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Rodriguez initially believed entrepreneurship was exclusively for white men
“You know, I think it's just a fact of, like, you know, you can't be what you don't see, and I'll be honest with you. Like, I thought that Being a business person or business owner, entrepreneur, whatever, like, I thought it was something for, like, white men. …”
Mielle Organics' profit margins were slashed in half upon entering retail
“Once we got into retail, our profit margins were like slashed in half, because remember, we went into retail with the still the high cost of goods, so, and all of the other fees that are attached with like retail, we ended up spending a lot in marketing and re…”
Mielle Organics required a 2020 New Voices Fund investment to stay afloat
“So when we got to the point of having new voices invest in us, that's how horrible our books were looking, so we needed that to stay afloat.”
Mielle Organics was founded after the traumatic loss of Rodriguez's infant son
“Miel wouldn't exist if it wasn't for what I went through.”
Rodriguez pivoted from opening a salon to products after a stylist's advice
“I mean, I wouldn't have started my L and blew up how I have if it wasn't for me talking to her because I clearly wanted to start a hair salon.”
Mielle Organics has recorded website sales every single day since launching
“And I will tell you from the day that we launched, May 23rd, twenty-fourteen, we have not gone a day without having sales on our website.”
Sally Beauty agreed to an initial retail test in 95 stores
“Sally's were like, you know, we're gonna test you guys in, in about 95 stores, because you guys are new, and I'm like, hey, I'm just happy to be in 95 stores.”
Mielle Organics secured a $250,000 loan to finance its Sally Beauty rollout
“And so his friend gave us a loan for 250 grand. And that 250 was like the push that we needed to like, you know, launch into Sally's.”
Mielle Organics expanded from 95 to 3,000 Sally stores in six months
“So, long story short, we went from 95 stores to 3000 chain-wide in less than six months, and that has never happened to a new brand.”
Mielle grew from $370,000 in year one to $2.7M in year two
“Yeah, so the first year we did about, like, 300 and, I think it was 360 or 70,000. That was the first year. Year two, we did 2.7 million.”
Mielle Organics never pitched retailers; partners proactively sought out the brand
“So, honestly, all the retailers that we're in, like, we never approached them. They all came to seek after us.”
Mielle Organics rejected Walmart's initial retail distribution offer
“We got the call from Walmart, and funny story, like, the call that we got from Walmart, we turned them down the first year. We didn't go into Walmart until, like, the second time that they reached out to us.”
Mielle Organics experienced roughly 4x growth during the COVID-19 pandemic
“We experienced, like, forex growth during the pandemic, so when I tell you we close with Richelieu with New Voices end of February the pandemic happened like a couple of weeks later”
An investment group pulled out of a deal with Mielle in 2018
“In 2018, before we received the investment from Richie Lou, when we were upside down, we were in talks with an investment group for almost about a year. And this investment group, like they were going to invest in us and waited until like the last hour to pull…”
Over 60 private equity firms approached Mielle Organics for its Series A
“I mean, we spoke to over, like, 60 different private equity firms that were all interested in, like, speaking with us”
Mielle Organics operates as an independent P&G subsidiary without a CEO change
“With our partnership with P&G, we are operating as an independent subsidiary under P&G, so we are operating as a standalone, so the company's still in Indiana, P&G has not came in and hired a new CEO”
Rodriguez applied interpersonal skills learned in nursing directly to business
“I'm an introverted person by nature, but I force myself to come out of my shell in order to get a job done, and I do credit that to working as a nurse because I had to deal with so many different patients from all different walks of life, and I learned very ea…”
Rodriguez realized her consumer influence when followers replicated her DIY recipes
“Women were actually making the exact recipes and trying it and experimenting on their hair as well, and I was, like, that showed me at that moment, like, oh, I have influence. They're taking what I'm saying, and they're, they see value in it, and they're actua…”
Rodriguez had just 500 Instagram followers when her recipes gained traction
“Oh, like, 500. 500. Yeah.”
Monique Rodriguez spent approximately $10,000 to initially launch Mielle Organics
“And to get the business, like, to launch the website, up until that point, I had spent about 10,000 dollars.”
Mielle Organics reinvested all direct-to-consumer profits back into the company
“We bootstrapped our company for so long until we got into retail. But as long as we were like, Online, selling direct to consumer, we were doing okay, but we just invested that right back into more product and marketing.”