Building A Movement and Business for Men with Long Hair – Chris Healy of The Longhairs

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Hey there, entrepreneurs. My name is Sushant and welcome to Treptalks This is a show where I interview successful e-commerce entrepreneurs, business executives, and thought leaders, and ask them questions about their business stories, and also dive deep into some of the strategies and tactics that they have used to start and grow their businesses.

And today I’m really excited to welcome Chris Healy to the show. Chris is the co-founder of Long Hairs. The Long Hairs is a lifestyle brand and global community dedicated to men with long hair. The company offers haircare products, styling tutorials, and community support. Their flagship product is Hair Ties for Guys, designed specifically for men, featuring durable construction and masculine designs.

And today I’m going to ask Chris a few questions about his business journey and some of the strategies and tactics that he has used to grow his business. Now, before we dive into this interview, if you enjoy this content, please make sure to hit the like and subscribe button. And for more interviews like this, please visit treptalks.com And with that, Chris, welcome and thank you so much for joining me today at treptalks Really, really appreciate your time.

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: Hello Sushant Thank you for inviting me. Thrilled to be here and great job with Treptalks I’ve looked through, you had some terrific interviews with a lot of successful entrepreneurs. Uh, you clearly put a lot of effort and energy into it, so, uh, congratulations.

And I’m, uh, thrilled to be a guest.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Thank you so much. And it’s always, uh, so inspiring to, to speak with entrepreneurs. You know, it’s always, uh, interesting stories and yours is definitely one of the interesting ones. I mean, you know, your, uh, as we were discussing, you know, your hair is not short anymore and that’s for a reason.

Uh. But I would love to know what, uh, what inspired you to start long hairs?

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: Uh, so my business partner, Lindsay Bartow and I, we both kind of coincidentally were growing our hair long. Uh, he and I started off as a marketing agency, just a two man web shop, building websites and doing email and social media and advertising for clients.

But we kind of were always looking for our own thing. Uh, so we both had, like I said, coincidentally kind of grown our hair out. It was about to our shoulders and we started trying to figure out like, do we tie my, do I tie my hair up? How do I tie it up? Like I don’t know really how to do this. Our first time with long hair and we went to look for hair ties and we found ourselves in the women’s haircare aisle trying to find suitable hair ties.

And we found out that they snap and they rip your hair out and they break and they’re like. A hundred of ’em for five bucks. And we’re like, man, these are pretty awful. So we went deep into it, into the whole hair ties thing. And uh, we ultimately launched our flagship product, hair Ties for Guys, but really it was more about the guys with long hair and like noticing other guys with long hair and like, if they don’t know how to tie it up then, or if we don’t, then they probably don’t know either.

So we started creating content and really that was the foundation of the long hairs. How to brush your hair, how to shampoo it properly, how to tie it up, how to style your long hair, how to power through the awkward stage. So we have a content library that we’ve been building for over 10 years, and that has also been how many of our customers and followers have found us over the years.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So is this, um, do you call it a niche? Do you call it a subculture? Do you like mot motivate, inspire people to grow their hair? I mean, have you done any research, like how many men in America actually grew out their hair?

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: Yeah. Great. So these are a lot of the questions when that we asked ourselves, when we started the long hairs and started coming up with the idea and if it was gonna be something that we would pursue.

And, uh, so our, our, our vision, our, our mission is to inspire confidence, develop masculinity and foster community among guys growing their hair, and really that foster c community and inspire confidence. Uh, just a lot of men grow, are growing their hair out for the first time. And like I said earlier, they don’t know what to do or they don’t know how to do it, uh, or they might feel uncomfortable or they get, you know, negative comments from people about their long hair.

So just establishing that community was really the core I. To your question, how many guys are there? Well, we haven’t found all of them yet, but we have found, uh, nearly 1 million customers. Uh, we have had hundreds of thousands of customers over the years and folks visiting our blog and read. So some of those questions are kind hard to answer.

Generally speaking, a a fair estimate is between 3% and 5% of males. We’re trying to increase that percentage. Uh, you mentioned Inspire, and that’s part of our mission as well, is inspire guys who want to try long hair, want to grow their long hair, that we could be there as a, as a kind of a fraternity really, that they could be a part of.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So when you started this business, like did you start with the motivation to build a community or did you start with the motivation that. This could be like a side income, because it sounds like, I mean, if you had million customer, it’s a, it’s a big enterprise. I mean, it sounds like, um, what was your initial motivation and did it kind of, um, transform into this big business?

Uh,

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: yeah, that’s a great question. It really was both. It was, uh, the very first idea, to be honest. We were driving down the highway back from a client meeting and we’re trying to think like, what is our idea? ’cause we were doing marketing, right? But we wanted our own thing. We tried a few other concepts, uh, you know, something similar to entrepreneur profiles.

And we tried a, a few other ideas just didn’t really stick. But one day when we started, we’d been noticing other guys with long hair and it’s kind of a thing. And we’re like, dude, it’s hair ties for eyes. That’s it. That’s our thing.

Track 1: Mm-hmm.

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: And we started pursuing it immediately. So. Yes, the first idea was a product in building a business, but then we, we kind of took a few steps back and realized that the community is really the, the heart and soul of the long hairs.

