We recently connected with Courtney Peters and have shared our conversation below.
Courtney , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What’s been the best thing you’ve ever seen (or done yourself) to show a customer that you appreciate them?
As a brand that has grown very organically, our super power has been connecting with and investing in our community. The Supercrush Fam has been so incredibly loyal and supportive over the last 6 years so giving back to them and showing our appreciation is one of our absolute favourite things to do (and it’s also a big reason why so many of our customers refer their friends)! We do this in a lot of ways… – We love to surprise and delight!! Twice a year we send our most loyal customers “snail mail” with either a surprise gift or an exclusive coupon code along with a handwritten note expressing our gratitude for them. We’re actually putting together 100 packages this week with a Valentine’s Day theme.
– We have a monthly Instagram series called “Calling our Customers” where we do exactly that and thank them for their support and surprise them with either refunding their order or including bonus products. This is such a fun way to connect with our customers.
– We go to ridiculously lengths to ensure our customers are satisfied with their Supercrush experience including personal deliveries to their homes when packages get lost in the mail, refunding/replacing products when they don’t meet quality control standards, and including personal notes and bonus/surprise items in their orders from time to time to thank them for a milestone order (5th, 10th, 20th order, for example).
– One of my favourite examples of a time we’ve gone above and beyond was when we were temporarily making face masks during COVID and one of our customers reached out because our elastic design didn’t work for her because she didn’t have ears to loop the elastic around. Our co-founder, Shelby, spent one evening designing a unique mask with tie-able straps that the customer could use.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
Supercrush is on a mission to make great hair super simple. Featured in publications like Allure and Elle, we’re best known for creating game-changing hair accessories that simplify your hair routine and make bad hair days a thing of the past.
How did things start?
My mom and I have always been close, but we never thought we’d start a business together. Back in 2018, as a creative outlet from our corporate jobs, we started sewing scrunchies in my mom’s kitchen. I posted about my creation on Instagram and the scrunchies garnered a lot of interest. I started receiving messages from friends and family about buying them and that’s when I knew I might be onto something. We created an Instagram and website that week and after a few months we were so overwhelmed with orders that we started building a team of local sewers to help. We grew the business together on evenings and weekends until we realized the potential our brand had and in September 2019 we both took the leap, quit our full-time jobs, and never looked back. Since then, we’ve launched 25 more collections and a ton of new products including claw clips, combs, headbands, silk hair ties, scalp massagers and even an all-natural dry shampoo. Although much has changed since those early days, a lot of things have stayed the same: our dedication to producing products responsibly, our obsession with quality, and our commitment to giving back.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
In April 2020, we were one of the very first Vancouver-based brands to start making non-medical face masks. At the time, the public was buying up medical-grade face masks creating a shortage for frontline workers. At the time we sourced all our materials locally, so we had the supplies necessary to make cloth face masks and leave the medical face masks for the people who needed them. We also thought it could be an excellent fundraising opportunity for our charity partner, Union Gospel Mission. We were also motivated to keep our sewing team busy, since we didn’t know how the pandemic would impact our regular sales. Although we had zero experience in face mask production, we were able to quickly pivot. We developed a face mask design, trained our team (via Zoom!), and launched the product within two weeks (with $5 from each mask being donated to UGM). Our first run sold out within 4 minutes of going live on our website and in one year we sold over 5000 face masks and were able to raise $25,000+ for Union Gospel Mission.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
As an entrepreneur of 6 years, I can confidently say that resilience is one of the most important qualities you’ll need to be successful in business. As a growing brand, we’re facing with new challenges everyday (getting told “no”, technical problems, shipping and logistical nightmares etc), so you have to get comfortable problem solving on the go.
An example that illustrates the need for quick adaptation was receiving an email back in May 2019 that forever changed our business. It was from a lawyer in the states accusing us of trademark infringement because original business name was too close to theirs (this is something we should have looked into when we chose our name, but we never thought our business would become much). In the short window of four months we had to completely rebrand, which was a significant undertaking, but ultimately one of the best things that happened to us. It allowed us to take a step back, get clear on our mission, and use it as an opportunity to expand our product offering (since our original name was very much linked to scrunchies specifically).
Never a dull moment!
Contact Info:
- Website: www.supercrush.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/supercrush
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/shopsupercrush
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/courtneypeters1/
- Other: https://www.tiktok.com/@supercrush
Image Credits
Kiara Schwartz Malumi Photography Kat Willson