"Give them a reason not to buy it on Amazon"
Vivian Kaye describes herself as "Oprah + Gary Vee" and that's a pretty good description.
Her presence and genuine desire to continuously learn and grow while keeping it REAL quickly made her a personality who transcended the title of Founder and CEO.
In this episode, she tells us how she started a premium textured hair extension brand for Black women, and then grew it to a million dollars without paid ads.
Kurt Elster: Today on The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, we are going to hear a journey from a merchant who got to $1 million in revenue, the holy grail, the seven figures, the two-comma club, without paid ads. What? How? How is such a thing possible, right? And once she got to $1 million, then she got to $6 million, and I actually… I don’t know anything more than that. So, we’re gonna find out how she did this together, my friends. Joining me is Vivian Kaye, founder and CEO of KinkyCurlyYaki, a premium textured hair extension brand for Black women that she bootstrapped over $6 million in revenue. Very exciting.
And she actually does quite a bit more than that. She’s quite inspirational and seems like a lot of fun, so we’re gonna… You know what? Screw this long-winded intro. Let’s get into it and see what we can learn here. Vivian, oh my gosh, this is very exciting. I was like, “I swear we’ve met, or we know each other. We’re in the same circle.” And you reminded me we’re on the same book cover.
Vivian Kaye: We are. We are on the cover of The Ecommerce Marketing Handbook by Privy.
Kurt Elster: Which actually is-
Vivian Kaye: I’m the Black lady in the middle. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: Oh. I’m the dude. So, okay, KinkyCurlyYaki. That’s an unusual brand name. Where did this come from?
Vivian Kaye: Okay. Well, first of all, I made it up.
Kurt Elster: Fantastic.
Vivian Kaye: And second of all, it’s actually a combination of three textures. So, there’s the kinky, so kinky hair, which is normally tightly coiled Afro hair, and then of course there’s curly, and then there’s Yaki, and that’s usually what gets a lot of people stuck, like, I mean, what the heck is Yaki? Well, back in the day when… Well, first of all, let me sort of… Let me rewind a little bit.
So, Black women tend to wear a lot of protective styles. So, protective styles include weaves, wigs, or braids, so any Black woman you know in popular culture, Oprah, Beyonce, Serena Williams, they are all wearing protective styles. And so, then back in the day, when they wanted to mimic a Black woman’s hair, or Afro-textured hair, straightened, they didn’t have any human hair to duplicate that. They used yak hair. So, hair from a yak. And so, then they just threw I at the end and they called it Yaki.
So, it’s sort of a tongue-in-cheek name, so if you’re a Black woman who’s worn a protective style, you know what Yaki is.
Kurt Elster: Whereas for me, I saw it and I was like, “I have no idea what any of this is in reference to. Please, someone save me from my own ignorance.”
Vivian Kaye: I get that question a lot.
Kurt Elster: You know, and sometime in the future, maybe years from now, this will come up in conversation and I’ll be like, “I know the answer to this.” And then I’ll just wildly butcher your explanation. I’ll be like… By the end of it, I’ll just kind of trail off and be like, “Maybe you should just Google it.”
Vivian Kaye: Yeah. Maybe. Maybe.
Kurt Elster: Okay, so how long have we been doing this? When did you start this brand?
Vivian Kaye: So, I started it in December of 2012, so I’m an OG.
Kurt Elster: Wow. December 2012.
Vivian Kaye: Yeah. Yeah.
Kurt Elster: It’s been nine years, almost 10 years, what do you think is different now? If you were to start a brand today versus when you started this brand in 2012, what tactics do you think would or wouldn’t work?
Vivian Kaye: Great question. I don’t know if it’s… You know, because how I actually grew my business was through a lot of the things that you see in Twitter threads, and on podcasts today, which is community. You know, establishing your brand, and telling your story, and those weren’t things back in 2012 that you did, right? So, there wasn’t the brand story. There wasn’t the founder’s story or any of that. And those are the things that worked for me then, and of course it works for me now, but I grew organically.
Kurt Elster: So, no paid ads.
Vivian Kaye: That’s a lot… Sorry?
Kurt Elster: No paid ads.
