$650K/Month – Building a Private Label Hair Extensions Company – Mikey Moran of Private Label Extensions

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 story 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 Mikey Moran to the show. Mikey is the founder of Private Label Extensions. Private Label Extensions is a hair distribution and technology company that builds hair brands from A to Z. For entrepreneurs looking to get into the industry. And today I’m going to ask Mikey a few questions about his entrepreneurial journey and some of the strategies and tactics that he has used to start and grow his business.

So Mikey, thank you so much for joining today at TrepTalks. I really, really appreciate your time and really looking forward to learning more about your business.

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: Thank you. I’m obviously glad to be here.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome, so, you know, [00:01:00] I went on your website and first of all, you know, when I looked at the product and to me, it seemed like the product was, uh, focused towards a very specific demographic.

And then I looked at the founder and it seemed like a complete mismatch, you know. Women, uh, using hair extensions. And I was, you know, I was thinking, how does a guy know anything about hair or hair extensions? So can you share a little bit about how you got specifically into this?

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: For sure. So the interesting about that statement, and I’ve heard that many times before, uh, it’s very similar to.

Anything you’re getting into when you’re starting a new business. And that is, we always start with a new project or a new product with not really knowing anything about it. Uh, but what I’d like to do is I go in really deep when it comes to learning about products. Uh, for, especially from the manufacturing side, I already love the marketing side.

And I’ve been doing this marketing and [00:02:00] entrepreneurship for. 16, 17 years now. So that part is nothing new to me. So it really becomes somewhat plug and play with the product, but I did fall in love with the beauty industry. And it really all started with my business partner telling me about how his girlfriend would go spend all this money on hair extensions.

And I was like, what in the world is this? So after a little bit more research and notice, there wasn’t a lot of competition in the industry at the time I said, Hey, let’s get into this.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And were you, you know, you said you’ve been an entrepreneur for a long time. Were you, were you into other businesses or do you actually have other businesses right now also that you’re running in addition to this one?

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: This is the main business as of now. My first real business, I had a, uh, Thai food sauce business. So similar to this industry, I’m obviously not Thai, uh, but I was somehow able to get the first packaged Thai curry sauce to ever be sold in America. Uh, in grocery stores, [00:03:00] like Whole Foods. So it’s not, it’s nothing new to be in an industry that I don’t look like I would be part of.

Uh, I started that in 2006 and it kind of went downhill, really 2010, 11. Once the U S dollar really crashed first, the time bot, I just got squeezed out. I was a new entrepreneur. I didn’t have the experience and it was, it was a learning process for sure. And do you, I

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: mean, this is such an interesting thing that I’m always curious to know.

Like, do you. Think or in your own self assessment. Do you think that you have the kind of the entrepreneurial personality like a person who can inherently see opportunities or who’s inherently driven by seeing, you know, there’s a gap in the market and I see an opportunity then, you know, a regular person cannot see and you’re able to pursue it.

And what, what drives you to be an entrepreneur? Like, are you driven by filling a gap, you know, you’d identify that [00:04:00] there’s a need that’s unfulfilled and you are motivated to fill that in some way, or is it more of a kind of a financial motivation that you, you know, you still want to help people, but of course, you know, it’s ultimately a financial thing.

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: I’ve actually never really been focused on money. Uh, when I grew up, we didn’t really have much money, so I didn’t even really know what it would be like to have money. Uh, so it wasn’t until really this business took off that I started to experience a lot more success. But I don’t think any real entrepreneur, if they stay really focused on money, they’re going to grow, uh, build a great product.

So for me, it’s really about. Creating great product or service something that is going to help people with whatever that need is. And really, if you do it well, then the money will eventually come. And I do say eventually because I see a lot of entrepreneurs think they’re going to make all this money the day they start.

Um, According to TikTok, that’s what happens, [00:05:00] but in reality is usually not what happens. So I usually tell myself if I can receive even a dollar profit on a project, anything new that we start, which is always going to be in beauty. Cause I stayed focused on beauty. If I can receive a dollar back in the first year or even two years, I consider that a success.

I have a really long term outlook with everything we do in the business. And,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: and I do, uh, you know, when I was doing some research, I did read that, you know, you started this business with a certain kind of a business model and it did, it did, you know, evolve over time. But before I go into that, um, can you share, so, you know, you identified this need, um, that, you know, your friend’s girlfriend was spending a lot of money on hair extensions and so forth.

What were the next, um, the next few steps in terms of, you know, Uh, going forward from an idea to, did you actually, you know, want to test [00:06:00] the idea or did you say, you know, this seems like a great idea. I don’t see a lot of competitors. Let’s buy some hair extension and try to sell it. What were the next few

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: steps?

The next steps was I started doing a little bit more research on the products, uh, the product suppliers, the suppliers for hair extensions are going to be overseas. I’ve had a lot of experience. Doing business overseas and traveling overseas. So I felt comfortable doing that and communicating with suppliers and manufacturers.

So that was really the next step as far as me being able to source the product. And then it was more, okay, how do I ordering some samples from different places? And then how do I sell the product? What’s the business model going to be? I thought it was going to only be online. And then that idea expanded over time as there was a need for a more retail showroom presence.

But that was really the beginning was to sell online. And when we got started, I think because I had a pretty, pretty decent at [00:07:00] marketing, it helped me. I can pretty much start selling almost any product at this point. I mean, I think once you figure out the formula, it’s really not that hard, but are you going to want to keep going with it?

It’s the question. So I wanted to keep going with this. And we saw a little bit of success in the, in the first year we sold about a quarter million dollars, basically starting with no money to get this thing going. So I saw a little bit of success and I said, I think I can scale this. Okay.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: What is the product?

Can you talk a little bit about what the product is? I’m assuming this like the, the hair are, you know, is it really just all the same kind of hair, but you know, they’ve been treated in a certain way to have like different styles and different colors and so forth. And are these like human hair? Can you talk a little bit about, you know, what the product is and what’s, what’s kind of the unique about this?

