The Interview: Glow For It founder Daisy Kelly on pioneering a hormone-free lash growth serum and driving growth on TikTok
Glow For It launched in 2020 with a hormone-free lash serum and a TikTok account. It has since grown its following to more than 130k on the platform, as well as its product offering to include a brow serum, hair serum, lip oil and more.
Daisy Kelly told TheIndustry.beauty about her struggles with OCD, which led her to lose her eyelashes and ultimately found Glow For It. Back in 2020, Kelly realised many lash growth serums on the market were either full of what she deems 'blacklisted ingredients' or sat at a luxury price point. So, in she swooped with Glow For It's hormone-free £30 lash growth serum.
Just this year, Glow For It hit the milestone of moving its manufacturing from Asia to the UK, all while keeping its prices lower than some of its competitors and refusing to add effective but dangerous ingredients to its formulations. Yet, she divulges some of her early mistakes, such as trying to give customers what they wanted too quickly and how she overcame this by going back to the drawing board with certain formulas.
Having originally studied to be a musical theatre performer, how did you end up founding a beauty company?
I went to sixth form and studied performing arts, so I naturally fell into the musical theatre way, which I guess is quite a stark difference to what I'm doing now. If you know anyone who went to drama school, I’m sure you would’ve heard that it’s crazy. I don’t know how my friends continue to be in an environment like that. It’s such a competitive, negative place and has become a breeding ground for eating disorders.
I had eating issues and I found that my coping mechanism was plucking out and making wishes on my eyelashes. When I was training or if I had an exam, if I didn’t make a wish with my eyelashes, I was convinced something terrible was going to happen. Over time, I developed this thing with the number 13. So at times, I was pulling out 13 lashes and nearly lost all my lashes and later moved on to my eyebrows. The musical theatre environment wasn’t for me.
After nearly losing all my lashes, I felt very vulnerable. I went the route of getting eyelash extensions. But if you're someone who picks their lashes anyway, this isn’t going to help the problem.
Then, in my third year, lockdown struck and I couldn't go to a beautician to get these lash extensions. I took this time to look at this habit while I was in a safe environment with my parents. When it was time to focus on growing my lashes and brows back, I researched about what options were available. I was looking at the different serums on the market, what their ingredients were, and their price points.
What lash serum did you opt for at the time, or did you set out to make yours instantly?
At the time, my mum bought me another existing brand as they sold it at the salon she went to. But after I did my research, the hormones scared me off going down that route. Equally, the other serums on the market were sitting in the £100 plus range. I was an emerging student, that was not an option for me.
I continued on my quest to find a lash growth cure and was consistently met with recommendations to try castor oil. But when I researched it, there was no proof it worked. If anything, using an oil can prevent growth. I knew something was missing in the market, so I began reaching out to manufacturers in the UK. I was 21 and only had £500 remaining of my student loan. Luckily, my mum was the chief executive of a large corporation so she was very business savvy, which rubbed off on me.
My main barrier to entry was the minimal quantity of orders that they have here in the UK. Most manufacturers accepted orders of a minimum of 10,000 units. At the time, I had no proof of concept and had no financial backing to support 10,000 units, so I opted for Asia.
I had a very clear blacklist of ingredients that I didn't want to be included. I knew I didn't want hormones in there, no prostaglandins because that was one of our key USPs. Luckily, I managed to find a supplier that created 500 units (which is almost unheard of) and I began trailing the samples and documenting my lash growth.
So, how did you then create the formulation of your first lash serum that put Glow For It on the map?
I started doing some research on serums that were on the market, and at the time, there was a lot of press coverage around the hormones and prostaglandins being used in lash serum formulas. I already knew about it because my grandpa has glaucoma, which contains prostaglandin analogues. They're the eyedrop treatments that he was given. And his eyelashes were growing above his eyebrows - it was ridiculous!
So I knew there was something in these prostaglandins. Although these hormones were driving results, there was also a lot of research about how they could cause pigmentation, discolouration, and some of the big players in the US had lawsuits against them because their product changed the eye’s colour orbital.
What is the biggest challenge you’ve faced as a female founder?
There are so many benefits to being a female founder, especially in the industry that we're in. I feel like it's only when you do your research that you realise how few brands are founded and run by females. So, I already highlighted that as a USPs.
I did find my age more of a challenge, however. Not only did suppliers not take me seriously, but I was naïve. Although, being naïve gave me the balls to go ahead and create Glow For It.
Can you tell us about your social-first marketing strategy and how TikTok has helped your business grow?
I think people assume we’re a TikTok-first brand, but we’re a Shopify brand first. Our brand website is where the majority of our sales and revenue come from. People always think it's TikTok, but that’s because of its impact on our brand awareness, which has helped us to grow and build.
I always say I remember posting videos of me packaging orders from my Mum’s kitchen. I’d only have two or three orders a day, but I’d package up a load of spares just to make it look like the table was a bit more full of orders.
It then got to the point where I was packaging orders until the early hours of the morning because I just couldn’t keep up. That’s when we moved to fulfilment centres.