Vivian Kaye: No paid ads. And so, that’s a tough sell nowadays, right? Especially because a lot of the platforms that I was using back in 2012 and 2013 were just… They were just starting up, right? Instagram was just becoming a thing. YouTube was still becoming a thing. And now everything is pay to play.
Kurt Elster: Right.
Vivian Kaye: But what doesn’t change is the community and the telling of the story because those are things that your competitors can’t steal. Those are things that China can’t mimic. Those are things that Amazon can’t beat you on, right?
Kurt Elster: Absolutely.
Vivian Kaye: So, yeah.
Kurt Elster: So, the things that have gotten harder is like in 2012, you could make a Facebook page and just get likes, versus today it’s you have to pay to promote posts and pay for like ads if you want the same thing, so that’s the part that got harder.
Vivian Kaye: Right.
Kurt Elster: So, customer acquisition cost got more expensive and more difficult. But the competitive edge then is the same as now.
Vivian Kaye: Exactly.
Kurt Elster: And that’s have a clear, have a strong brand, be able to tell a story, and be able to build a community. All right. Well, I’d love to know more about the beginning of your journey, but this is too valuable. Let’s unpack this. So, when you say tell a story, it’s such an easy thing to tell people to do. Yeah, tell your story. Three words. Oh, tell your story. What do we mean by that? What goes into that? What’s a good versus a bad story? How do people screw this up?
Vivian Kaye: Oh, you know what? I think people screw it up by not knowing why they’re even doing it in the first place.
Kurt Elster: Ah, the why.
Vivian Kaye: The why! It’s because it’s like, “Oh, well, I just started this because one of my bros is making a lot of money and I thought I’d give it a try.” That is not a story.
Kurt Elster: Uh, I started this online store because I hate my job.
Vivian Kaye: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: That’s a legitimate reason, but that’s not the story, and that’s not like the real why.
Vivian Kaye: That’s not the story. That’s not the why.
Kurt Elster: You’d have to dive deeper, right?
Vivian Kaye: Right.
Kurt Elster: So, what’s your why?
Vivian Kaye: My why is so I was actually running another business at the time and I wanted hair that looked “presentable,” which for Black women, what that means is having to… and women in general, there’s this beauty standard. You know, that skinny, blonde, white woman that is our standard of beauty, that for some reason Black women are included in that standard. So, one of the ways for us to do that was to wear straight, European looking hair for our protective styles. But I was tired of that, Kurt. I didn’t want to do that shit no more. Wait, can we swear?
Kurt Elster: Absolutely, you can swear.
Vivian Kaye: Okay. I didn’t want to do that shit no more.
Sound Board Bill & Ted: Excellent!
Vivian Kaye: So, I was looking for something that looks like my hair, but when I went looking for it, it was… It either didn’t exist or it was buried underneath silkier texture. So, I thought, “How come no one is just selling kinky hair?” But because I was running my other business, I sort of took the idea and filed it in the back of my head, and it wasn’t until I went to a networking event for wedding planners or event planning and another Black woman pulled me aside and was like, “Girl, how did you get your hair like that? Who’s your hairdresser? What’s your regimen?” And I was like, “Girl, this is a weave.” And she said, “I would buy that.”
Kurt Elster: Oh, light bulb moment.
Vivian Kaye: Light bulb moment. So, I thought, “Well, hm. If she said she would buy it, and then I bought it…” And you know, because I was trying to solve my own problem, I was in the protective styles community, so I was in the Black hair care forums trying to solve my own problems, so I saw other people with those problems. I was like, “You know what? This is too much. Let me just solve my own problem and keep it moving.” And I thought, “Well, if she said she would buy it out loud, and I did, there’s gotta be at least a dozen other women who would, too.”
So, then in the down season of my wedding business, which was the business I was running at the time, I launched KinkyCurlyYaki on December 8th of 2012.
Kurt Elster: 2012. Shopify was around. Was this brand on Shopify?
Vivian Kaye: No. It was on Big Cartel.
Kurt Elster: Big Cartel. Oh my gosh.
Vivian Kaye: Remember them? Are they still around?
Kurt Elster: I have no idea, truthfully.