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: Sure. So we sell 100% human hair products. The hair products are [00:08:00] generally sourced from countries like India, Vietnam, China. Some of the raw materials might be sourced from Mongolia, Burma, the Philippines, Indonesia, many different countries. And. It comes in varieties of extensions, wigs, uh, other lace hair pieces.

But as the business can, uh, started to grow, we continue to grow our product line because people that buy hair extensions, wear hair extensions, generally wear lashes. So we got into the lash business and those people generally wear cosmetics. So it grew into cosmetics and hot tools to blow dry your hair and flatten your hair and style your hair.

So it’s grown considerably. Over the past now almost decade that I’ve been in the business. We’re in our 10th year. So it’s grown, the product line has grown considerably. It was once we captured the consumer, it was what else do they want from us? And how do we supply that to them? [00:09:00]

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: So, I mean, it sounds like there has to be, because this is a faction industry and of course, Western.

Um, Western world has different fashion styles and, of course, fashion evolves. So you probably have a very close collaboration with your suppliers or manufacturers in terms of, uh, consistently be working on products or different, you know, products, styles and so forth. Can you talk a little bit about, you know?

Is it, is it really just a partnership or do you actually, um, own part of that manufacturing process or do you plan to own part of that manufacturing process in the future in order to really, uh, you know, maximize the profit margins as a firm?

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: Yeah, so we don’t own any of the manufacturing facilities. It was something we actually were looking into during the COVID period when, uh, there was potentially going to be opening up some other manufacturing in some different countries.

I was going to [00:10:00] partner with some of the people we work with now. It’s not necessarily. A hundred percent necessary for us to invest and do that. It was more of just to have a little bit more control and, but my relationships with our suppliers are so strong as people we’ve worked with for so long. And generally before COVID, I would spend at least a month in China every year, uh, between two trips, we’d go over there and I would spend a lot of time with our suppliers and we’re just hanging out, whether it’s.

You know, sitting over hot tea in the hundred degree heat and talking about different products. Uh, but we reach out to each other quite often, pretty much a couple of times a week, still for years at this point. And really most of the product development is done by the feedback that we get from our customers.

Uh, I’m looking at how things are done and. Getting closer to a more finished product, something maybe a hairstylist has to does, has to do. I’ll cut that [00:11:00] product, that process out by doing it at scale in China at a much lower cost and a less, it’s going to save the hairstylist time or the consumer a lot of money.

So we work really close with the suppliers as well as our clients to. Continuously improve the products. At this point, there’s nothing I can do. That’s going to basically double the value of a product. I’m just looking for 1% increments at this point and just keep trying to find those to help with growing the product line and improving it any which way I can.

So initially when

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: you had launched, it was completely a direct to consumer e commerce business. And how can you talk about, you know, what has been the journey of, uh, evolving your business

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: model over time? Yeah, so when we first started, it was more of an affiliate marketing system that we had. So it was an affiliate marketing system.

We had that for about two years. We saw some [00:12:00] success with that. But then what happened was when we were 100% affiliate based, we could only as grow as fast as our affiliates could sell. And a lot of people when they’re first starting a business or it’s, it’s a low cost to get in. Yeah. Then they’re maybe not that great at selling.

So that’s when we started creating some sister brands and some other ways of doing things. And that’s how everything started to evolve. And then eventually we had our first office and then people started showing up our office to purchase hair. And then that’s when things got really interesting. Cause we thought we were going to be a hundred percent online forever.

And then now we service people locally. And the reason for

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: that is that the buying process for this product is inherently, you know, the person wants to be able to touch it, try it out, um, before purchasing it. And that is just not possible doing online. Is that the reason for [00:13:00] having really the retail kind of, uh,

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: For sure.

Being able to come into our showrooms, being able to see the hair in person, being able to talk to our staff, uh, becoming big, being able to come into a beautiful environment. We actually do invest a lot in our spaces. So when you walk in, it’s kind of similar to, I call us the Gucci of hair, but we just don’t have the price.

The Gucci prices were very affordable relative to the market. So. If you go to some of the other hair stores in our area, we’re probably going to be 30 to 40% less expensive. And even with a nicer shopping experience. And I think that’s really important. And once again, just like the hair products, we’re always looking at different ways to improve the customer experience.

I want people to come in and feel very special and feel very excited the moment they leave all the way to getting their hair done.[00:14:00]

I mean, hair is hair.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And I’m assuming that, you know, once, um, I’m assuming that over time, you know, you said initially there were, you didn’t find a lot of competitors, but I’m assuming now there’s probably are a lot of other competitors in the market. Because I mean, hair is hair, right? So if you’re buying these hair from like, let’s say a Chinese manufacturer.

You know, the second person can go and buy it from a Chinese manufacturer, Indian manufacturer, and so forth. So really the differentiation that you’re bringing, um, is really that premium experience that you’re describing, right? So someone comes to your showroom, they get that premium, uh, shopping experience.

Is that the differentiator? Or to me, it seems like that’s, you know, you’re going to

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: make it sound, no, you make it sound a little too easy. Um, there’s a huge difference between My, the way that business is done with myself, with our suppliers and the products relative to [00:15:00] other we’re very, it’s kind of hard to say there’s a lot of not so great hair products come to the market and we are very well protected by our suppliers of not getting those types of products, uh, to give you an example, so there is lace products.

Uh, this is not going to make sense to you, but if you’re in the hair industry, you’re listening to this, uh, lace wig, lace closure, lace. I don’t, there’s another very prominent hair company that was just blasted all through the news about the lower quality products and they charge a super premium. I mean, they’re probably twice as expensive as us and they had a huge problem with a lot of the wigs and a lot of that lace and lace products.

Uh, the reason being is there is a lot of cheap lace products that have flooded the market and people are just buying them really cheap and maybe reselling them. And not really having a higher level of understanding of the quality of the product. So you’re going to spend a lot of money. And then to get this, [00:16:00] to get your hair done could be hundreds of dollars.