And not just products, not just hair ties.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I mean, your, your product, the, the hair tie is targeted towards men. So I guess there is a differentiation there, but I mean, one can make an argument that this is like a commodity basically. People can use, people can use like, all kinds of ties. So I’m very curious to know, like when you look at your business, I mean, it is really, uh, an exercise in marketing and branding, right?

Like if, if you are selling hair ties, which is like easy to find and you know, you, you’re selling it for $18, um, I mean it’s, there’s something more going on behind it. So I would be very interested to hear how you kind of. Build this brand or marketing or movement behind a simple product like this.

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: So we say it’s strong enough for a woman, but pH balanced for a man.

And we say that a little bit tongue ’cause there’s nothing really pH balanced about your hair ties. Men’s and women’s hair is the same, so hair ties. However, if we came out with just hair ties for everyone, we really wouldn’t have had the same opportunities to establish a niche and develop the community that we have.

And so lots of women use our hair ties, you know, all the women in our lives or who we know. We have a lot of women customers and many of them are buying for themselves. Some are buying for their their son or their significant other who has long hair. But women love our products also. It was that before that there wasn’t anything that was made specifically for guys.

And when you’re growing long hair, especially if it’s for the first time. You’re kinda wondering like, all right, where’s the guy stuff? Most of the, almost all of the longer hair products are really gear geared towards women, uh, including the marketing, the packaging, the, the, all, all of the points about it, which is fine, and I don’t mind using, you know, it’s not a big deal.

We kind of joke about it, like being in the women’s hair, hair care aisle. It wasn’t a huge problem. But it’s also like, it’d be nice if there was something geared a little more towards men. So if we would’ve just, uh, come out with hair ties for everyone, I don’t, I don’t think we would’ve been able to build the community and grow the business the way that we did.

Hair ties for guys, uh, yes, it is marketed and geared towards men, but you know, they’re, they’re truthfully, they’re great products for everyone.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Have others followed behind your success? I mean, I. That’s the story of any brand or business, right? When you know something gets successful, then there’s copycats, there are other businesses that come up in the same category.

Uh, I’m sure other businesses have come up. And how are you dealing with that? Like, is, has that affected your business? Um, is it that your story is because you’re first in the market and you have a story, uh, you’ve created a brand that is enough for you to continue, uh, having, uh, a sustainable business?

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: So we have had a lot of copycat brands and, uh, sorry about that.

We’ve seen a lot of copycat brands and imitators and people trying to copy, and sometimes it’s just blatantly obvious. Sometimes it’s not quite as obvious. Uh, there we find listings on different seller platforms and things, and. Oftentimes they will even copy our language directly or exactly use our titles or even use our brand’s photos and things like that.

And it’s kind of a, a fool’s errand. Truthfully, we don’t, we don’t worry about it too much. We’re aware of these things and, you know, we monitor to some degree, but our story, the, the core of our brand is in 500 blog posts and YouTube videos and interviews with successful men with long hair and tips and tutorials.

And, uh, someone who thinks that they’re gonna just come and take a big slice of the market of hair ties. I mean, maybe someone could, don’t get me wrong, like, we don’t like it when that happens. You know, it, uh, yeah, we are, we, we don’t like seeing copycats, but at the same time, we’re years ahead of what they’re doing.

And if they want to just try to sell cut rate hair ties, well, they’re gonna be just like any other hair ties before we came along. So. Yeah, that’s, I think

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: that that’s an, I that’s an important lesson to, I guess, build a brand or build an identity if you want to, um, I guess stand out of the, the crowd.

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: Yeah, certainly.

And, you know, we, we just, we just know what we have put into it. And some other copycat brand has not put that into it. And so they can try as hard as they want, but they can’t be us. They can’t be the long hairs. And the long hairs is just as important as whatever products that we have. More important.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So in the beginning, how did you get your first customer?

Like how did you kind of get the momentum going? Um, yeah.

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: So I told you that we were a marketing agency, so we had been familiar with building websites and building up our email list. And you know, we started in the very beginning by taking all of our friends and family and everyone we know and starting our, our email list.

And as round two creative group, our marketing agency, we had, uh, some, we built our list up to some degree and we had, uh, some followers and, uh, other associate businesses. But it really was like absolutely, oh, it was absolutely grassroots. I mean, we also had these cards, referral cards, which we still have to this day, which is like you are invited to the long hairs fraternity.

Finally, there’s a place for guys with long hair. Uh, I personally handed out pro thousand thousands, maybe, probably more, probably many thousands over the years. And then, so, so you’re

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: walking, so you’re walking down the road and you see a guy with a long hair and then you would approach Yes. ’cause to me it time, it seems like a challenging problem because you’re targeting

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: uh, that’s a funny, that’s a funny point actually.

’cause we can see our guy on the street from a hundred yards away. Now I’m finding them online through digital marketing is more difficult ’cause you can’t see ’em, you don’t know what people out there have long hair or not. But on the mean streets, man, it’s no problem. I approach a guy almost every single day of my life and sometimes, you know, many dozens of people if I’m out at a big event or something.

And that hand to hand, uh, personal introduction, uh, really has built it from the core, from, from. A grassroots effort. Now, the digital marketing really took time and energy as well, but we started building, uh, so we had our email list. We had a couple hundred, and then we had a thousand, and then we had 2000 and, uh, with opt-in forms on our website.

