We were lucky to catch up with Stephanie Farsht recently and have shared our conversation below.

Stephanie , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Too often the media represents innovation as something magical that only high-flying tech billionaires and upstarts engage in – but the truth is almost every business owner has to regularly innovate in small and big ways in order for their businesses to survive and thrive. Can you share a story that highlights something innovative you’ve done over the course of your career?

We recognized a gap in the market that inspired us to develop an innovative solution — Small Wonder’s powder-to-foam hair care concentrates. We could not understand the rationale behind shipping large single use plastic bottles filled with mostly water. So we embarked on a mission to transform the way people think about shampooing. We envisioned a product that combined salon performance, sustainability, and a bit of magic. The result is Small Wonder, a salon formulated hair care line that offers a unique sensory experience while minimizing our carbon footprint.

The journey began with extensive research and development, collaborating with globally renowned hair care chemists to create a formula that could retain the cleansing power of traditional shampoos while being easily transformable from powder to foam. This required extensive prototyping and almost 3 years of innovation. In addition to the powder, we have spent the past year innovating the packaging. Our patent pending bottle is the first vessel that keeps powder dry in the shower and dispenses with an auto sealing system (and it only uses one hand to dispense).

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?

The three of us don’t shower together, but we agree that showering should be one of the best parts of the day. It’s a chance to bring a spa into your home — warm, fragrant, soothing. It’s the best place to let your mind wander, think creatively, sing without care, and decompress.

Imaginations run wild in the shower. But the shower has not been reimagined in decades.

We have the same-old shampoos, goopy lids, breakable pumps, plastic bottles, cluttered shelves, and the craziest of all, shipping heavy bottles of mostly water. Why are we diluting the good stuff? We knew if we were willing to dive in and get our hands dirty, we could address these problems. We had the experience and background to create something new.

And Small Wonder was born.

The first salon formulated powder concentrate.

Tiny.
Mighty.
Beautiful.

(Actually, it wasn’t that easy!) It took years of research and development, prototyping, and testing with industry experts, formulators, powder experts, and more! Before making a splash, we had to develop a salon-formulated powder product from scratch and engineer a bottle that would enable the powder to dispense while not letting water or humidity in. Well, we did it.

All you need, nothing you don’t. Just add water. And activate.

We looked at everything, trust us. If there is a product form that reduces waste, odds are, we tried it. Ultimately, after seemingly endless tries, here is where we landed: a beautiful powder that works just as well if not better than traditional shampoo, is easy and fun to use, and comes along with none of the historic waste. It’s a tiny solution to a huge problem, and frankly that’s pretty big.

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

We tested a lot of hypotheses online to find the right audience on our social media channels. Most of them failed. Only recently have we begun to gain some traction. We have found hair stylists and salon owners that genuinely want to try new products and new innovations. And we are happy to send them a gifted box knowing that they will love our product and want to talk about it online. It worked! Hair stylists are creating Reels and TikToks telling their customers how cool this innovation is and how effective it is for their customers’ hair. There is not better audience for us as hair stylists’ approval give us tremendous credibility.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

Our initial plan was to develop a single dose “pod” that holds the Small Wonder powder together until you get into the shower. The vessel would evaporate and our customers would be able to activate the remaining powder and shampoo as normal. We learned very quickly with a lot of consistent feedback that pre-dosing does not work! People with a lot of hair felt frustrated that they needed three pods. People with little hair felt guilty that they wasted half the pod since they did not need as much shampoo. We pivoted fast and started prototyping multiple formats that eventually turned into our Small Wonder powder-to-foam shampoo!

Contact Info:

• Website: smallwonder.world
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smallwonder.world/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-farsht-1878824/

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