And then you have a much bigger issue pretty quickly once you’re working with the product. So this happened to this company. It was on the news. And this is kind of the thing that I talk internally with my team. I was like, look, this is not going to happen to us because we’re very well protected. Also because of our buying volume, we get obviously much better discounts on products.

Uh, being able to develop certain products, some of the products that I’ve worked closely with and developed, they’re kind of a pain to manufacture. And I even said like, Hey, don’t make this for anyone else. And you know, my partner business, my manufacturing partner was like, you know, he’d, his text was like, brother, this project is such a pain.

There’s no way I’m doing this for anyone else, but you. So, but then we have a super premium product and something that is. A lot more advanced than just some of the normal things on the market

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: so when somebody is looking to purchase this kind of a product like [00:17:00] i’m assuming one aspect of it is really the You know the style and the color and those kind of things and the other aspect, you know You were just saying was probably the durability and longevity longevity of the product, right?

So, you know like do the customer need to Or how do they take care of this product over time so that, you know, they’re, I’m assuming it’s an investment, you know, that they’re making, you know, uh, that they can use this product again and again, um, what, what separates a good, um, product versus, you know, you’ve mentioned like less product.

I’m assuming that’s not a. Very high quality thing.

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: There’s a lot of different differentiators. Uh, things like having, there’s a way that manufacturers will have, it’s called filler hair. So it’s almost like a silicone strand that’s in the hair that’s mixed in with human hair. Uh, so having filler hair is something that becomes an [00:18:00] issue because it’s not going to be able to color and style like you want the rest of the hair.

But. If they just put a small percentage of those inside of, uh, say a bundle of hair or make a wig with that, it saves them a little bit of cost. Anyone that has done a lot of business with manufacturers in India, China, overseas, they are very, very cutthroat when it comes to profit percentages, pricing and everything.

So there also will take a lot of shortcuts, you know, so I make sure that our products don’t have the shortcuts. It’s it’s a lot of products on the market. There are small shortcuts. Now, not every consumer is going to notice this, which is honestly good for them that they don’t notice. But as someone that knows the product and probably the hairstylist, you know, one of the hairstylist’s biggest nightmares.

is when someone buys a really, uh, not up to par product. The hairstylist is the one has to put it in. It’s not going to look good. And the client blames the hairstylist for [00:19:00] not looking good. Whereas the client bought a non premium product where it would never look good no matter who the hairstylist is.

Uh, so it is an investment. You do have to be careful who you order from. One of the things at private label that we’ve been really successful with is our return customer rate is it’s probably it’s on a daily basis. I can look in Shopify at 70 to 75%. Uh, once you become a client of private label, not many people leave.

And most of our clients are hairstylists anyway. So hairstylists come shop with us. Some people come every single day. So we’ve really done a good job of keeping our clients happy with premium products, but at an, a very affordable price.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Now, in terms of your customer base, you know, uh, as I was reading, like in the, in the introduction, I read, uh, I believe, you know, I got it from a different, uh, uh, one of your other interviews is, you know, you are helping other people [00:20:00] build, uh, hair brands from A to Z for other entrepreneurs.

So in a way, to me, that sounds like that you’re kind of. Um, this, uh, you know, white label kind of service where, you know, other entrepreneurs who wants to get into this, uh, business, you know, they can, or a franchisee kind of model where you can, you know, give them the product, you know, You can give them some sort of a template of how to run this kind of a business and they can go and start their own enterprise and they kind of become, you know, your sales people.

So, you know, they purchased the product from you and they are the ones, uh, you know, the customer facing, uh, business that are helping people, you know, uh, buy and, and use the product. Is this, is this the right kind of way to describe what your business is right now? Or.

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: That’s one aspect. We do have many different revenue streams and different ways that we work with clients.

Uh, this was a, [00:21:00] a segment that we created because we were drop shipping for clients, uh, being us based because we do know the headaches of drop shipping with overseas suppliers, with long delays, Chinese new year, and a whole bunch of other issues. So being a USA based drop shipper for these types of products, uh, we’re definitely the leading.

Hair dropshipper in the USA and we do help them with branding. So we have private label branding and that’s where we create labels for people and packaging. We also sell full e commerce websites. We are the only hair partner with Shopify. So Shopify, I met with them in 2018. I was invited to their headquarters in Ottawa.

So I flew up there and showed them what I wanted to do. And they said, okay, great. At the time they weren’t really working with too many hair companies due to the high charge back and fraud rate that’s in the industry. So I worked that out with them [00:22:00] and we started offering the website. So we basically, if you come to us, we can build your website.

We can help you with your branding. We will pack and ship your orders for you very quickly. And that helps a lot of people because this industry. It does get expensive to start up with the holding cost of inventory with the different products. Uh, these products, uh, wigs, you know, are costing at a wholesale cost are going to be 150, 200 a wig a lot of times.

And if you have different styles, different lengths, everything else, you know, just to get started in the industry, it’s a minimum, I would say 10, 000 investment of inventory, just to have that. Absolute bare bones, you know, at any given time, we’re holding over a million dollars to inventory that our drop shippers get to tap into.

So we have a Shopify app that you can import in your store and then are at your store. It imports all the products into your store and you can be selling literally in minutes. [00:23:00] I mean, uh, having said

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: that when you got started, what kind of investment? Uh, did you make, uh, into this business and what’s that kind of like a personal investment or did you have to get some sort of, uh, you know, um, capital raise or, or, uh,

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: to get started?

So the only money we’ve ever quote unquote raised was our initial investment. Me and my business partner, we both put in 7, 000 each, and that was just to kind of get this thing going. We decided to have this big conference. I have, it was a bad decision and we had this big speaker who cost seven or 8, 000.