Now where we started to get bigger traffic was when we were publishing blog posts, like how to get through the awkward stage that became like a smash hit and everyone’s googling awkward stage, how to get through the awkward stage. And hundreds of thousands of people found us from that blog post through organic search, and they found the long hairs.

And wow, look at these guys. They opt into our email list a little bit. Few years into it, we started advertising, uh, a little bit more. And that brings in more new customers. So like really starting from the grassroots and building out one stage at a time.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, I mean that’s very interesting because as I’m thinking about it more and more it’s the, the marketing advertising part seems.

Um, more challenging than it appears at the face value because, uh, you can’t just target any male because, you know, if you target a general men, like they don’t, they’ll just ignore it. Because if, if somebody doesn’t have long hair or if they’re bald,

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: you know, and that happens sometimes we’ll get some comments on our Facebook or meta ads and it’s like, I’m bald, why am I being targeted by this?

So it’s like, well, you know, if we knew we wouldn’t have, uh, targeted you with that. It’s a little bit harder to Yeah. Do online than just seeing people physically in person.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So, I mean, with advertising, of course, there’s, you know, cost in involved with it. So to me it seems like, as you said, it’s, uh, your marketing has really been more of the grassroots and organic and, uh, because otherwise you’re basically throwing money in the dark, right?

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: Yeah. Uh, I it really built. Slowly and built small and slowly. For the first two or maybe three years, we were still a part-time business. We had our marketing agency still operating for the first two or three years of the long hairs until we, uh, finally started making enough revenue on a daily, weekly, monthly average to where we eventually dissolved the marketing agency entirely, which was our goal.

And then, uh, been full-time since then. I think that was in 2017 or late 2018 when we, uh, when we finally dissolved the marketing agency and went full-time with the long hairs.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Wow. That’s, that’s awesome. I mean, to be able to let go of the marketing agency, it’s, it’s, I mean, that, that speaks of the success.

What advice would you give, like if somebody wants, is creating a, an e-commerce business today? Uh, of course the landscape is a little bit different like. What I mean with all your experience, what, uh, what direction would you advise somebody to go? Like, uh, would you say somebody start like creating blog posts, somebody, you know, start posting on social media?

Like what, what would work today to get a business off the ground?

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: Well, first of all, we’re still figuring it out, you know, 10 years in. And, uh, we still have the challenges. We’re still learning and figuring things out as we go. And obviously we’ve learned a lot and done a lot in 10 years. But, uh, boy, it just, uh, it takes, it takes a lot of energy and time and so many different avenues.

SEO advertising your website, your conversion, your product line. Like, you know, it’s, it, it, and to answer your question, how would it started Now it’s a, it’s a tough question. When we started in 2014. SEO you know, SEO has changed and with uh, AI and the ability for people to create an unfathomable amount of content with minimal effort, the SEO landscape is changing fast.

It has changed enormously fast and it’s still changing. So for us, doing 500 original blog posts took us 9, 8, 9 years to do that. You know, someone could do that a lot faster. So the publishing organic content as a form of, uh, people finding you, it’s a hell of a lot harder now. Is it still possible?

Probably it’s, you know, I don’t know how many billion articles are published on websites every day now. Uh, it’s, it’s a tough, it’s a tough question. Uh, if we weren’t where we are, are, and, uh, just it’d be tough to, to get it going. There’s a way, obviously people are still doing it and people are still gonna find success and, uh, it’s still gonna be happening, but if we didn’t start when we did, it’d be, it’d be pretty tough to get a, a foothold in there now with the organic content publishing as the primary strategy.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. Yeah. It’s, uh, I think organic is difficult now, even, I mean, paid is even more difficult, more expensive. Um, but let me switch the gears a little bit. So now you have, uh, of course your product selection has grown quite a bit. Can you talk a little bit about where you started, I believe you started with the hair tie and how, you know, how have you grown your product selection, which are your best sellers and, and so forth.

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: So hair ties for guys. It took us a full year from the time that we launched the brand before we were even selling hair ties, just sourcing and finding manufacturing and all those things. Uh, took, took us a long time, a pretty fair bit of time. Uh, soon after that we went into head wraps and headbands, uh, which was, has been a really successful product line.

And then our first haircare was our Argonne oil hair serum, uh, which is a hair serum that you put in the end, ends in the lengths of your hair, and it detangles and smooths it out. And, uh, it makes your health hair just stunningly healthy. That was our first haircare product, has since been one of our top products.

We then went into shampoo and conditioner. Uh, we then in, went into hair brushes and then a little bit later. Into more haircare and styling products like sea salt spray and leave-in condition, uh, leave-in conditioner, dry shampoo, clarifying shampoo. So we have a pretty robust haircare line. Now, out of all those, the hair serum and the shampoo conditioner are really the most important.

Uh, and then the ancillary products, you know, are, are popular as well, but not nearly as much. All that being said, hair ties are still our number one product. That’s how most people find us. And people tend to continue buying hair ties. And we are always launching new collections and new designs and things and trying to, uh, make it fresh for all of our customers.

So yeah, hair ties is still number one, but then the headbands and head wraps and the hair serum and shampoo and conditioner are kind of our, our top categories.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Well, that, that’s also very interesting because I would assume that, um. The shampoo and the other categories, there’s probably a lot more competition.