Vivian Kaye: Shout out to Big Cartel.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. What’s up, guys? So, what’s so amazing about a lot of these entrepreneurial journeys is they really follow a very similar path often, where someone has a pain or problem in their own life, and then they look at existing… They start researching, and they start looking at existing solutions, and go, “Well, this isn’t quite right. I could do this better. Here’s how it should work.” And then finally you go, “Well, why not me? Why am I not the one coming up with the solution and fixing it?” And for you, like you walked right through that journey and then someone said, “I’d buy that.” And then you’re like… And you did, you had business experience. Unrelated, but certainly there are overlapping skillsets there.
Vivian Kaye: Right.
Kurt Elster: And so, from that point, what was the next step? Where did you go from there? You’re like, “All right, I’m doing this.” But then that’s the… Giving yourself permission, all right, hard but easy, and then from there, we… It’s like question mark, question mark, profit?
Vivian Kaye: No. It was just, “You know what? Let me…” I actually had no clue because it’s not like… At the time, eCommerce wasn’t as prevalent as it is now, right? There weren’t people on YouTube telling you how to do all this stuff, so I just sort of figured it out as I was going along, so if… You guys can’t see me, but Kurt can. There’s this Rubbermaid bin behind me and it has drawers in it, and that’s how I started my business. So, a customer would buy one bundle of hair. I would take that money and I’d buy two. And I slowly grew my business that way.
So, I just kept buying more and more hair. The more people would buy, I just kept reinvesting the money into inventory. So, I started this business from zero. I didn’t have any outside capital. I didn’t have any family loans. I didn’t take a bank loan. Nothing. I literally started from zero. And I made a lot of mistakes along the way. I’m still making mistakes, right? But it was something that I really was passionate about because when I started to really think about it, I started to think, “Well, okay, so what sets me apart? Besides the fact that I am my own customer, I get high on my own supply,” and you know, at the time, there weren’t a lot of Black women who owned Black hair businesses. It was all owned by other people. Yeah, and so-
Kurt Elster: I shouldn’t be surprised.
Vivian Kaye: Yeah. Yeah. There’s a lot. That’s a whole other episode. It’s a whole other podcast. But for the most part, a lot of businesses were not Black owned, and so then of course you had other people dictating what they thought was beautiful, right? So, then this was a time when YouTube, when women were just jumping onto YouTube and doing videos, and you know, we started taking more control over our beauty. It was something that I realized that I wasn’t just selling hair. I was selling confidence. I was selling Black women confidence to show up at their 9:00 to 5:00 and not have Karen or Chad ask them, “Hi, you got a new hairstyle today. What’s that all about?” No. I gave them the confidence to show up, and so that they can look like themselves, and no one would ask them about their hair. They would just have them… You know, you could just tell. Hey, Karen. Focus on my work. Don’t focus on my hair.
Because for Black women, that’s a huge problem. And so, then I thought that… I felt like that’s what I was solving. Did I even answer this question? I don’t even know. I don’t even remember what the question was.
Kurt Elster: You know, I don’t even know what the original question was, but I loved all of that.
Vivian Kaye: Okay. That’s a very entrepreneury… This is an entrepreneur conversation, so…
Kurt Elster: Yeah. I did greatly enjoy that. Well, all right, so you talked about bootstrapping. And you said you defined… I’ll tell people like, “Oh, I bootstrapped.” But also, like my parents helped me out financially, so like clearly there’s generational wealth there in any respect that helped me. And I paid them back, but still, I had that safety net. The risk just was not the same for me. So, it’s very… It’s much easier for me to be like, “Yeah, just grab those bootstraps and yank, guys.” You know, like it’s silly.
When you say bootstrap, you said like bootstrap-bootstrap. You know, you sold the inventory, and that money immediately went back in to get more inventory. What was the… Why bootstrap? Why not take out a business loan or run up some credit cards? That’s what a lot of people do.
Vivian Kaye: Yeah. Well, see, you mentioned it. The answer was what you mentioned earlier, which was generational wealth, right? So, I was born in Ghana. So, I came over to Canada when I was three in my mom’s lap, and my parents were… My dad was a high school… I think he graduated high school, but my mom didn’t have any education. So, it starts right there, right? So, if they don’t know, if they see, if they’re constantly hearing about debt, and they’re scared… And you know, a lot of immigrants, a lot of people of color are afraid of debt. We don’t see, they don’t teach us that debt is something we could use to our advantage.