He’s 50, 000 now. So we did get a good deal before he got really huge. So we had to put in an additional 7, 000 each basically to pay for this conference that we lost a lot of money on, but that’s okay. Uh, that money I borrowed from my mom actually, because I was. Broke from my other [00:24:00] business going under, uh, when I got started this business, I said, I’m going to do a lot different how I’m going to do things.

So we’ve only invested a total of 28, 000 to get this started. That was back in 2014. And I ran with it from there. I mean, we scaled it up. We made the Inc 500. We ranked 278 fastest growing companies in 2018, uh, by Inc for their, their Inc 000 competition, and really kept going with it without any additional investment.

The only other money that we have borrowed is for some of the real estate that we’ve purchased. We, we own a few properties now. Uh, for the business. So as we continue to expand, like our warehouse, we actually bought the property and invested in fixing it up and making it real nice. Awesome. Uh,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: so the speaker that you mentioned that you had hired, was that kind of like a fashion guru, fashion influencer or someone [00:25:00] who you were hoping that will attract the kind of customers you were

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: looking for?

No, his name is, uh, Eric Thomas. So he was more of a motivation. He’s much more of like a motivational speaker and, uh, well known in our, well, Now, very well known in many industries, but mostly in our, not necessarily the hair industry, but just in general, he was a pretty well known guy, really great speaker.

So that was, that’s who it was. It was Eric Thomas. Okay.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Um,

I would love to hear a little bit more on the competition and, you know, if you were starting. This business today, let’s say, um, I mean, you, you mentioned that there is a little bit of, uh, you know, uh, you know, you need like 10, 15, 000 to get started. Um, but if, if one has that and, [00:26:00] and, you know, and if somebody has a desire to start it, like what is, um,

what is stopping someone to come on in the market and with the right strategy, the right, you know, investment. And not take away, uh, uh, share of market from you.

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: Oh, they, people definitely have, and we’ll continue what I see in just business in general is most people get excited about the startup phase, right?

That’s kind of like the honeymoon of a business. It’s real fun and exciting and just so glamorous. But it’s really, can you continue to push year two, year three, year four, year five? Can you continue to innovate? It’s much more, this business for me is much more than just the exact product. Right? So you asked about competition.

Our biggest competition technically is China [00:27:00] because anybody that has a product today, there’s somebody in China that’s selling it direct to your same customer. Right? I don’t care who it is. I mean, you can find the manufacturers, I have access to every manufacturer for all the major brands and can figure out who it is or find out even who the hair manufacturers are.

Cosmetics. People like to purchase from brands they like and know, and then also continue to be innovative. So I say my main competition is in China. So I always look at how can I Do something that is above and beyond what China can do, because I can’t compete with China on price, but maybe I can compete with China on the experience, like our showrooms, um, creating a little bit different, unique products directly with my manufacturing partners.

Maybe it could be that now in Atlanta, [00:28:00] Charlotte, or Detroit, where we have showrooms, uh, you can actually go order online and I will have your, your actual hair delivered to you within an hour. Right. China’s not delivering hair in an hour. Amazon’s, Amazon’s not delivering hair in an hour, but private labels delivering hair in an hour now.

Um, so, um, my goal is to continue to build that out. And, uh, It’s, it’s tricky because there’s a lot of problems that come up. And I remind my team, Hey, look, guys, we’re going to start this. Things are going to go wrong. That’s how I start everything. Things will go wrong. We will put systems in place. They will not continue to go wrong.

We will, we are going to get, you know, screwed a couple of times somehow. That’s okay. It’s just part of the business. We’re going to continue moving forward, continuing to do better for our customer. And that’s how we’ve won over the last 10 years. You know,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: there’s a lot of things in a business that are, you know, you can’t, you know, that are not on the surface that you [00:29:00] only come to understand when you’re running the business, right?

Like the day to day operations, you know, the challenges that you face, maybe, you know, the customer is, you know, uh. The customer service issue, you know, the customer warrants refunds and things like that in this business What has been like the some some of the biggest challenges that you’ve had to deal with?

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: uh, the first challenge was initially Credit card companies weren’t as advanced with fighting fraud and dealing with chargebacks. They’ve come a long way with this uh, we’ve we work with a Kind of like chargeback insurance company to actually help. It’s a it’s a whole nother layer that helps analyze fraud Because we had some big chargebacks back in the day People still will try to do a charge back.

Maybe they’re, you know, 250 order and they realize maybe they shouldn’t have bought that and they think they’re going to do a charge back and say, [00:30:00] Oh, this, that, the other reason. I mean, it’s very rare. We lose charge backs at this point, just because we continue to put layers of, um, our own. Systems in place, which has been really important.

And then the technology side has come a long way. Uh, companies like Stripe, who’s basically Shopify payments is Stripe. Obviously, uh, it’s just a white label version of Stripe. They, they have become very analytical now with particular addresses that are continuously fraud based, uh, different clients and everything else.

So that’s come a long way. That was an initial issue. Um, Still today, it’s more of a knowledge, uh, as far as what the consumer needs to do. Okay. They get the product. How do they take care of the product? Those are continuous things. I actually was just talking with someone in our customer service team today.

I was sitting down talking to how we can make this better, uh, through videos and, uh, really educating the consumer. So [00:31:00] it’s a continual educational process that we go through with us educating Customer service staff as well as them relaying the messages or doing it through the web YouTube and different quick tutorials to educate the consumer just because they’re, it’s not like a, it’s not like a glass where not much is going to go wrong with this class unless you drop it in a breaks.

These are people are taking a human hair product. They’re putting chemicals in it to color it. They have somebody else maybe installing a wig and there’s, there’s a lot of variables in this business, right? So it’s just figuring out how to do the best for our customer, for them to understand what they need to do with something.

Now,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I want to talk a little bit about marketing, right? So previously you said that there’s a formula, you know, you understand marketing as a formula now, and you can apply it, you know, in any situation and things like that. I’m very interested to hear what that formula you’ve figured out. Um, because every time I talk to a founder, [00:32:00] like, this is the first time I’ve heard like a formula kind of a thing.