Um, what, what is your, which channels do you sell through? Do you, are you also on like retail stores?

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: No, not really. Our own website is our number one channel. We also sell on Amazon, Etsy, and like Facebook Shop and a few of the other platforms like that. But really number one is our own website. Okay. By, by a long shot,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: which is great because, you know, you don’t have to pay someone else like a commission or something.

So That’s, that’s awesome. Yeah. Um, I did see your Shark Tank, uh, presentation as well. Can you talk a little bit about how you, um. Uh, how, how you ended up on Shark Tank and what was your experience like? I mean, I did see that you, I think you got a deal from Mark Cuban. Uh, did you actually go through with it?

And what has been your experience, uh, so far?

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: Uh, yeah, extraordinary story. Try to give you the short version. We do have some really nice published content, both in written form and we have a really good video about what it was like going in there and leading up to it and all the stuff that we did. But, uh, so you could Google the long hairs on Shark Tank and a lot of that great content is out there.

Uh, we just went to an open casting call in Southern California. We’d been in business for probably a year and a half, getting close to two years, right around that time when we had gone full-time. And from the beginning we kind of knew that we were gonna give Shark Tank a try at some point or another.

We were kind of a catchy name and a, you know, haven’t heard of hair ties for guys before. So. Yeah, we went to the open casting, we pitched our business. Uh, we got the callback. You have to submit some videos and at long applications, and it’s kinda a long process. And I don’t know, it was probably six months later when we were invited to come down and film the actual episode.

It went fantastic. Uh, a few things that maybe your listeners don’t know is, or some people have said this, but what is most fascinating about the show is that when you walk down that aisle, uh, to the, to meet the sharks, they don’t know who you are. They haven’t read like your stuff in advance. They don’t know who’s coming down.

They don’t even know. So it really is a very true, like the responses and like one of the first things that Mark says, wow, that’s some long ass hair. Uh, my hair’s a lot shorter. Now. We have to get into that at some point here of why my hair is the length that it is right now. This, uh. The actual recording, pitching to the sharks.

Uh, our, our pitch went great. The adrenaline is massive. Like it’s, it’s one of the, you know, great adrenaline rushes that you know of your, of your lifetime. Really exciting, certainly stressful to some degree, but we prepared an enormous amount we prepared under duress just to, uh, really give ourselves the best possible chance.

And it went great. We did get offers from a couple other sharks, but, uh, ultimately Mark was our guy and, uh, did a, a relatively quick negotiation with him and he, let’s see, it was 20% for $100,000. We had established kind of our valuation range that we would be comfortable with, and that fell like right with it just right within the target.

Uh, we, we didn’t ask for that much. We didn’t try to value our business too high, which you do see some of the entrepreneurs on the show do. Uh, so we went ahead with the deal. When a shark makes a deal on that show, unless you default somehow, like if you were dishonest about your sales or you didn’t have your bank accounts or you didn’t have something, the sharks are there to make a deal.

It like 90 something percent of the deals that you see on television are going to be consummated. Ours was, it took a few months after that ’cause we’re going through a really deep due diligence and all the pieces to it. But yeah, that was in 2018 when we appeared on the show. And, uh, we’ve had an excellent relationship with Mark.

Uh, we check him with him often. Uh. Uh, by email. He’s extremely responsive. We’ll send some bullet points on what’s happening if we ever have questions or something that we’re would ask him to help us with. He’s always happy he and his team, uh, to help in any way. Uh, we’ve gone and visited the Mark Cuban company’s headquarters in Dallas and really well received and it’s just been a excellent business relationship.

We, to this day, day feel extremely fortunate to have Mark as an investor and really someone who believes in us and someone who we can reach out to at any time. So yeah, the whole Shark Tank, it gave us a massive, uh, visibility. When the show airs, it’s always, for most companies, it’s your biggest day in history to that point, we have since had bigger days, but it took a long time to be that, like it was incredible.

Massive surge. Visibility, website, traffic sales, like being prepared for the airing was, that in itself was like a pretty big deal. But, uh, yeah, it was an extraordinary experience. I, it’s hard to believe that it’s six, seven years ago now. It’s like shocking to even think about. Uh, it’s probably a good segue though, after Shark Tank, you know, we rode that wave as hard as we could and the exposure and everything, but we said from the get go that Shark Tank is not going to be the biggest thing that we are known for.

’cause if it is, then this is the end of the road, man. It’s not gonna get much better than this. But we intended to, we intend and still intend to run this business, you know, for the long haul. And so we set our sights on something, uh, bigger, something, you know, the next big thing, so to speak. So, uh, we have almost from the beginning a charity partner, their, their name is Children with Hair Loss.

Track 1: Hmm.

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: And they are in de based out of Michigan. They provide real hair replacements to children with alopecia or who have had cancer treatment or burn victims or any kind of medical hair loss. And they provide a customized human hair replacement to every child, 100% free of charge at no cost to the children or their families.

Uh, they have been around since the year 2000, and they have provided over 10,000 children with hair replacements. Wow. So we started our partnership off with donating a percentage of our sales, but we wanted to do something bigger. So in 2019, we hosted the Great Cut. The Great Cut is a charity haircutting event.