Kurt Elster: That it could be a tool.
Vivian Kaye: It’s a tool, right? We’re taught that debt is bad and the only debt you should have is maybe just your house. Maybe a car. But a business? Ah, forget it. Why are you going into debt for a business? It’s a risk you’re taking. It’s not a sure thing. And you know, I know, I always joke with my mom. I’m like, “I know you didn’t bring me to this country to be an entrepreneur.” Because when you’re coming, when you’re leaving your home to bring your children to raise them in a strange country, you want them to be successful, so you’re thinking they’re going to be lawyers, and engineers, and doctors, and here I was being an entrepreneur. But to answer your question, the reason why I didn’t take out any of that stuff is because I didn’t know about it. I wasn’t exposed to it. I don’t have a network… And I still don’t really have a network of people to show me how to grow beyond a million dollars.
And I’ve tried, right? And there’s a number of reasons why I’m stuck at where I am, but it’s really the network. It’s really those things, that privilege that you don’t think you have, you have. You can say, “Hey, dad. You know, I’m thinking about this business.” He’s probably got $30,000 tucked away. My parents didn’t have $30,000 tucked away. They were living from meal to meal. And that happens for a lot of people of color.
So, whenever I see anyone on the cover of Forbes being self-made, or anyone that’s like, “Yeah, I bootstrapped,” but their dad was the CEO of whatever, that’s like, “Bro, that is not bootstrapping.”
Kurt Elster: They’re so full of shit.
Vivian Kaye: That’s not what it is.
Kurt Elster: Well, I read… I think it was a study, but I wish I could find it or remember where it was, but successful people try to explain away their privilege and advantages because it makes for a better story.
Vivian Kaye: Absolutely.
Kurt Elster: And so, you don’t… Us on the receiving end in the social media age, scrolling through someone else’s Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, you… Not only are you missing all of that, you’re also, you’re missing all of their failures, you only see the highlight reel that is selected in a way to tell a story.
Vivian Kaye: Right.
Kurt Elster: And I think that’s such an important thing to realize when you’re looking at somebody else and being like, “Oh, I wish I could do that. And how come they can do it and I can’t?” Because there’s a whole bunch of stuff behind the curtain that you don’t know about.
Vivian Kaye: Yep.
Kurt Elster: And it’s privilege, and it’s access, and it’s experience that you may not have, or know, or like you don’t know what you don’t know.
Vivian Kaye: Yeah. Well, some people always ask what’s the key to your success, like how are you able to do all that? And I say it’s because I was naïve, right? I had no idea. I didn’t know. I didn’t know about the term bootstrap up until… I didn’t know about it until 2017. And it wasn’t until I went to an event that I was invited to by the government of Canada, to help, to enter into one of their digital export accelerators, which I didn’t get accepted into because they didn’t know how to help me, right? They didn’t know how to help me because of the demographic that I serve.
But what I did witness was some guy with a solar ant farm getting $100,000 on an idea. And I’m like, “But I have money in my bank account.” But the bank is calling me to ask me where that money’s coming from and where it’s going.
Kurt Elster: How did you feel about that?
Vivian Kaye: Shitty. I still feel shitty to this day because even to get the loans, or even the line of credits that I had, the line of credit I got was because my white guy accountant knew a guy at the branch and said, “Hey, she’s good for it.” The loan that I got from one of the major banks here, the only reason why I got it was because a Black woman had to intercede or intercept my application to explain to them what I was doing and why my business was making this much money. Because no… I remember even doing things like crossing the border into the U.S. to do events, the border guard’s like, “What do you mean you make money selling hair extensions to Black women? How is that a thing?”
Bro, this is like a $25 billion industry.
Kurt Elster: It’s a huge thing.
Vivian Kaye: But you don’t believe that I’m the one running the business. You don’t believe that I’m making the money. It’s always a white guy that has to come, that has to go to bat to me in order for me to get anything. Which is unfortunate. And it makes me feel… It makes me feel shitty. But you know what? I take the shit that I make, I turn it into manure, right? So, I take my experiences and I share them with people, and I help people understand the privilege that they have, and what they can do to help people who look like me, to help people with unconventional backgrounds succeed at this thing. Because the system is stocked against me. The game is stocked against me. Cards are stacked against me.
