that they can afford, and that they enjoy using.
Lamont: We’re lucky enough that we are strategically placed in an area of Dallas where we’re getting a big range of individuals. There are people that won’t bat an eye at spending $200 on a serum or an oil. Then, we have more conservative spenders that are also new to clean beauty and don’t really want to switch over their whole routine. They maybe try the [Indie Lee] Squalane Oil, they’ve heard great things about that. Maybe they’ll start with an oil and a cleanser and, then, graduate to makeup, bath treatments and hair. We get people who like to come in as they’re just changing their products out [and] are very interested in lines we carry.
Is the majority of your business in-store versus online?
Lamont: We’re 75% in-shop sales right now. We’d love to expand our online presence. We’re working with a Shopify site. We’re a little limited there. We also are limited in our digital experience. We’re lawyers by training. We’re focusing on the lines and the customers in our store, so we wanted to have an approachable website. Is it the best website out there? Not right now. Our goal is to make it more user-friendly and prettier. We have milestone goals that we want to meet as time goes on. For sure, we’ll pay more attention to that, but we want to just really nail the lines and our customers right now.
What are some of your bestsellers? Have any dark horses become bestsellers?
Lamont: The top three that pop out in my mind are Kypris, Pai and RMS.
Bender: At this point, we’re really only selling things that sell. We’ve gotten rid of things that haven’t. Indie Lee is really popular. A dark horse was La Bella Figura. It’s a smaller line out of Chicago, but it has devoted fans. Their vitamin C serum has incredible results, and we have had so much replenishment on that.
Lamont: They have this great product, this under eye corrector, which we sold out of two shipments in a row. We’ve sold out within three or four days. A lot of that has to do with how we present the product and sell it as well. Ursa Major deodorants sells like crazy, and Agent Nateur does really well.
Kypris does really well. People love the Moonlight Catalyst and Antioxidant Dew. Honestly, people love the things that we love. Everything we sell we really like a lot. We have very different skin types. I suffered with eczema and dermatitis, so I can’t use a lot of oils, but I use serums and creams. That’s why I also love Pai and the Kypris serums, but Flauren loves the oils and the oil cleansers. So, she speaks really well to that when we have customers come in who have that [preference]. I can speak very well to other products we sell.
How do you discover new brands?
Lamont: There was just the Natural Products Expo West, so sometimes we’ll have a look to see which vendors are there at these expos. We get a lot of people that contact us directly and, if they want to send a sample, we also love to give local vendors a spot, always. We carry more than a handful of local lines. We’ll carry one to three of their bestselling products because we really do want to represent Dallas and Texas in our brick-and-mortar store.
Bender: We are constantly cool hunting. Hallie and I instant message things to each other all day. We are constantly scouring the stores in Dallas. We both travel a lot to see our families. I actually grew up in Dallas and so did Hallie’s [in-laws], so we do have deep Dallas ties, but, in our travels, we discover a lot and, anytime we go anywhere for anything, we do a lot of research.
What are some of the local Texas brands that The Greenway Shop carries?
Lamont: We carry a line called Buca Botanicals out of Austin. A very close friend of ours in Dallas put us in contact with the owner. They have a great following, so people will come in for Buca. We have a very good friend who is a beauty blogger, Courtney Kahla, and she has a line called Pure and Radiant. She has a wonderful following, and we just love Courtney and all of her advice and referrals, so we’ll always carry her line. There’s another one called Align [from] two local yoga instructors.
The Dallas beauty scene is thought of as very glam, very done up. Is that still the way it is?
Bender: That’s certainly the perception, and that definitely exists. When we first started discussing this [with] people two years ago, you could see in their eyes they didn’t get it. We could’ve been talking crystals, which now would get huge buy-in. Now, people get it, and people are seeking us out. We’ve had really good early press I think because we were the first to arrive.
Lamont: Dallas is still very glam and that is why, despite how good a product may or may not be inside, packaging speaks volumes. If we have something that’s in a brown box with handwritten script, we’re going to have to really work double time to push that product on somebody that’s used to luxury marketing.
Bender: We want all customers. We want that glam customer, too. Go do your injections and your maintenance and, then, come to us for what you can incorporate into your routine that’s clean. It’s not an all-or-nothing thing for us.
Lamont: We are seeing people starting to really love the tools like the jade rollers and the gua sha, which is fun.
“We want that glam customer, too. Go do your injections and your maintenance and then come to us for what you can incorporate into your routine that’s clean. It’s not an all or nothing thing for us.”
How do you sell a jade roller to someone who’s used to getting Botox? Do you do education in the shop or outside of it?
Lamont: We have a mailing campaign list that we send out to about 2000 people. Our targeted mailers go out where we’ll speak about jade rollers, an under-eye corrector or we’ll talk about RMS. From those, we definitely get a percentage of sales. Otherwise, we try to incorporate stories. We try to utilize Instagram as much as possible. We haven’t done a meet the maker yet, but we’ve had Courtney Kahla in the shop to do meet-and-greets.
We’ve got some great events coming up. We’re going to have an event with a local essential oil brand. We want to diversify and mix things up. Anything we can do to educate customers that come in, we’re happy to entertain. It’s definitely an ongoing educational process. We’re still so new and working out the schedule of when events happen.
We are tiny. I think 200 square feet would be generous. We are a shop within a shop. CAP Beauty, when they started out, I think they were not even 200 square feet.
Bender: CAP Beauty and Follain were huge influences on us.
Tell us about growing pains you’ve experienced.
Bender: The biggest thing is inventory management. We don’t want to order too much, but, then, if someone comes in and it’s not in stock, they can easily go to anyone of a number of websites, including Amazon, and get what they want.
There’s a balance between having enough product, but not overbuying. In the beginning, we were just taking stabs at what customers would want and, now, we’re closer to figuring it out. We didn’t know we were going to be such a gift destination. We are, which is great. We’ve quickly adjusted to that, bought more scrubs, soaps and gift items.
Lamont: People love to come in for gifts all year. It’s not just the holidays. It’s easy for [customers] to just pop into our little shop, where they can find a housewarming gift or a gift for a new baby or an expecting mom or a great friend who loves clean beauty and, then, something for themselves.
What are categories you’d like to expand on in your collection?
Lamont: In the next two months, [we are] bringing in two, maybe three additional lines. One is a big skincare line, which we’re excited about. We need a good body lotion. I know that sounds like that would be something easy to find, but we actually haven’t been able to find a great fit for us.
Bender: Fragrance is at the top of our list.
Lamont: And maybe another hair care line. We tried a couple of great hair care lines, but they all have fragrance, and some people have a very hard time with fragrance, which I understand. We want to make sure that we stay true to the ethos of our brand.
What are your future plans for The Greenway Shop?
Bender: We want to improve our online experience. We want to add to our offerings in our shop and, then, I’d love to do a collaboration with someone like a juice bar or a Pilates studio, someone that gets a lot of daily traffic.
Lamont: It’s just a matter of finding the right fit. There are different areas in town that we’d like to have a presence in. We want to have one year under our belt, but we’re always looking at real estate. We’re always looking at rents, we’re always looking at where we think a shop would do well, and this is all in Dallas proper.
We want to stay cute, curated and cozy. Do we have plans to span across the U.S.? Not right this very minute, at least, but we would like to extend an offering in Dallas, keeping it local and manageable for us. You can lose yourself in these big, mass-produced shops. That’s not to discredit anybody else, that’s just not what what we have in our future.
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