I think TikTok is a platform where you can visualise the growth and you can see the impact. From that perspective, I could not knock the platform as it is an authentic way to showcase the brand’s journey. Just look at Made by Michell, he just made £1 million on a 12-hour TikTok Live. The opportunity is incredible.
So it all started with the lash serum, but Glow For It later expanded into colour cosmetics. When and why did you increase the offering?
We are completely customer-led. The number of products in development based on just customer requests is quite literally ridiculous. If you've got such an engaged audience, you'd be an idiot not to listen to them. In hindsight, we launched some of those products too soon, because it was just like the excitement of giving our customers what they want.
Our ethos and our core message is "always let your natural beauty glow", which transcends lash serums into skincare and cosmetics. I think the line is becoming more and more blurred anyway.
You later launched the Brow Growth Serum and most recently the Hair Growth Serum. Was this something your customers asked for?
Yes, our hair serum was probably our most requested product. People were using the lash serum on their eyebrows, so we launched the brow serum. Then people had been using the brow serum on the edges of their hair and sent us transformational images.
I knew I wanted it to be launched with our UK manufacturers. So obviously, we only were able to relaunch our new and improved formulas of the lash and brow serums in January when we finally moved our operations to the UK. It was a project that had been going on behind the scenes for about two and a half years because UK manufacturing is a longer process - it does take a lot more investment in time and the order quantities are a lot higher.
I also knew we couldn't have it be the same formula as the lash and brow serums for many reasons. We see the scalp as an extension of your skincare. So we've had the opportunity to add additional ingredients and properties to soothe and condition the scalp itself to provide the ultimate environment for healthy hair growth. There's a real shift of people looking after their scalps and not just their faces.
I'm someone who likes to use so many treatments on my hair. There are already amazing oils for your hair and your scalp, for example, rosemary oil. I knew that if we were going to launch this, it needed to offer something unique and different. It's designed to be used alongside all of those amazing products that already exist on the market. My biggest pain point with oils is that they leave your hair greasy, whereas the Glow For It’s Hair Growth Serum dries down and leaves your hair non-greasy.
With several competitors on the market, how do you differentiate/stand out?
I've always put myself and my face out there; we focus on that female founder message. I wouldn't do that and wouldn't feel comfortable doing that unless our products are those that I’m truly proud of.
But equally, our products are hormone-free. We got so many messages in the early stages from people who were going through cancer treatment, or maybe have PCOS, those who were cautious about what products they were putting into their system and whether there were any additional hormones. So, I knew that there was a keen market out there who cared what was in their product.
Since January, Glow For It has been manufactured in the UK. It's quite a rare thing for products to be made here. I get it, it's expensive and it takes a long time. I know lots wouldn't choose to do that because they would rather have that money in the bank. But for me, if I’m the face of the brand, I’m going to put every penny I can back into it.
It was the proudest day of my career when I pulled that first bottle off the production line. I think this is what a lot of other brands are missing - direct contact with your product. There’s not a single formulation that goes through that I have not trailed.
How were you able to move Glow For It’s manufacturing over to the UK without hiking up the prices?
Everyone around me was telling me that I needed to raise my product prices, but we'd been established for three years. I didn’t want to deter or potentially stop our customers from being able to continue their journey with us because of price point, especially during the cost-of-living crisis.
If I’m not proud of a decision, I won’t do it, even if that impacts things behind the scenes.
So far, you only sell direct-to-consumer and through Beauty Bay. Why is this? Are you looking to expand?
Initially, our goal was to put emphasis and focus on our core brand, our community, and grow that through our organic channel.
I didn’t want to increase our third-party distribution until I achieved all products being formulated and produced in the UK. We are proud that our serums are manufactured in the UK by a B- Corp certified manufacturer. Now we’ve achieved that, increasing our in-store physical presence is our goal. Physical retail is something that we don’t offer currently. So having that in-person connection with the customer is a goal.
@glowforitshop Time to address this... 👀 Thank you so much to everyone who has sent us comments and questions on this topic 😚 Not all lash serums contain hormones! Be aware of the side effects and always patch test your serum first 💗 BUT don't be put off the long lash journey, there are safe lash growth options for you ✨ (Stitch via @Dear Media and the gorgeous @Lauryn Bosstick) #lashgrowthserum #tiktokmademebuyit
How do your sales in the UK compare to those overseas?
It’s not surprising that the US is a big market for us. Obviously, people spend a lot more money in the US and it’s a far vaster area. So, we moved our fulfilment centre over to the US about a year ago to meet the demand we’re seeing over there.
In 2025, we’re going to focus on that community. Any sales we were having in the US were all just happening organically because we've never put any spend or budget behind growing that market previously. So I know there’s a big opportunity there.
We also have growing demand in places that surprised us, take New Zealand, for example. Because social media is global, even though we targeted the UK market, organic demand has grown across the globe. Some of our viral videos have got 12 million plus views – they’re not just in the UK.
Are there any new launches we can expect to see?
Right now, my main goal is to get 100% of our products to be manufactured in Europe by the end of this year. So, products that you may have seen from us before are potentially coming back with new and improved formulations. We've already done with the lash and brow serums.
I can also reveal that our lip oils are undergoing a revamp with a new and improved formulation – it’ll be more nourishing than ever before.