But I succeeded despite that. So, now it’s like sometimes I’ll show up in some places and people are like, “How did you get there?” It’s like, “Bro, I don’t know how I got here, but I’m here.” And I know for myself that if I don’t see myself in places, I won’t go. So, I purposely insert myself in things. I put my… I get myself on the cover of books so that other people who look like me, other people who have the same unconventional background as me know that it is possible. I am not a role model. I am a possibility model. I want to show people what’s possible when you actually roll up your sleeves, when you overcome those challenges despite all the shit that you’re going through, despite how the cards are stacked against us.
I want to show people that it’s possible.
Kurt Elster: That’s amazing. Truly. Wow. I got goosebumps.
Vivian Kaye: I got all… You got me started!
Kurt Elster: I did. Oh, sweet. Oh my… I don’t even know where to go from there. Let’s go back to KinkyCurlyYaki. You’re bootstrapping this thing from 2012 and you’re telling your story, and the story is largely… Well, not largely. A core theme to the story is about accepting yourself and about confidence, right? And from there, you start to build a community. And you mentioned that as like that is a critical component, is being able to build that community. Talk to me about community.
Vivian Kaye: Well, here’s the thing. I didn’t actually set out to create a community. It just sort of happened. And the funny thing is I learned all this terminology after the fact, like when I learned about bootstrapping, right? So, what I knew was that one, I’ve got a personality, and it translates very well online, so I was able to just be Vivian on Facebook groups, and on hair care forums, so people remembered me. And so, then in order to create that community, one, you can’t just go into the community and just start selling them stuff. No. You have to provide value.
So, what did I do? I provided value in being a resource, right? Or being funny. Entertaining. So, that provided value. That made me memorable, right? So, even when I did drop my business, I didn’t tell anyone it was my business. I didn’t. I just would say… Because I knew what the issues were, I knew what the pain points were, I knew that I was my own customer, I could get high on my own supply, I would purposely say… I would just repeat back what they were saying. So, if they’d say things like, “Oh, you know what? Kinky hair is just so hard. It’s so unmanageable. It’s so this.” I would be like, “This is finally the product you’re looking for that’s manageable and easy to care for.”
Kurt Elster: Oh. That’s clever.
Vivian Kaye: Right? Right? And so then, but when you’re in the community, when you’re giving value and you’re participating in the community, that’s easier to do. But if you’re just going, if you’re just running into communities or creating communities solely for the purpose of just-
Kurt Elster: Selling.
Vivian Kaye: Making money and selling, you’re not… First of all, you’re not adding value. Second of all, you’re being a dick. And third of all, you’re not… You’re doing yourself a huge disservice. You’re not going to create a sustainable business doing that, right? And so, for me creating community is really about providing value and being vulnerable, because one of the things that happened to me while I was building this business was I got pregnant and I had a baby, and I became a single mother. And so, now not only did my community realize, “Okay, so now when we’re buying this product from this person and she’s a Black woman, she understands me, but now she’s a single mother. She’s a mother.” I understand that struggle.
So, when I had to put my business on hiatus and be like, “Hey, ladies. You know what? I just had a baby, so I just need a minute.” They were like, “Oh my goodness! That’s okay, that’s okay, that’s okay!” But then, what happened during my hiatus, a bunch of Chinese companies started popping up.
Kurt Elster: Uh oh.
Vivian Kaye: They saw my success and said, “We can duplicate that.” And so, they started hiring a bunch of Black women to front their companies.
Kurt Elster: Oh, wow.
Vivian Kaye: Yeah, so they would hire Black women to front, but it was a Chinese backend. And so, when I figured that out, I was like, “Wait a minute.” That’s first of all smart, second of all, what do I have that they don’t have? They don’t have me. So, then that was all the more reason to tell my story and to show my face and be like, “Hey, I am the person who’s shipping your package.” Girl, you want 14 inches, but you want it a little bit more black? Girl, I got you. And I’m speaking the language, which they were not able to do.
