CurlMix Enters Ulta Beauty And Initiates Crowdfunding Campaign To Support Retail Growth

Shortly after launching in 460 Ulta Beauty stores, CurlMix has initiated a crowdfunding campaign on WeFunder with the goal of raising $5 million to put toward driving product development, retail growth and profitability.

Ulta’s courtship of CurlMix lasted for three years because Kimberly Lewis, who founded CurlMix parent company Listener Brands, also owner of the brand 4C Only, with her husband Timothy Lewis, was intent on revamping its products to be shelf friendly and increasing its online customer base in advance of embarking on retail expansion. Now, CurlMix has updated its packaging and added a stronger hold gel, signature fragrance and fragrance-free version.

With the rebrand handled in-house, CurlMix swapped out bottles for tubes and unveiled a new dark teal color scheme to appeal to its core customers of women 40 years old and above. Lewis says, “Our customers are more mature and want something that feels more luxurious and so typically luxury is not a bright and bold color. Luxury is more deeper tones or solid colors, less graphics.” She continues that another objective of the rebrand was to “own a color” that wasn’t an “iteration of SheaMoisture because a lot of brands are some version of Shea.”

The earlier packaging, which Lewis designed herself over five years ago, used a brighter teal, and the former bottles called out ingredients like pure grapeseed or pure aloe vera on the bottles. Lewis says, “I knew that we would need to rebrand because whenever we would ask our customers what CurlMix was or what the brand was, some people thought the brand name was Pure because of how our packaging was.”

CurlMix landed at Ulta end-caps in November, and it’s sold more than a six-figure total in products since rolling out to the retailer’s stores, according to Lewis. The products carried by Ulta are $26 Wash and Go Flaxseed Gel for Curly Hair, $26 Wash and Go Moisturizer for Curly Hair, $21 Wash and Go Shampoo, $21 Wash and Go Conditioner, $26 Wash and Go Finishing Mousse and $18 Growth Serum.

“We’re selling through the stores, and I think we’re doing well, but I think we can be doing a bit better,” says Lewis. “So, that’s one of my challenges for the new year. I want to be able to say that we sold out.”

Established in 2015, Listener Brands has surpassed $32 million in sales and drawn 260,000-plus customers throughout its existence. Ninety-five percent of its lifetime sales have been conducted online. From January to December 2022, it generated nearly $8.6 million in revenue versus nearly $4.6 million the year before. During the same period, it had a net loss of almost $4.6 million versus $3.1 million from the year before. Its gross margin was 52.88% in fiscal year 2022 compared to 62.55% in 2021.

“We are working on closing our crowdfund and then after that we’ll be off to the races.”

Listener Brands’ financial information comes from its WeFunder campaign. If the campaign accomplishes its $5 million goal, the company states it will be enough to achieve profitability. Listener Brands expects to reach $1 million per month in revenues before the summer, and its costs are slated to be $800,000 a month. Listener Brands manufactures itself out of a 30,000-square-foot factory that it anticipates will support it until it hits $100 million in revenues.

To date, it’s been financed with about $6.2 million in debt, $11.4 million in equity and $225,000 in convertibles. Among its investors are Cleveland Avenue and BrainTrust Fund. Listener Brands turned to crowdfunding after it wasn’t able to raise a $5 million series A round. It previously had success with a WeFunder campaign in 2021 that raised $4.5 million. The company received investment from about 7,000 people in that campaign, making it one of the largest WeFunder campaigns ever from an investor volume perspective, according to Lewis.

“Some people have raised a bit more than us, but most people have a big check from an investor and then some small checks. We had mostly small checks,” she says. “And I think we had about 3,000 comments on the actual page itself, which is significantly more than any other campaign.”

A portion of the money raised from the 2021 campaign was allocated to digital advertising. “We’re looking to convert 2X to 3X on overall ads in any given time,” says Lewis, who notes Listener Brands is shifting its marketing and advertising to affiliate marketing and offline ads.

Money from the 2021 campaign was also dedicated to Listener Brands moving to a better factory in Chicago’s South Side. The old factory was spread out across two buildings and required a truck to transport goods from one to the other. The current facility was previously owned by Soft Sheen, the brand founded by Edward and Bettiann Gardner in 1964 that’s known as Softsheen-Carson today. L’Oréal took it over in 1998.

Lewis says, “It was a cornerstone piece of land in Chicago because the Gardner family employed about 600 Black people back in the day, so it was a really historic moment moving into that building.”

On top of the goals Listener Brands has for CurlMix this year, its goal is for 4C Only to pin down a significant retail partner. By 2025, the plan is for it to cross an eight-figure sales sum. Lewis aims to get Listener Brands to $20 million in the coming years also. For now, though, her focus is on the WeFunder. She says, “We are working on closing our crowdfund and then after that we’ll be off to the races.”