Where we attempted and we did in fact break the Guinness World Records title for the Most Hair donated to Charity in history. We donated 316 pounds of hair breaking the Guinness World Records title in 2019. Uh, almost 3000 people donated. It was a big event that we had in San Diego, but then lots of people mailed their hair in as well.

And that was the first time we most recently did the Great Cut again in 2024. This time we did not break our own world record, unfortunately, but we still donated almost 250 pounds of hair. Uh, and that time, myself and the co-founder, Lindsay Bartow and our entire staff, we all shaved our heads, uh, entirely in this, uh, hair donation.

So that is why my hair is this long right now. And some of the photos, uh. You may have seen or we can provide, uh, for your, your post. My hair was down, past my belt, uh, extremely long, so to speak. Uh, so I shaved it down to a zero. That was about 13 months ago. So this is about 13 months of air growth. It’s really annoying.

It’s in my eye, just constantly a pain. I’m working through the awkward stage, uh, as are the rest of the guys on my team. And, uh, you know, you can’t grow long hair overnight. Uh, it takes a year, two years to really get it going and we’re, we’re almost there. We’re all pushing through, but we’ve been in a little bit of awkward stage for the last year since the Great cut 2024.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I mean, it’s, it’s quite admirable that, uh, you, you have done this and uh, uh, but I think many men especially would be envious that at least you are able to. Grow luscious, long hair because not everybody can,

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: no,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: especially men. It’s like, uh, you know, not every men have like, uh, great, great hair. So yeah, it’s, uh,

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: did you, did you, uh, and, and, and especially the, the children who really cannot grow hair ’cause they have alopecia or some other condition.

And if you are in junior high or high school or really any point as a child, it’s already tough enough to be a kid. But if you’re getting teased or bullied for not having hair, it’s just, it’s really tough for these children. And the hair replacements can cost two, three, $4,000, which most families cannot afford.

And they’re already going through whatever it is that is causing them to lose their hair. So providing the, the, the wigs free of charge just provides a huge boost of confidence and self-esteem and. Helps those little girls, and sometimes boys just live a little bit more normal life. We’re lucky enough to be able to grow our hair the way we can.

So we are the extremely well suited to partner with children with hair loss. And, uh, we say we give our time, we tre we give our treasure and we give our hair. And that’s, that’s, that’s all we can give.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. No, it’s a, it’s a great cause I think, I think you’re doing great work and, you know, uh, 250 pounds and 300 pounds of hair, it’s, it’s a significant amount of hair.

So, um, congratulations to you for doing that. And Yeah. Um, I’m curious to know, given that you are in the hair industry, have you all ever thought about, um, going into a wig business? Because I think there is ata, there’s a big, uh, big industry. There. Have you ever thought of like selling, uh, uh, human hair wig as well?

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: No. That’s an interesting question. I don’t think I’ve heard that one before. So, when children with hair loss receives the hair that’s donated, they pass it on to a company called John Reno. And John Reno makes those hair replacements and provides them to every single child who requests one on the children with hair loss website.

They are in the hair business, so to speak. Uh, and that’s a big business and it’s just not our, it’s just not our lane. It’s just not our lane. They are really good at what they do and we have a great relationship with them. Wait, I, we’re gonna leave it to the pros on that one. It is just, uh, you know, we’re.

Our expertise is e-commerce, online marketing, digital, you know, video, ad, email, all of those things. And there’s a lot more that we can do. There are a lot more people that we can find online and when, when we, we already expanded quite a bit, you know, by adding all these haircare products and it costs a lot and it takes a lot of money, uh, a lot of time and energy to go into new product lines.

And we learned with the last round that it also takes a lot of product education. Guys didn’t know of what clarifying shampoo was and you know, we’ve had to explain why you wanna use, you know, it’s a deep cleansing shampoo, it’s occasional use, it really all the, all the reasons why it’s great. But most people dunno that so.

We will have, we will exercise more caution in the future on new product lines to go into. And that’s just not our wheelhouse. You know, it’s, it’d be worth considering, but it’s just not our wheelhouse. And we kinda sticking, sticking to what we had, what, what we got going.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: No, that, that makes sense. Um, in terms of your fulfillment and shipping strategy, um, or, and the markets that you sell in, are you primarily within the US and can you just share a little bit about how you fulfill your orders?

Where do you warehouse and so forth?

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: Yep. We’ve always done it all in-house. We’ve had, you know, we started in a small office and then moved into a little bit bigger warehouse and then quite a bit bigger warehouse and we’ve moved to a little bit smaller. So we’ve always had our, our own warehouse and do all of our own fulfillment.

Uh. We’ve considered some, like three PL or dropshipping, some other possibilities, and it just hasn’t been necessarily the right fit for us or the right time. You know, when you start grassroots and bootstrapping, you know, we’re getting like five orders a day or something,

Track 1: it makes sense to do it

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: yourself.

You also gotta do things yourself like a number of times to really figure out how to do it and how to do it properly, and how we want to do it as a business, what we want our customer experience to be. There may be a point, and we may have already passed it where it would make more sense to do a three pl, but uh, yeah, it just hasn’t been the right fit for us.

It, it could be and it is for plenty of other businesses, but, uh, yeah, it, it, it’s, it’s, it’s another model for sure. We’ve liked it to, to do it ourselves.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Okay. No, that, that makes complete sense. When you started out, um, one of the things that I was thinking is because you started out with one product, uh, and you also have a co-founder, I’m assuming that, uh, the upfront investment was not very high.

