We were lucky to catch up with Aliyah Marandiz recently and have shared our conversation below.

Aliyah, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, naming is such a challenge. How did you come up with the name of your brand?

This is a fun story! When I was brainstorming the name of my company, I was inspired by the popular sunscreen brand “Supergoop!”. The founder, Amanda Baldwin, found its quirky name because she used to refer to her sunscreen samples as “goop” when creating her first formula. The sugaring paste that I was formulating also had a fun texture – so I called it “doh”, because it reminded me of Playdoh. And because it was made of sugar I just combined the two words together… “Sugardoh!”. Our customers love the name, so much so that we’re introducing new vocabulary into the sugaring space. I often head on other sugaring forums and see people saying “I love using my doh!”.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers

Background Information (Name, Name of Business, Where Are You From, Opening Date)

Name: Aliyah Marandiz

Name of Business: Sugardoh

Where Are You From: Austin, Texas

Opening Date: September 2020

Share a little bit about your career background and what led you to become an entrepreneur.

I studied Sociology and Studio Art at Santa Clara University and ended up in the tech world shortly after graduating. After several years working on emerging technology brands, I dove deep into new, sustainable, bio-based materials replacing everyday items (like packaging, building materials, clothing, etc). At the time, I had been making my own sugaring paste on my kitchen stove after being frustrated with the harsh and wasteful hair removal options on the market. I found sugaring to be the plant-based solution for removing hair that could replace more wasteful hair removal methods. As a young person seeing global warming hurting our planet at an alarming rate, I was determined to do my small part and give more people at-home access to this sustainable hair removal method. So I rounded up my skills and started Sugardoh. I’m a strong believer in creating a business where everyone wins; where excessive trash is kept out of landfills, where customers are empowered, and where a profitable business thrives.

What inspired you to start your brand/business? What problem were you looking to solve?

Hair removal has historically been something we’re told to do. From lovers to classmates, family to advertising— we’ve been inundated with the idea that being hair-free 24/7 is the only way to be. Unfortunately, this pressure has left many of us embarrassed with our body hair and in desperate need to remove it, especially women of color who naturally have darker, denser hair. We are rarely in love with our hair-removal products. Sugardoh was created to rebrand hair removal as attainable, fun, healthy, and most importantly, a choice. Since hair removal is often a repeated routine, we were moved to make it one of the most sustainable, eco-friendly options on the market. Our Sugardoh products are compostable, great for all skin types, and easy to learn from the comfort of your own home. We’ve created the most extensive at-home sugaring guide on the internet so people feel empowered to learn this new skill and create a better relationship with their body hair.

What inspired you to become an entrepreneur?

I like to say I tripped and fell into entrepreneurship. After working in the corporate world for a number of years, I knew those environments stifled my love for creating and building things. After doing freelance design and marketing for a year, I realized a lot of those skills were transferable to starting a new business. My husband noticed that too and encouraged me to start a business, any business, to make use of those skills (a note of how important it is to surround yourself with people that support and encourage your God-given talents). I was actually inspired to become an entrepreneur after launching and building Sugardoh. The company was taking off and I began meeting other entrepreneurs in the space, and for me, the most inspiring stories always came from women of color. I wanted to run a business in a fresh way that elevated feminine qualities in the workspace (like intuition, empathy, and collaboration) and I got to see that early on in companies like Golde, CocoKind, Pattern, and The Honey Pot.

Share more about your business. What do you all offer?

Sugardoh is a relaxed body hair care company on a mission to make compostable sugaring paste your favorite at-home hair removal method. We offer everything you need to have a successful at home sugaring session from the sugar wax (firm or medium), reusable cloth strips, applicators, pre-sugaring body powder and post sugaring calming serum. I created Sugardoh because as someone with a darker complexion, coarse hair, and very sensitive skin, I felt like everything on the market was promoting hair removal at all costs and my skin was collateral damage. Sugardoh is not only kinder on your skin, it’s also kinder to the planet.

What is your ultimate goal for your brand/business? Or what are a few of your goals over the next 5 years?

Building and growing Sugardoh has been a personal and intimate experience. The reasons for starting the business were twofold; 1) to give more people access to the only hair removal method that worked for my skin and 2) to give myself the financial freedom to build, grow, and create on my own terms. These two reasons for starting the brand are the fuel to my ultimate goals. I want Sugardoh to be an international brand available in 1000s of retail stores across the globe so we can give more hairy bodies access to a healthy relationship with hair removal. Secondly, I want the next generation founders with like-minded brands to have the financial freedom to build, grow, and create on their own terms, through Sugardoh grants, programs, and infrastructure.

What challenges have you faced on your journey?

Getting the resources I need for the vision I have for Sugardoh has been a challenging journey. The closest analogy I can think of is having the perfect idea for an art piece, but not having the painting supplies or skills to execute it. Being new to the business and consumer packaged goods (CPG) space, I often find that I don’t have the answers to business basics, and finding the right partners that 1) I trust bringing into Sugardoh and 2) has the expertise needed. It’s a good practice in patience as I slowly build an executive and mentorship team in line with the Sugardoh vision.

What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs?

My favorite advice to share, and words that have helped me get through the thick of it, is learning to walk before you run. Getting a new business off the ground is not easy – I know how overwhelming it can be to be pulled in so many directions. You want to have the perfect product, packaging, marketing plan, team, Instagram grid, Tiktok videos…the list goes on and on. Starting small (just a handful or products done really well or posting a Tiktok video from excitement instead of obligation), keeps you in the present moment so you can really react to customers’ needs.

Learning how to walk in your business doesn’t doesn’t come by going to a top school. It comes by doing, working, learning every way you can. And once you do that, you’ll run faster than you ever thought possible.

How did you build your audience on social media?

We’ve excelled in organic social marketing and creating a community. Because we’ve leaned into education and content creation from the start, I really feel like we’ve tapped into a cultural moment, which has been accelerated by people looking for alternative at-home grooming options because of the pandemic. Since our September 2020 launch, we’ve had a viral TikTok every month driving sales.
Our product is highly visual- and looks like something you can eat, and we’ve leaned into that with our in-house content productions studio.

We explored paid social ads but the cost per acquisition is extremely high and we do not have the system in place to optimize sales on those platforms.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Since I started the company in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, I actually don’t know what “normal” business operations look like. TikTok also exploded during the pandemic and we were able to build a following on the platform to the point where the majority of our sales come from TikTok.
However, we have found that our inventory levels suffered due to manufacturing closures during COVID and there was no way to predict virality. We oversold massively six months into the business which resulted in a slew of angry customers demanding where their order was. Because we were a new company, people were calling us a scam and threatening to involve their lawyers. As such a new company, we were also learning how to communicate delays to customers while needing their pre-orders to sustain the business. Some days, it felt like our entire brand reputation was on the line.

Still, we are still having trouble with our supply chain. A combination of worldwide packaging and raw materials shortages and price spikes have made managing our supply chain extremely difficult. We are trying to diversify our suppliers and manufacturers for this reason but we’ve had to slow our growth in order to protect our customer’s experience with the brand.

Contact Info:

• Website: aliyah@sugardoh.co
• Instagram: sugardoh.co
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sugardoh.co/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/sugardoh
• Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/sugardoh
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMAMdh11-fZS2yEH5e7Rc_w/videos

Image Credits
Kayla Davis Photography