Because it’s almost, almost like, you know, different businesses, different channels work for different businesses. And there’s a lot of trials and errors. And, and, and, you know, um, and even then there’s always like, you know, they’re trying to figure out the right, you know, return on investment and everything, return on ad spend and so forth.

What, what have been your learnings? What, what is this formula that, you know, you can teach someone that can, uh, you know, help them market their product a little bit better.

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: You have to be willing to try things. Okay. So. We get a ton, tons of marketing ideas. Some of the worst ideas are some of the ones that work the best.

Really the first thing, especially when you’re starting out is you have to understand you have to get traffic, right? So if you’re not getting traffic to your site. It doesn’t really matter what, how beautiful your site [00:33:00] is, how fast your site is, how great your products are. So step one, get traffic. Step two is conversion.

Are you converting the customers? Because if you’ve got a million customers to your website every single day and you’re converting zero, then the conversion is a major issue, right? So if you have a thousand people come into your site with a 1% conversion rate. You’re getting 10 orders a day, so that’s pretty good.

10 orders a day. Most e commerce brands that get started in this year won’t get 10 orders a day. But what if you start making better product photos, product videos, descriptions, you know, being able to educate the consumer of what they want, uh, follow up sequences with SMS, email, uh, or you can be real strategic.

I’ll tell you about some of the stuff we do now. Right. And you get it up to 2%. Now you doubled your sales with the same amount of traffic. And then you’ve got to look at the margins because you have to have [00:34:00] some decent margins because you have to reinvest back into the marketing of your products. I can tell you When Apple did iOS 14.

5 update that hurt, that basically killed the small business for marketing because the stuff I did with Facebook, Instagram ads was wild, you know, 20s. 15, 16, 17, 18. It was wild what I could do with, with how the creative stuff that we were coming up with that really was our ROAS on some Facebook ads. I was working with someone at Facebook and she’s like, I’ve never seen anything like this.

It was, it was good. So then we had to take a step back. I actually deleted all my Facebook, Instagram ads and said, I’m just starting over. Facebook has come a long way. But, you know, there’s so many different components of your website. SEO is ever changing, especially with AI now. Um, but I hired Neil Patel.

If you’re into SEO, you’ve [00:35:00] probably have heard of Neil Patel. I hired his group as for, as consultants for six months. I learned a ton from them. It was. Stupid expensive, but it really helped our business scale. So there’s the SEO component for traffic, creating all sorts of videos, following the latest trends.

Some of the stuff annoys me, like honestly, creating videos for TikTok, it’s kind of annoying, but you know, that’s why I have a team. They kind of help with that. So you put the right people in place. So, and then you just try to get real creative. So. The, in the hair industry, especially for our industry, the summertime gets really slow for us.

And I know it’s been slow in the summer for 10 years. So one of the new things that I’m working on is I’m really honing in on say the abandoned checkouts. Now, every e commerce store has abandoned cart flows and SMS flows. And yeah, that’s kind of, kind of the standard. But I said, Hey guys, let’s be really creative.

What if somebody [00:36:00] just got a text message from us and let’s just say that they were looking at a particular wig. I said, look, we have a studio because we built a studio in our office. I said, let’s just create a quick 30 second clip showing them the product, talking about the product, saying we have it.

It’s ready to ship today. Uh, we can send you a link. It’s a very personalized. We say their name. If we’ll say, Hey, it looks like you’re in Charlotte. Uh, it’s going to ship from here in Atlanta. It’s going to be to you in one to two business days. A lot of the things and reasons why people don’t finish the checkout.

We go over that in a quick video and we send that personalized video. It’s time consuming, but our average order value being over 200, we can take a little extra time to really do something to the customer experience that most people have never seen. So those are the kinds of things that I look at to continue to innovate in our industry, not just in the beauty industry, but just e commerce in general.[00:37:00]

I mean, who knows,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: maybe. I’ve come across them in the new AI technologies where, you know, you can create AI videos. So, you know, maybe, maybe this kind of personalization rather than a real person doing it, maybe it’s the face of a AI

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: person. Maybe of course it would be hard maybe to eventually AI could hold some of the products and other things.

And a lot of people talk about these AI. I’m all in on AI. I love the idea. And it’s not to replace anyone. It’s I’m looking at AI to make my staff 50% more efficient so we can grow. But, and I know you can make a lot of the videos with AI, but I haven’t seen anyone actually done well using these AI generated videos where it’s kind of more robotic talking, like who wants to watch one of those videos, right?

It’s very, it’s very difficult for AI at this point to exactly replicate me, my movements, my tone, uh, AI,[00:38:00]

but. Who knows in the future, it’ll be interesting to see and I’m definitely staying on top of AI because I think it’s going to be an important part of everything we do in the future. Yeah,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: definitely. Um, if you were starting the business today, you know, where, you know, where you had started when you got started and you had the same kind of money,

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: um, I had no money.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I mean, the loan that you got from your mom. Yeah,

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: I gotcha. Um,

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: what, I mean, based on all your experiences, what, what would be the marketing channel That you would invest in to get that initial correction? Would you really just go to the, uh, Facebook ads and, you know, uh, run those? I mean, also considering that, you know, how uh, Facebook ads have changed now, or, you know, would you much rather take a different approach, like a viral, organic TikTok, uh, kind of campaign,

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: kinda a thing?[00:39:00]

I believe in an omnipresent approach. So the main social channel I would focus on now is, is probably honestly YouTube, creating YouTube tutorials and everything else, more longer form content that you can cut up into shorts, kind of like you do with your podcast. And a lot of people do with their other items, just throwing money at Facebook ads, you’re not solving your sales problems because.

A lot of websites, especially when they first start, all the website does is sell. So they don’t have 10, 20, 30 blog posts that are going over every aspect of their products. Something else that’s not selling a customer because nobody likes to be sold to. So how are you warming your audience? Right. So that’s the first thing I would do is it was, I was, I would create educational content around my products.