And, and since then you’ve kind of invested any revenue that came in. Like did you have to, besides the Shark Tank, like did you have to get any other additional investments or was it completely bootstrapped how much investment did go into the business at the beginning? Yeah. Like

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: I said, we started really small.

We had six collections of hair ties as a relatively small investment to launch a brand new untested product for for sure. But we, like I said, had kept the marketing agency running for the first two or three years of the long hairs, so. We ended up using some of the revenue from our marketing agency and, uh, we put a little bit of money in ourselves, but we have, and some financing loans here and there, things like that.

But, uh, we haven’t gone to seek out other investment and we’ve all, we’ve always just put the money back into the business. That was, that was really great for us, being able to do it that way, you know, ’cause our very first purchase order was something that we could afford without having to go and ask for money.

And the first couple of years not having to, you know, go out and seek big investment like Shark Tank, we ended up getting the $100,000 investment and that was extraordinary. But it was more important being on the show and being partners with Mark Cuban, it, as time goes on, is more valuable than, you know, just, just the financial investment.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: For sure. Um, what does your team look like right now? I know you have a co-founder. Do you have any other team members working?

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: So we have four full-time staff, plus a full-time customer service representative, uh, a part-time fulfillment person. So you’re like five full-time, one part-time. And then we have some agencies or, you know, small businesses that help us out with things like advertising, email, uh, things like that.

But as far as in-house, yeah, we’ve got the five full-time and one part-time.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I always want to ask, you know, when, whenever I am talking to founders who have co-founders or you know, two co-founders, uh, who started a business, you know, some entrepreneurs that are like, will never do that, or they have done it and they had bad experience.

What, uh. What was your experience like? Uh, did your co-founder, like, did you know them for, for a long time? Uh, how did it come about and what has been your experience, um, running a business with a co-founder? Have you run into any challenges? Has it always been smooth running?

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: That’s a great question. A lot of challenges.

Certainly it was, it was kind of magical for us. Uh, Lindsay Bartow and I became friends in college. We were part of the same fraternity. Uh, we became really good friends in college and we worked on a lot of business team. We worked on a lot of projects and things together. So we really established our working relationship back then.

And we’d always said back then that, Hey, we’re gonna start a business someday. And we really kind of believe that in college, back in, you know, 2001, 2002, 2003, after college we both went our separate ways and got our first jobs and you know, did different things for a number of years. But then we came back together and landed both in San Diego.

Lindsay had kind of started up this marketing agency. I had just gotten back into the United States from a big long trip around the world, which I recommend to anyone on, on a side note. And yeah, we started working together and the marketing agency and then I kind of covered how we got into the long hair story after that.

It’s very challenging to have a partner. It has just worked out extremely well. Uh, for the two of us. I think being really good friends beforehand and having had some work working relationship beforehand and we really like working together. Uh. Our, our skill sets really compliment each other quite a bit.

He is a designer and developer by trade. I’m a more of a copywriter in a business background. And those things just really meshed well together. Even to this day here, you know, 13 years in business together, the two of us, including the marketing agency. And yeah, there’s plenty of challenges. We’re not always gonna agree on everything, but our commitment to the long hairs has been that foundation that is just kind of the bedrock of our relationship.

And in the hard times, in the good times. We’ve been through a lot of both sides for sure. And there’s definitely been some tough times. But, uh, like I said, that that foundation, that commitment to the long hairs really set the tone and we’ve always believed in each other and believed in ourselves and know that we’re gonna hang in there no matter what it takes.

And we’re still great friends on the side. You know, we play golf together when we can and, uh, go up to the mountains or whatever. And I think maintaining that friendship has been really crucial part of it as well.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: That’s, that’s awesome. Um. What does your, I mean, it seems like you both are committed to the business and continue running it.

Do you have any future vision? Do you have any, like, where do you see your business five years down the road? Do you have any sort of, uh, exit plan or buying your, you know, uh, mark Cubans shares out, or, you know, where do you see your business or basically just continue growing it organically?

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: Yeah, that’s a great question and it’s come, you know, we have talked about it over the years and it’s pretty hard to see I, us to see ourselves not being involved with the long hairs

selling it to like a big company. It would, it’d be, it’d be, it’d be tough to do, uh, because in many ways we are kind of the face of the brand. I. And our employees take a, a nice, a good share of that as well. But Lindsay and I have been the face of the brand and we make the videos and the tutorials and we’re usually the, the models for the hair ties and the things.

And that’s not to say someone can’t do that, but I think our character and our personalities have been a, such a big part of the brand. And we would always consider anything, don’t get me wrong, but for us to just be not involved anymore would, uh, it feels like we would lose the brand, would lose some of the authenticity that we have established over the years.

So yeah, we, for the, in the, in the, in the interim here, we’re continue to grow it organically and stick with our mission, continue with our charity partnership, continue growing the business. There’s still a lot more runway for us. Where we are right now in the e-commerce space, and there’s plenty of opportunity ahead.

So we’ve talked about, you know, having an exit plan at some point or another, but there’s nothing really realistic on the table in the short term for that.

Track 1: Do you? And we love

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: having Mark, mark as our, as our partner. So could that be something someday to buy the shares back? Yeah, certainly that would be a possibility.