So, to answer your question, community is really important. But you really… But it has to be sincere, which is why I’m really adamant if you’re going to start a business, you need to solve a problem, and you need to be solving a problem that is close to you, because that’s where that passion comes from.
Kurt Elster: Yes.
Vivian Kaye: Because trust me, this shit is not easy, okay?
Kurt Elster: You have to love it.
Vivian Kaye: You have to love it. You think quitting-
Kurt Elster: And it has to be personal.
Vivian Kaye: Exactly, because if you think you’re getting away from the 9:00 to 5:00, this is 24/7. It does not stop.
Kurt Elster: And you can’t fake authenticity.
Vivian Kaye: You can’t.
Kurt Elster: So, you want to be authentic. You want to be able to tell a story. And the story has to be if it’s your story, it’s real and authentic automatically. And you can put yourself in the position of the customer, they can identify with you, you can identify with them, and then you’re able to hold up the mirror in a way.
Vivian Kaye: Right.
Kurt Elster: And that’s what really makes successful marketing, is where the person goes, “Okay, this gets me. This is me. This is… I’m seeing a better version of myself by buying this product.”
Vivian Kaye: And people don’t buy products, they buy people. They buy the idea that I can be that person too, or I can… That person’s solving my problem. They see me. That’s what people buy. They don’t buy products. Otherwise, they’d just buy it on Amazon. So, you have to give them a reason to not buy it on Amazon.
Kurt Elster: Oh, that’s such a good point. That’s a good line. You have to give them a reason to not buy it on Amazon. Because it’s-
Vivian Kaye: You can use that. You can go ahead and put that in the…
Kurt Elster: Oh, writing it down right now. She got me. It’s going in the summary. How… You talked about you made mistakes, and I think those are just fabulous learning opportunities. Are there one or two mistakes you made growing your business that stand out to you, that you think other people could benefit from hearing?
Vivian Kaye: Oh, my goodness. Two, huh? Well, there’s one mistake that I made where I hired a company to help me with my branding and they did such a good job, I went to get a new website and I said, “You know what? I need someone to handle the photoshoot aspect.” I thought they understood the branding, so they’ll understand the photoshoot. I’m not sure why I thought that. So, I was pretty hands off in that regard and the photoshoot was an absolute shit show.
Kurt Elster: How so?
Vivian Kaye: I hated the photos.
Kurt Elster: Okay.
Vivian Kaye: Well, first of all, I asked them to get women that were everyday women, but it was too everyday. Like it was too everyday, right? And then I walked into the shoot, I remember, and the photographer wouldn’t let me see the photos on the screen. He just kept… I’m like, “No, no, no. I want to see the photos so I can tell that model, okay, I need more of this and less that.” And he was really getting… He was not happy. He was being a drama king. And then when we got to the videos, the video portion, because we were doing these 360 videos, and I wasn’t loving the way that was going, either.
Plus, it didn’t help that when I walked in, the music they were playing was really chill, and I am… I don’t know if you can gather, but I’m not a chill person, right? I need some upbeat stuff. But anyways, I thought… You know what? I was thinking about the sunk costs, right? I’d spent all this money and it was about $10,000 U.S. that I’d spent on this photoshoot, and I thought, “And these people know what they’re doing, they know what they’re doing. I’m gonna leave them alone. I’m not gonna say anything.” Then when I got the photos back, I was like, “Oh, I hate them.” But sunk costs, sunk costs, sunk costs, right? But then when I got the video, I was like, “Hell no. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. I cannot.”
So, then I had to pay another $12,000 to fix it. But those are the photos that you see on KinkyCurlyYaki.com today.
Kurt Elster: They’re fabulous.
Vivian Kaye: Thank you. And I was super happy with it because then it really made me feel like this is what I worked so hard for. It’s finally representative of that. So, the lesson in that is don’t trust people with your vision. You can’t. You absolutely can’t. You can’t think, “Okay, yeah. I’m starting this business. I’m gonna be hands off.” You can’t. You can’t. You can’t. Especially when you start the business for personal… from a personal standpoint. That’s my biggest mistake.
Kurt Elster: You have to be involved and invested in the day to day.
