We were lucky to catch up with Mary Harcourt recently and have shared our conversation below.

Mary, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

The idea came from the pain points I felt daily at my spa. I owned an eyelash extension spa in Los Angeles. We offered multiple treatment rooms with a fully trained staff. When applying eyelash extensions, you isolate individual lashes, as a hair strand, between your tweezers. From there, you select an extension, dip it into adhesive and apply it to the natural lash. We operated on precision. You work with sharp tweezers close to a person’s eyes with individual lashes and adhesive. You can imagine how crucial overhead lighting is. Yet, there wasn’t a light that offered bright, shadowless, full-coverage lighting in the treatment room. I had tried every light on the market, replacing my salon lights several times over, only to make my employees unhappy and complain about the lights we used. Calculating how much I had spent on replacing lights three times a year, still needing better results, I started to think about what the perfect light would look like. I thought to myself. If I design a light and get them made for my salon, it would save me money and make my employees happy. That would be worth it for that alone.
I talked to my husband about how my light would look if I could design the perfect lighting system. As we all know, you can use 1,000 words or 1 picture. He asked me to draw it out so he could see what I was seeing. I grabbed a napkin and quickly drew up a sketch of my perfect light. It had a half-circle shape, and part of the light would be rotatable, so you reach every angle. I drew it with a flat base. Most lamps are seated on a tripod, making them flimsy, top-heavy, and easy to fall over. A flat base would give stability and save space by fitting under the treatment bed.

My husband looked at the napkin sketch and said, ‘This wouldn’t be that hard to make.’

Just like that… we were off to the races! We got the napkin sketch turned into drawings for a prototype. The company asked me: How did I want it to feel? What material did I want it to be made out of? We got our prototype to the salon and plugged it in. Iknew this wouldo change the game of treatment room lighting forever.

We had some changes and modifications. The first design didn’t wasn’t adjustable. Asking someone to get under the light required them to lean back and wiggle to get under the light. I instantly knew I had to add movement to the light. I envisioned gliding it in place when you needed it and allowing it to rest flat against the wall.

Our second prototype was made with the new improvements. It was much better as you could now position the light above the client without them having to wiggle themselves under it awkwardly.

People come in all shapes and sizes, and my salon was no different. My staff would fight over who got to use the new lights. However, everyone was a different size, and adjusting the chair and bed was only sometimes an option. In our third prototype, we added a height adjustment so you could easily adjust the light for the most comfortable height. We added a rotation to the top halo so you could reach any angle in a 360-degree rotation. With our third prototype, I knew I was going to innovate industries across the globe. For the first time, we had bright, adjustable lighting that gave perfect ear-to-ear coverage without shadows or giving off heat.

This all lined up with the pandemic of 2020. I got a notification from California that I would temporarily have to close my spa due to state regulations. I went from being fully booked every day with a waiting list, running a spa, and managing staff to being closed without a reopen date and a newly found wide open schedule. It was an adjustment, for sure. We were curious to know how long it would last or how long we would be closed. I took a week to freak out and researched what my options were. When I realized this was not going to be a fast re-opening process. I put my salon on the back burner and started pursuing this light with full focus. I was just gifted the gift of time and had to use it best. Patent paperwork got filed, a website went up, and I started testing the water for who would be interested in purchasing a light. I made a post on a social platform to see the response, and the comments flew so fast that it was hard to keep up with them.

In just a few short months, we had everything in position to manufacture these lights in the USA. An interesting thing happened with the pandemic. Borders were closing, and travel was still being determined. This challenged us to find American manufacturers. In retrospect, that was the biggest blessing. Being able to manufacture in the USA means I could have a hand in every step of the way. The finished lights would ship from the factory straight to consumers’ doors.

The first batch was starting production. We opened up pre-sales, and the first sale came in right away. We sold out of the first batch before they were ready to ship. I organized a second production batch and opened that batch for pre-sales. Again, they sold out before they shipped. At this point, I knew the world was ready for innovation in the treatment rooms, just like I was. They had been going through the same pain points I had been, and this light would change the industry, and it did!