I would put it on the different platforms before I spent a dollar on Facebook, Instagram ads, because. It’s just not ready. I would [00:40:00] probably do a little bit of influencer marketing to get a little bit more user generated content. Then I would reach out to people in the industry that are maybe my friends, or I’d make some friends in the industry, see if I can have them make some content.

Then you have a little bit of user generated stuff mixed in with your own content that you’re making. Then you have a little bit more for people to attach themselves to, to learn a little bit more about the brand. And then. Really focus on getting some sales and calling every single person that buys from you begging them for a review.

Okay, because you need social proof on your site, start getting up for you. We reviews because the first reviews are the hardest. No one likes to leave a review on a website with no reviews. No one wants to be the first with anything. Once I have some of that accomplished, then I would start working on and on my email flows and everything else built out.

You know, it all takes time. Then I would probably start working on a little bit more of [00:41:00] the paid ads. I wouldn’t do paid ads too early because It’s too early. Yeah.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. It’s probably just, you know, throwing money down the drain. Yeah. Now you did mention a little bit around your fulfillment strategy. And you said that, you know, you’re doing something where you’re able to, you know, get the item delivered into the customer had within.

Oh, sorry. An hour. Um, can you talk a little bit about, you know, your warehousing and your fulfillment and how, how you’ve set everything up and, and, you know, a little bit about the one

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: hour fulfillment and so forth. Sure. So we have our main warehouse that we store most of our products and then the showrooms, each showroom.

Is now considered a mini warehouse, and this is a similar strategy as to what Best Buy is doing. So Best Buy has really gone hard on the local [00:42:00] delivery and delivering things same day within a few hours. And what they realized is they have these stores all over the place. Why don’t we use this as our fulfillment center as well?

Because now the technology is there to allow you to do so. So we have our normal online orders that we are shipping out the same day, which is very important. And then as the. When you check out on our store, you do have a local delivery option, say for Atlanta, and it’s using the radius from the store to be able to match with drivers of services.

We do not have our own drivers. We can use people like roadie with Uber Postmates. There’s tons of services. We do not need to recreate that. We need to integrate with that. So then we teach the managers how to manage everything, uh, have some nice packaging for the local deliveries. We have a good, strong communication with our customer saying, [00:43:00] Hey, we’re sending a driver there that’s going to be there probably in about an hour.

We want to make sure somebody’s home because it requires a signature. So, you know, we go the extra step and it is a little extra work to do this, but I think it’s something that we can continue to scale. And continue to really impress our client base that used to some, some companies in our industry, they say, Hey, processing’s two to three days.

And I’m like two to three days, what the heck are you guys doing over there? It knows same day. Right. So those are the kinds of things that we’re going to continue to work on. You know, future growth will be a West coast warehouse. I’m not sure exactly where that was, where that’s going to be. So that way we can split up online orders and then our clients online orders that we’re drop shipping for, you know, we’ll cut the cost down.

If we’re shipping to California from Vegas, a lot quicker and a lot faster. So those are kind of some of the future plans to improve our logistics, [00:44:00] because I think logistics plays a huge part in any online business. Are you, do you

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: ship only within the U S or are you also like Canada or

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: other places? We ship to Canada.

It’s expensive. Uh, and then we, we don’t really ship down to the Caribbean too often. And we, it’s usually a client that we know that we’ll do it special for. It’s just way too many issues with fraud and risk. The problem with our products are, it’s a very high value product that it’s very easy to resell for cash.

So it’s not like something that’s. Easily trackable. So that’s one of the things that we’re, we’re just, we have plenty of room to cover in the U S we don’t consider, we’re not overly interested in going a million different places and overextending ourselves. We, we have plenty of improvement we can do here in the U S.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Now, uh, the question, uh, that I had started with initially is, you know, and, and you said that in any business or [00:45:00] in any product, you have to learn about the product and, you know, yeah. Um, a lot of the business does, does, does interest come into play, um, in, in your mind. Uh, you know, I think you mentioned that you would always want to be in the fashion industry.

I’m assuming that that is your interest, right? Like if you didn’t get into this business just because, you know, it was, it seemed like a good idea. I mean, there has to have some interest. Uh, you, you, you must have had some interest in this product or the industry in order for you to, uh, go and do it. Right.

Because the way I think it, you know, there could be an idea that’s, you know, very interesting, but if I don’t find it interesting personally, um, should I, should I pursue it? Or should I, you know, spend my time and effort? Because, you know, it could be boring for me. What are your thoughts on that?

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: Well, the, my.

Before this beauty business, I was always in the food [00:46:00] industry or food service or something along those lines. So I actually had no experience, nothing with beauty before I started this. Initially, I didn’t have a passion or love for the product. I just thought it was very interesting. And as time went on and I learned more about the industry, I started working more with hairstylists and really digging in deeper, that’s when I became really passionate about the products.

That’s something that took, took time and it took me a while to learn. It was. It was something that was not overnight for sure. But then I would start to go to the middle of China where the manufacturing facilities are. I mean, honestly, most people in the hair industry, they’re not even going that far.

They’re not going to go that far. Right. It’s not comfortable to go, to go there. People will go to where. Maybe the sales offices are in Guangzhou [00:47:00] or Qingdao and other places like that. Yeah. Those places are cool, but you’re not, you’re not in the factory. We’re sweating over the hair, you know, you’re not, you’re not going to go that far to the business.

So you learn every little aspect of it. So for me, I feel like I’m a product guy. There’s a few things that I’m really good at. So it’s products, technology. And probably the marketing side. One of my business partners, I think is one of the best hairstylists in the United States. His name is Dallas Christopher.

So I’ve also aligned myself with experts in different parts of the industry or just in business in general, uh, that definitely has led to our success. It’s, it’s not a one man show over here. It’s, it’s been a lot of strategic partnerships from, you know, our accounting to working with Shopify and software companies and developing our own software.