But it’s, uh, it’s a privilege to be, yeah. To have Mark as a part of the business still.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. Do you, um, as part of your, I guess, distribution, or do you also look into partnerships? I, I recently interviewed the founder of Beard Brand, uh, which to me seems like complimentary offering, but, you know, similar audience have, have you ever thought about.

Partnering with them or similar brands?

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: Yeah, we’re, I’m a big fan of Beard Brand. I know of the owner, and I think they have taken a similar approach as we have over the years. I’d say they’re a very authentic brand. They really speak directly to their audience. They know who their audience is. They have, um, a voice that they speak with.

Uh, they’re a terrific business. We have done some collaboration content with them. Uh, there was a blog post some years ago that guys with long hair and guys with beards tend to go to the same bars. Uh, was kind of the, uh, the topic of the post, the similarities, like a lot of guys with long hair also have facial hair.

A lot of guys with facial hair also have long hair, so there are definitely some crossovers. Uh, we have some of the same product lines as well, so. In a way, they are a competitor business, but, uh, you know, we have nothing. And we would do another collaboration if there were another opportunity. Some other, uh, kind of content sort of thing.

And yeah, they’re a great business. We, we wish ’em the best.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: In every entrepreneur’s journey, there’s always failures, lessons learned, mistakes made. Um, all the years that you’ve been running your business, what has been like a big, um, lesson learned or mistake made or, you know, failure that comes to mind?

What did you learn and what can other entrepreneurs learn from your mistakes?

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: So COVID played a, a big factor in our business in 2020 when COVID hit, a lot of things happened. E-commerce, uh, absolutely exploded. Also, unfortunately, all the barbershops and salons, mostly throughout the United States, closed down.

And so no one could get their hair cut. So more guys started growing their hair long in 2020 than really probably any other time before that. And their, every e-commerce was exploding. So during 2020 and 2021, we had, we experienced to some degree, some, uh, artificial wave, not artificial, but created by external out external factors that we didn’t necessarily control.

We’d been doing our content. So we were really well positioned when that hit, uh, from being an e-commerce gra brand for guys with long hair, we were crushing, you know, 20 21, 20 22 was a huge wave and. We, we tried to expand pretty fast. I mentioned the new product lines, the clarifying shampoo and beautiful products, but we invested an enormous amount really quickly.

You know, in retrospect we might have done one product at a time on the new releases as oppo. We also did a full repackaging moving our, our bottles from plastic to recyclable aluminum. So we made some huge investments coming off that wave. And 2022, late 2022 and 2023 came around and retail started opening back up and bars and restaurants and entertainment and concerts and e-commerce, you know, didn’t go down to previous levels, but it took a huge hit and we took a huge hit.

It was extremely difficult to stay alive through that. Someone called it e-commerce recession. I don’t know that’s a particular term, but it put us in a tough position having like that huge growth and major success for a couple of years. And then all of a sudden that was kind of gone. And, you know, with Google always changing their algorithm, we lost an enormous amount of SEO traffic and it’s kind of, we were on this huge wave and it was crushing and then all of a sudden we weren’t.

But we had a, a lot of liabilities and you know, to this day we’re still recovering from that. I, I’m proud of us for making it through that. ’cause there are probably a lot of e-commerce companies that did not make it past 2022, especially if that was their first year. Like, and everything booming. Like, we’re like, dude crushing.

And, uh, man, coming back to earth, uh, was tough. It was extraordinary. It has been extremely challenging since that time and, and frankly, we’re still recovering and getting back, uh, on our feet to a place of real stability since then. So, you know, if we were gonna do it all again, I think I, like I said, we’d probably launch one new product at a time and not four or five all at once, and just recognize the good times and be like, okay, it’s not always gonna be like this.

Yeah. And adjusting your strategy according to that, we were planning on just growing again the next year and the next year and the next year. And it was gonna be popping. And instead of growth, we had, you know, we had some shrinkage for a few years there. And, uh. Yeah, just being cognizant of that sort of thing.

I don’t know how much advice that offers for your listeners, but when it’s going good, don’t just expect that it’s gonna keep going good forever.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. I think the big advice there, I mean, I, I talk to lots of business and I think the big advice there is to, to, to never just, you know. Think that you can run on autopilot.

I think you, as a business owner, you always have to be thinking five steps ahead. You always have to be thinking what are the risks? And you know what if, you know, my biggest customer leaves me, or what if my, you know, supplier just stops sending me things? So I think businesses have to be very, very careful thinking and, and, you know, being prepared for a lot of different kind of risks.

I think that that lesson comes to me again and again. It’s like, you know, things that you think is certain may not be certain.

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: Yeah, yeah. You can say that

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: again. Yeah.

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: And if you’re starting a business to try to put it on autopilot, uh, it’s probably not very few, with very few exceptions. That’s probably not a realistic expectation.

I don’t know. It’s been 10, 10 years for us, and I guarantee you we’re not on autopilot. It is pretty hard. It’s gonna be pretty hard to get to that. Now. We do have a vision where we could get to a certain place where maybe you don’t have to put in max effort all the time, but, uh, having some real realistic go expectations going into it, you know?