My salon eventually re-opened, and I would serve clients and run the salon all day. After we closed for the day, I would switch gears and do customer service, social media, and marketing for CosmoGlo. After a few weeks of burning the candle at both ends and I knew I had to make a decision. I had to choose which company I would give my entire focus to. I saw the response to the light and decided to jump in with two feet. I put my salon up for sale and sold it very soon after.

Switching gears into being fully available to my company allowed me to plan and scale the company strategically, seeing hockey stick growth right out of the gate. We added in new staff. We pulled in new platforms for handling customer support. We devised new systems for how information was processed. We got up-to-date with shipping platforms. Now just two and a half very fast years after shipping our first light, we are on the verge of being a globally distributed product and climbing to take the name as the industry leader in treatment room lighting. We have introduced a new model to include tattooing, medical aesthetics, and other industries.

We have been awarded design patents for 30 countries, and we are patent-pending for utility patents in 37 countries.

Mary, 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?

Being a boots-on-the-ground service provider, I felt the pain of not having proper lighting available daily. This gave me a birds-eye view of understanding the hole in the beauty and lighting industry. I was able to correct my pain points and developed a product that was innovative and solved problems. I believe this is what sets us apart from all other lights. It is lighting that makes sense. It was industry designed and built to be visually appealing and functional. There is nothing else like it on the market.

I love being able to share my story. As a service provider, I have been in their place. I know what it is like to use the other lights available and how superior CosmoGlo is to those lights.

Bringing innovation to the treatment room will not only elevate the experience for the client, but it will help you to work more efficiently and effectively by having proper lighting to perform your service.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

Social media is a massive source of brand awareness for us. People find our product by seeing it in use on someone else page. Usually of them in their salon. We quickly identified that being able to use our customer’s social media would be a surefire way to grow our following. Most of our purchasers are in the beauty industry. Service providers spend their day enhancing others to look and feel more beautiful. They will show off their work and post about their services to attract more clients. Understanding that service providers routinely follow other service providers, we quickly reached a new audience when our customers would show off their lights.

Our light became the focal point of these posts, pictures, and reels. We doubled down on this and created connections with people showing off our light. We would repost them on our page and give them a shout-out. This increased traffic to their page and increased their followers. After approving the transaction and reaping the benefits, they began to post us more and more. We would repost them just as often. The accounts would include us on every post, building this sense of family. We welcome them to be a part of the CosmoGlo family.

This increased brand awareness would bring us customers asking, ‘where did you get that light!’ We saw increased traffic from our page from our customers posting our product. We have created a symbiosis relationship where both parties are rewarded equally for showing off the product. This exposure has led us to have a solid social media presence. Using social proof as an accelerator for sales, we continue to grow in exposure, brand awareness, and sales across all platforms.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your business?

I was able to negotiate the terms of my first order. I started with 150 lights. The contract required fifty percent down to start the project, and the rest was due at the time of shipping. I had the first fifty percent down from tapping into my savings account.

I opened up my production runs as batches that were available for pre-sales. I sold out of my pre-sale batches before they shipped. Those funds went straight to the manufacturer, and we increased each order as we went. By the time we got to our fourth batch, the manufacturer had seen interest from consumers and felt comfortable in the supply in demand. We renegotiated the last half being due thirty days after the order had shipped, and we maintained a rolling deposit. The order size increased until we got out of batches and switched to a steady production stream.

I was able to manage my expenses with my salon income. I was able to re-invest every penny of CosmoGlo for its first year. Then I switched to scaling CosmoGlo full-time. That was the first time I let the company run on its own.

Still to this day, CosmoGlo was grown from bootstrapping with my very first investment and customer-funded since then.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://thecosmoglo.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thecosmoglolight/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheCosmoGlo/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maryharcourt/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/MaryHarcourt
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@cosmoglolight
• Other: https://maryharcourt.com/ https://www.instagram.com/maryharcourt_/