There it’s, it’s a whole production. Awesome.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: And I mean, I should, I should ask you, you know, [00:48:00] any business that’s comprised of a team, team of people, what does your team look like right now?

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: We, our team, we have, uh, that’s tough. We have a management structure. That’s good. We have managers for each location.

We have our customer support team that I’m getting trained more with into sales. Cause I said, you guys are going to be much more valuable as a sales. So when in sales that does some customer support, then customer support that does some sales. And I said, I want to make you more valuable. So I’ve been teaching people actually some of the team SEO and about articles.

And Hey, we did a foul. We wrote a thousand articles in 2018, probably more than any hair company in the world in history. But now those articles are five years old. So let’s go back and rewrite some of these and other things. So I’ve been always. Trying to educate the team. I have some overseas editors. I have a developer in New York.

That’s amazing. I’ve been working with him for 10 [00:49:00] years. He does most of our development. Uh, we have different partners overseas that basically work for us. We have people a little bit everywhere, and I feel like we have a very strong team and. Most of the people that come work for us, stay with us for a long time.

I mean, we’ve had someone employee number one is still with us. Employee number two is still my cohost of the podcast, my podcast. Um, we just lost employee number three. She moved on. This is from like 2015, 2014, 2015, you know, so I’m happy when some people go on to the next thing. So people have been with us for a while, but the team is very important.

Where do

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: you, I mean, how have you evolved as an entrepreneur since you started this business? And what, what, what does your day look like? Like what I’m assuming you are spending most of your time working on the business, not in the business. Where, like, how do you structure your day or week and what are the things that you [00:50:00] are working on in any given week or, uh,

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: day?

So I am a completely different entrepreneur today relative to 10 years ago when I first started this. I mean, my, from my mindset to my day to day, pretty much everything in my life has changed dramatically. Right now at this point. I am highly focused on improving aspects of the business with technology to streamline things, to make us more efficient, to make things more cost effective, uh, finding that 1% improvement is really important to me.

My day to day change, my day to day changes a lot. So people said, wow, 10 years. Aren’t you bored being in the same business for 10 years? And it’s not because there’s always new things. So for me. I focus on what’s most important. I live by my to do list. I live by my calendar. So I’ve become much better at being efficient with my [00:51:00] time because my time is very important to me.

And, you know, I’m still trying to work on work life balance a little bit. I feel like as someone in my position, work life balance is something you just kind of threw out the window, uh, because I still do work a lot. I don’t necessarily, I’m not on the computer working as much as I used to, but strategy and kind of the theory behind what we’re going to do next, that’s always going on in my brain.

So what I’ve done over the last few years is try to travel a lot more and work remotely. So that really takes me out of the business. So I can actually get a lot done when I do travel and work remotely. And then it allows me to see what needs improvement within the business. Um, so. Yeah, my day to day I create videos.

Sometimes I’m trying to implement new software. I’m working with my developer to improve like our drop shipping system. We have an influencer marketing platform called beauty cloud. We’re working on another [00:52:00] Shopify app because it’s going to help one of our other websites. So I said, Hey, let’s just. Make an app because other people probably want the same thing So it’s it’s very different every single day, but I do focus on my health I do work out a lot.

I focus on my energy levels because I feel like as i’m getting older I don’t have as much energy as I did You know, 15, 20 years ago, I mean, no one would, so that’s really important to me and, you know, trying to spend time with my girlfriend of 10 years or excuse me, 12 years and my three cats, very important to me and just try to have some fun with friends and family when I can, but I do work a lot, but I love it.

So it’s okay. Okay.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Awesome. Uh, I know we’re at six 30, uh, but now I’m going to move on to our rapid fire segment, if you’re okay with it, if you have a few more minutes,

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: let’s go. So the

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: first one is one book recommendation for [00:53:00] entrepreneurs

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: and why? Oh, Jesus. Let me look back to this is we talked about the sterile.

This is not a virtual background guys. This is a well designed background. Uh, let’s see. I would say I recommend fearless beauty, the hair business blueprint. It’s. Not really actually even about hair. And I am the author of this book. It was an Amazon bestseller. Uh, we have about around 250 reviews on Amazon, actually, which it’s very hard to get 250 reviews as a book, to be honest, unless you’re some famous author, I’m not a famous author, put a lot into this book and.

I think it will, it was written to help all entrepreneurs. I’ve put a lot into this guy’s fearless beauty, checking out on Amazon.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Wow. And that’s, that’s really awesome. I didn’t know you were an author also for a book. Um, that’s, that’s really awesome.

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: Real quick note on that. I do have that book. Uh, it was.

Endorsed by a billionaire as well, John Paul de [00:54:00] jure, he’s the co founder of Patron and Paul Mitchell systems, which is a huge beauty enterprise. Uh, getting a billionaire to, to actually endorse your book is nearly impossible. So that’s kind of cool. A little fun fact of the book. If the book sucked, a billionaire would not endorse it.

Just let me say that.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah, definitely. I mean, he has a very inspirational story as well. Yeah. Um, An innovative product or idea in the current e commerce, retail, or tech landscape that you feel excited about?

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: Tech product? I’m excited about AI. Uh, I think there’s huge opportunities. I do use it often already, but I think there’s huge opportunities if utilizing it properly, staying ahead of it, and figuring out how to, how to empower your staff to be more efficient and get things done quicker.

Because at the end of the day, A lot of your success will be based on how quick you can [00:55:00] execute your ideas

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: definitely Um a business or productivity tool or a productivity tip that you would recommend I know you mentioned traveling.

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: Use Grammarly for productivity. Grammarly is a service that helps you with your grammar, spelling.