Vivian Kaye: Yes. Absolutely.
Kurt Elster: So, your website is beautiful. It is really quite extraordinary. A couple highlights I like is on this product detail page, the product photo, and this is so cool, is full width, full height in the frame, so it looks really good. And then the thumbnails lay over it, and the logo is right over it, and you had to really think it through to make this work.
Vivian Kaye: Yeah.
Kurt Elster: It’s really cool. I don’t know that I’ve seen it set up like that before. At least not this well.
Vivian Kaye: Well, there’s… Fuel Made. That’s who made the website.
Kurt Elster: Oh, Fuel Made did this?
Vivian Kaye: Fuel Made did that.
Kurt Elster: Carson McComas is the… that crew.
Vivian Kaye: Yes. Shout out, Carson. Hey!
Kurt Elster: Yeah. I like those guys. I do. Let’s see. And your email flyout, it slides out from the side, it’s got a little animated video.
Vivian Kaye: Yeah. It’s my .gif. It’s me!
Kurt Elster: And it immediately makes it like 10 times more engaging, like I gotta put my email in this thing.
Vivian Kaye: She’s saying hi to me! I have to put my email address in there.
Kurt Elster: Oh, my… And this is the purple wall behind you in the .gif, isn’t it?
Vivian Kaye: It is. So, see how I’ve made it so it’s personal, like I’m a real person. So, sometimes some people see the website and they’re like, “Oh, it’s this big corporation behind it.” But it’s like, “No, girl. It’s me.” It’s me.
Kurt Elster: And of course, like you’ve got this excellent our story page. When people say like, “What’s an example of a good about us page?” This is the one. We found it. It’s right here. And on the… Do you tell the story on the homepage?
Vivian Kaye: I think a little bit. I think if you scroll down.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. We say reasons to love and we talk through that. When did you end up on Shopify?
Vivian Kaye: 2015.
Kurt Elster: And so, for three years you were on Big Cartel. You switched to Shopify. What was the thing that made you go, uh, I gotta switch?
Vivian Kaye: At the time, I’m not sure about now, but I couldn’t keep track of the inventory properly on Big Cartel.
Kurt Elster: Yeah, that seems pretty basic.
Vivian Kaye: Yeah. It was pretty basic, and I was like, “I need something that can help me track this inventory and to this properly.” I’m like, “I heard about this Shopify. I know they’re Canadian, so I know if I need help, they’re gonna be right there.”
Kurt Elster: You were gonna go knock on the door?
Vivian Kaye: I know, really. Little did I know that they would blow up and be this kabillion dollar company and have this bootleg podcast named after them. The Unofficial Shopify Podcast.
Kurt Elster: Yeah. It was a working title and then I couldn’t think of anything better, so we just ran with it.
Vivian Kaye: I like it. I like it.
Kurt Elster: So, you started on without paid ads. Do you use paid ads today?
Vivian Kaye: Today? No.
Kurt Elster: Still?
Vivian Kaye: Well, no. That’s not true. So, after I hit my first million, then I said, “Okay, wait a minute. I hit this first million without any paid ads. What would happen if I did paid ads?”
Kurt Elster: Okay.
Vivian Kaye: All right, so then that’s when I started doing email. That’s when I started doing Facebook ads.
Kurt Elster: Wait, you weren’t doing email?
Vivian Kaye: Nope.
Kurt Elster: All right.
Vivian Kaye: No email. No email. And so, then what happened was I started doing email and started doing Facebook ads, but I foolishly… I would say six months into doing Facebook ads I shut them off because we couldn’t keep up with the demand.
Kurt Elster: Hm. You’re like, “These work too well.”
Vivian Kaye: It was crazy. Plus, it brought in a different type of customer, so it was still the same demographic and everything, but they wanted stuff… I found that they didn’t really… I don’t want to say care about my story, but they didn’t take into account that I was still a small business, right? And so, then of course they had those Amazon expectations, right?
Kurt Elster: Oh, no.
Vivian Kaye: So, they ordered it Friday night at 2:00 in the morning and by Saturday morning they were sending us emails asking where their tracking number was, and that was the type of customer that we were attracting from these Facebook ads, whereas anyone that learned about us organically, or through of word of mouth, understood that we were a small business, and so sending us an email Saturday morning wasn’t really gonna get them anywhere. Right?