Yeah. Is, is, is, is important.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. Running, running. I mean, being an entrepreneur is difficult and running a business, you know, that, that, uh, stays stable and, you know, healthy. That’s even more challenging. Now I’m going to move on to our rapid fire segment. In this segment, I’m going to ask you a few quick questions and you have to answer them maybe in a word or a sentence or so.

The first one is one book recommendation for entrepreneurs and why

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: I re I saw this question in advance, so I was ready, and I have to say, the War of Art by Steven Pressfield.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And any specific lesson there.

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: It really gave us a basis for what we just talked about of, uh, putting the work in and staying, staying on it, doing what it takes, whether you feel like it or not.

And it’s just, uh, it’s not specific to business, it’s to creative. Uh, but anyone who’s trying to do anything worthwhile would get some value out of the War of Art by Steven Pressfield.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. An innovative product or idea in the current e-commerce retail or tech landscape that you feel excited about?

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: Everyone’s probably say AI to this. I, I think for us to be aware of. The AI thing, you know, it’s to be able to whip, rip off blog posts, is that kind of, that’s not a positive necessarily for us or the, or The AI models are trained on all of our published content, you know, that now it can just spit stuff out.

So it also could do some incredible and some amazing things in being able to find and leverage those things, uh, where it can benefit You are extremely important.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. I mean, AI is definitely, I find now that, you know, previously if I would do 10 Google searches now eight out of those searches are on chat. GPT. Like I don’t usually not go on Google much, to be honest, because you get so relevant. Basically answer. It’s like an Oracle. You ask a question, you get the answer.

Yeah. Um, a business or productivity tool or software that you would recommend or a productivity tip

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: just to keep it simple. Turning your phone off for a designated period of time. It’s not an app or a software or some tool. You know, if you just turn your phone off for one hour and or two hours and focus on one specific task, that’s when the real work gets done.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. I think many people would be, find it difficult to do that. Um,

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: it can be, but it also provides a certain relief or, uh, lifts some burden or it, it really frees you up if your phone is off. Yeah. You’re gonna look at it to check, oh wait, it’s off. I forgot it was off. Uh, that’s why you turn it off and not just ’cause you’re gonna end up wanting to like.

Even if it’s just to do the calculator or check this thing or so, like, it’s off. Like Yeah, you’re just, you’re not touching it. It’s a, it’s a really worthwhile exercise and probably the best productivity tip that I could offer.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I mean, isn’t it interesting that we are all addicts though, to the phone via addicts

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: Max maximum?

I do want, you know, I do think about the impacts that’s gonna have on human society over these next 10 years when the kids, you know, we’re, we’re getting almost to the end of the generation that didn’t have phones, not to the end, but for what, 20 years now. You know, the kids have had phones and uh, how it’s going to look in another 20 years is gonna be fascinating.

We’re gonna have to come to a reckoning with the, uh, the screen time.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. Another startup or business that you think is currently doing great things.

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: I had an ans we talked about Beard brand a little while ago. Uh, we respect a lot what they are doing. There are a lot of businesses that are catering towards e-commerce brands or providing things like that. Uh, it’s hard to keep track of everything that’s happening out there yet important at the same time.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Uh, a peer entrepreneur business person whom you look up to or someone who inspires you,

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: uh, that would be really easy. Mark Cuban, our investor, uh, partial owner. I think he is just shown what he is all about and being an approachable what you, the, the guy that you see on the television show, I would say is very accurate to.

How he is in, you know, real life, so to speak, and appreciate what he does and the approach that he takes and having really strongly rooted values and uh, the way that he treats us, you know, his responsiveness, all of those things. And you know, he’s been doing it for a long time and he’s a very authentic individual.

And yeah, we’re proud, like I said, to be associated with him and I definitely take inspiration from how he does things.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. Final question, best business advice that you have ever received or you would give to other entrepreneurs?

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: We kind of covered this a little bit, just having realistic expectations going, it could be one of the most rewarding and fulfilling experiences in your life.

It certainly has been for me. It’s also been a trial and a test, and here we are, you know, 10 years into the long hairs, 13 years into running our own business. And there’s no shortage of challenge and difficulty and tough times. But at the same time, it’s also been just an extraordinary experience and a highlight of our lives.

I can speak for Lindsay on that and it’s, it’s, it’s a really special thing doing your own business, but uh, be prepared to put in everything you got. And it’s not gonna be fast, it is not gonna be easy, but it can be rewar very rewarding and fulfilling.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, I completely agree. Entrepreneurship is very difficult, but if you.

Go down the path. Of course you’re going to learn something about yourself.

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: No, no question.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. Well, Chris, those were all the questions I had. Thank you so much for sharing your story, for sharing, um, you know, your business, business advice, some strategies and tactics, marketing, uh, advice. Um, what, uh, what is the best way people can try out your products and buy your products?

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: Yeah, so please visit the long hairs us. That’s the long hairs. Us can also find us on social media channels at the long hairs. Really pretty, pretty easy to find The long hairs is our, is our website. That’s where our blog is. Or, or you could just google how to tie my hair up for a guy or how to braid my hair for a guy, and you’ll probably find us that way.

But yeah, the easiest is, uh, the long hairs us or at the long hairs on our social media channels.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. Well, thank you so much again, Chris, and uh, wish you all the very best. Thanks for joining. Great,

Chris Healy of The Longhairs: great talking with you Sushant Thank you for having me and take care and best to you.

Track 1: Thank you.