They will help you rewrite your sentences to seem more strong and positive. It has helped me tremendously over the years because I didn’t learn any grammar in school because I did so horrible in school, barely passed. Um, Grammarly, I feel like Is a total lifesaver. If you write emails or do anything, sending out any type of content, Grammly for 12 a month or a hundred bucks a year is amazing investment.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Definitely. And there’s a free version also. So, you know, people don’t necessarily have to spend money also. For sure. Another, [00:56:00] another startup or business that you think is currently doing great.

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: Startup or business that’s doing great in any industry. Yeah.

Well, maybe one that I’ve invested heavily in that I’m losing my shirt on is, um, I really like what all birds is doing. If you’re familiar with the shoe company, New Zealand based with their zero carbon, um, initiative, their designs and some of their innovations. I wish they would work a little bit more on the partnerships to become more relevant, but I really like.

And another one that has just gotten crushed lately, but I think is one of the most fantastic products I’ve ever bought is Peloton. So I have a Peloton in the Peloton service. Peloton is really well done. And I actually had one of my really good friends. He moved down to Puerto [00:57:00] Rico, obviously for tax reasons.

Um, and. He, I made him order one. It’s like, oh, I might cancel it. It hasn’t shown up yet. You know, it’s hard to get stuff down here in Puerto Rico. Are you sure it’s good? I’ve talked to people and they say after three months, it just sits there and this, that, the other. And I said, Danny, most things just sit there after three months because people aren’t consistent and they don’t have the, the, they don’t have the motivation to do anything.

This is, I was like, it’s same with a business. Most people start a business. And then after three months. They’re out. So really, that’s up to you how serious you are. But as far as a product, phenomenal product. And I think they can go a long way with it by, uh, really focusing on their core group of users.

Exactly.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: I think the problem there may not be the product itself. It’s really the, the motivation behind people. And I think most people understand that, you know, they’re not consistent. So they’re, they’re much rather not invest in, uh, that kind of an item. Thousand percent. Final, uh, [00:58:00] uh, sorry, not final. Uh,

A peer entrepreneur or business person whom you look up to or someone who inspires you? I know you mentioned John Paul DeGioia, but is that your answer or would you like to?

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: Right now, let’s see who I would look up to as an entrepreneur. Ah, this is a tough one. For the innovation and just absolute, no fear to go into an industry.

And I think it’s kind of an annoying answer because everyone’s like, yeah, well, obviously, but Elon Musk, I think has gone so above and beyond with innovation and obviously it’s not all Elon Musk, like he’s done really well at building a team, but. You know, people, Steve Jobs didn’t build the iPhone either.

So like, you know, but he gets all the credit. So it’s, it’s really the founder that gets the credit. I think he goes from, I’m just talking business now standpoint, not like the Twitter and all the other stuff that he gets [00:59:00] involved in. Um, from a business standpoint, what he has done, I mean, really starting our car company and making it successful.

Is literally impossible over the last a hundred years. Do your research. Everyone has failed basically, except for like Ford and gm, I guess, you know, and some Japanese ones. But being in America, so I would have to go with Elon Musk cuz his, his innovation, some of his ideas, a little outlandish, but you have to be crazy to do the stuff that he’s trying to do.

So I get it. Yeah.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Yeah. I don’t know if you were following this, uh, Titanic submarine kind of a thing. For sure. He was also, he was also trying to do a little bit of, uh, you know, outside of the box thinking, I guess. But, uh, anyway, that didn’t turn out well. Nah. Anyways. Um, final question. Best business advice you will receive or you would give to other entrepreneurs?

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: 100% is be consistent. [01:00:00] I mean, it really comes down to consistency. You have to be consistently educating yourself to grow. That’s because where, where you are today is usually a result of your education. This is coming from someone that barely passed high school. Didn’t go to college. Like I had no prior edu before 20.

Like I didn’t learn anything in school. I learned how to type. That was the best thing I think I learned. But once you really learn that. I have six locations today. Well, why don’t you have a hundred? I haven’t learned how to do so. So being consistent with that, being consistent with your health, because you can be the richest, most famous, everything in the world.

But if you’re not healthy, honestly, it does not matter. Um, being consistent with managing your time because efficiency is so incredibly important. I’ve read that Bill Gates used to schedule his time in five [01:01:00] minute increments. Now, I’m not that. Crazy about time management, but I do understand the importance of it.

And then I think be consistent with who you have around you, who you’re, you know, significant other is who you’re spending time with is something really important because there’s going to be certain times when, especially I think when you get older and you look back, like my biggest fear is, wow, I did really well in business, but I didn’t have experiences.

So trying to, when you get to the point. That you can mingle the two together and have great experiences with people. And those are the times that you can look back at, I think are so important. So you have to be consistent in, in your life in many different aspects. So that way you don’t necessarily, when you get older, you’re saying, Oh, well, I should have worked harder because I had all this opportunity or other things that, you know, you don’t want to have those regrets.

So just the consistency aspect plays such a [01:02:00] big role and you don’t really understand it, I think, till you get a little bit older, most people don’t. So if you can start learning at a younger age, I think you’ll definitely have an advantage a lot faster.

Sushant Misra of TrepTalks: Definitely. Um, I think, you know, Finding your why and, you know, having the necessity, like if, if you understand why you’re doing something and, or you come up with a necessity, then I think people, that’s when I think the real education begins and, you know, people want to try to figure out, uh, you know, why, you know, how, how do I do this or, you know, what do I need to learn to, to get this done until then it’s like the classroom education is kind of pretty useless, to be honest.

Yeah, anyways. Well, well, Mikey, I don’t want to hold you any longer. I know it’s a little bit later. Um, thank you so much. It’s been such a pleasure chatting with you. Thank you so much for sharing your story. Very, very inspirational for sharing all the [01:03:00] different strategies and tactics with the audience. So yeah, can’t can’t thank you enough.

And I want to wish you all the very best with your business and all the success. So thank you again for joining me today at TrepTalks

Mikey Moran Private Label Extensions: I really appreciate you having me. Thank you so much.