We were lucky to catch up with Jacqueline Baron recently and have shared our conversation below.
Jacqueline, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?
The story of FELOH: For Everyone’s Love of Hair + Beauty originated in 2009 at the University of Pennsylvania in the Fisher Hassenfeld dormitory. It was myself and Camille Heard, freshmen roommates, up one night discussing hair sagas. See, Camille is someone who loves to do her own hair. She had her own products & beauty tools and could explain her entire wash down process from top to bottom. Me on the other hand, not so much. I’m a salon girlie. All it took was a couple of times for me to attempt to do my own hair and it not come out right, that I’ve vowed to sit in the beautician’s seat for the rest of my days. Fast forward a couple of years to 2014, where Camille had moved to Chapel Hill, North Carolina for graduate school, and I had moved to San Antonio, TX for Teach for America. Here we were again having similar conversations- Camille frustrated with trying to find the right indie brand products to support. Me frustrated with trying to find a new stylist in a new city. That’s when we realized, we needed to create a community where beauty lovers could find inspiration and information.
FELOH has been a journey, full of peaks and valleys. What initially started as an app devoted to hair, has grown into an ecosystem dedicated to celebrating diversity and innovation in beauty for all. From partnering with independently-owned beauty brands to provide access to their products on our marketplace, to creating a beauty series intended to foster authentic connection and conversations in beauty, FELOH seeks to be the glue to the disjointed beauty industry.
Jacqueline, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
As a Social Worker by trade, wellness is something that’s always been important to me. FELOH allows me the opportunity to expand my definition of wellness, and connect with others on an even broader level. FELOH is all about celebrating those things that make individuals feel beautiful, which ultimately leads to overall well-being.
FELOH intends to build the largest community of diverse beauty lovers and brand founders to champion DEI in the beauty industry while providing pathways for stakeholders to authentically engage our audience. We have recently expanded beyond our social marketplace app, to focus on curating more in-person events. While the app allows users to share their content, purchase from indie beauty brands, and even earn rewards called “Curl Coins” to shop our marketplace, our IRL (in real life) events will provide the opportunity for beauty stakeholders from multiple markets and demographics to join in community. We’re talking beauty consumers, influencers, indie brand owners, large corporations, you name it!
We are currently in the process of launching our Beauty Experience Series. This is a six-part event series designed to foster authentic connection and conversations in beauty, while also serving as a platform to amplify various brands, promote business development for guests, and collect valuable data from our diverse influencer audience. The beauty series will take place between May to October 2024, and will target specific locations such as Miami, LA, NYC, and Cleveland.
We are keenly focused on inclusion in beauty. We are founded by women of color. Because of who we are, and what we stand for, we have been able to generate authentic, and quality brand equity as it relates to DEI which attracts diverse people that are craving for authenticity in beauty. We can engage our community to inform market research– while other platforms solely focus on making videos/products go “viral” on their platforms, we focus on providing informed insights to help aid in market research and product development. Because we take an omni-channel approach to community, we can extract both quantitative and qualitative data from our community which can be valuable to predict trends, provide product feedback, inform product development and more.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
The entire journey has required resilience :) Neither my co-founder, nor myself majored in anything business-related. We’re self-taught, which has come with its fair share of pros and cons. The most difficult part of our journey though has been funding. While part of that may be partially due to us not initially having a seat at the right tables, or being in the right rooms dedicated to business-related ventures, it’s important to recognize another piece of the puzzle. Black women receive just 0.34% of venture capital in the U.S. Yet, there is no statistical evidence that indicates Black women founders under-perform in comparison to other founders. In fact, some emerging studies indicate we are out-performing our counterparts when controlling for the lack of capital we have access to. Why is this the case? Venture capital is still largely relational and is driven by human beings. Human beings are filled with many unconscious, subconscious, and conscious biases that dictate who has access to what capital. When venture capital is largely controlled by men and non-BIPOC individuals, you have incredibly dense layers of unconscious biases.
FELOH has not received venture capital investment despite demonstrating market validation and problem-solution fit. Throughout our journey, My cofounder and I have invested nearly $50K of our own capital when no investor gave us a chance. We simply refused to let a dream die at the hands of someone else’s judgement of our vision. Through small grants, small loans, pitch competitions, accelerators, and a very small friends and family round, we were able to raise another $47K. And yet here we are again, in the midst of fundraising. It’s never stopped. The journey has been full of having to balance managing the business, with figuring out how to fund the business simultaneously.
But no matter how difficult it’s been, I wouldn’t want to have to go on this ride with anyone other than my FELOH team. We’ve been able to maintain a high morale through things such as weekly team meetings, affirmations, Slack check-ins, in-person meet ups (none of us live in the same state), and specific team building activities. As 4 women of color, we’re going to stay invested in our cause because we know it’s necessary.
How did you build your audience on social media?
FELOH contains a social media component, as we have a social marketplace app. Users are able to post pictures and videos, leave comments, and interact with others. So we were essentially using one form of social media, to steer users to our form. Now, we could’ve easily gotten stuck in the fact that Instagram and Tik Tok were doing so well, and we weren’t on that caliber (yet). But there was absolutely no purpose in hatin’. And that’s been an ongoing lesson in our history with entrepreneurship. You’ll see other companies thrive, but that doesn’t minimize your skill set and what you bring to the table. If you know you have something special, you’ve got to keep pushing!
One piece of advice for social media specifically, is to keep it fun and authentic! Yes, we know one of social media’s main purposes is to ultimately drive sales. But that doesn’t mean it has to be stressful. The content that received the most engagement on our social media channels were those that involved us just being visible and just being our authentic selves. Because Camille and I have the benefit of maintaining a friendship for 15 years in addition to a business partnership for 10 years, we vibe really well. And we’ve used that to our advantage because who doesn’t love to see people vibin out?
Another high point for us have been bringing a Chief Marketing Officer on board, who is able to develop strategy. As a result, she’s also been able to find social media interns who were willing and able to create exciting content for our target audience. No matter who was creating the content though, it had to be authentic to us and our brand!
Contact Info:
- Website: https://feloh.com/#
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/felohapp/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jacqueline-baron-licsw-31778624
Image Credits
Emmanuel Wallace Devante Caldwell