And then it just got crazy. It got crazy. We were doing six figure months. But honestly, Kurt, I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it because it’s like this is not what I started my business to do. I didn’t start my business to do… It’s gonna sound silly. I didn’t start my business to have to do all this ROAS and CAC and ROIs and all that stuff. I literally started it to solve my own problem and then I wanted to solve my sister’s problem, my Black sister’s problem. I wanted to help that woman in Australia who needed to show up to her 9:00 to 5:00 but couldn’t find a protective style that looked like her hair, right?
I wanted to help that sister in Baltimore who just got diagnosed with cancer and couldn’t find a cancer wig that looked like her hair. And here are all these CACs, and this, and… So, I shut them off after I think about seven months, I shut it off.
Kurt Elster: And you didn’t go back?
Vivian Kaye: I did go back, but it was… That was my second biggest mistake.
Kurt Elster: Oh!
Vivian Kaye: Shutting off the Facebook ads. Because of course, when you shut them off, it’s almost like you’re starting over again once you start back up. Because I started back up maybe two months later. I just needed to get ahold of what was happening.
Kurt Elster: Right.
Vivian Kaye: And so, then that was the biggest mistake. That was the second biggest mistake that I’d made. But I don’t regret it, but right now they’re off, only because… You know, with this whole pandemic thing going on, and a lot of people who are our customers, I wanted to be sensitive to pocketbooks. I mean, that makes me very anti-entrepreneur, right? Because what we’re selling is a luxury product, right? We don’t sell cheap hair. That’s for sure. Even the wig that I’m wearing right now is nine years old, like this, I’ve had this hair for nine years. This was what I was wearing when that woman asked me who was my hairdresser, right?
And so, I felt like I wanted to have a solution, like I just didn’t want to sound tone deaf by saying, “Oh, yeah. Buy this $500 wig,” when they’re still waiting on that $1,200 from the government. So, I wanted to come up with a solution that people who are working from home could easily do, because our hair is… You know, it’s something that you need to take time to manage, and during a pandemic, you don’t necessarily want to do that, so I wanted something easy. So, I had to sit back and just sort of watch, look at my routine. What was I doing different? How could I… What could I do different? What product could I come up with?
And then I came up with headband wigs, right? So, it was really a five-minute wig that women could throw on five minutes before their Zoom call.
Kurt Elster: Oh, smart.
Vivian Kaye: Right? And it’s a product that I didn’t invent, so it’s existed before, but it’s just a matter of putting that 2020 spin on it. So, yeah.
Kurt Elster: What’s next? What’s next for KinkyCurlyYaki?
Vivian Kaye: I actually do not know. It’s something that I’ve been thinking about these past couple of months. You know, because like I mentioned before, I didn’t get in the business for the ROAS, and the CAC, and the this, and the that. I got in to give Black women the confidence to do what they did, to do what they need to do, so for me, in December of 2019, I got hit with that whole… The supply chain got… went crazy. But at the time, we didn’t know what was happening, right? Because it’s December 2019. So, Black Friday, those orders didn’t come in until January, like my inventory shipment did not come in until January.
Kurt Elster: Oh, no.
Vivian Kaye: Yeah, so it sort of set off this chain of events, right? So, inventory from November didn’t come in till January. Then we go shut down in March. I was in what the fuck mode, you know? Even to this day, I still have trouble getting my head out of my ass. You know, I struggled to launch those headband wigs because my… I just didn’t have the bandwidth or capacity for it. And so, what I’m thinking is it’s still making money. Is it a million-dollar business this year? Absolutely not, and I’m not ashamed to say that, right? But I am proud of what I’ve built and I’m proud of the things that I’ve done, and the fact that I built a business from zero to a million with no experience, and no help, and did it as a single mother. I’m very proud of that fact.
And I think by telling my story of how I did it and how I overcame the challenges and struggles in order to create this business is something that I’d like to share with the world, right? So, I always tell people I’m like Oprah meets Gary Vee, because I will tell you the business advice straight up, but you know, I have that little bit of heart to it, too.
Kurt Elster: I like that assessment. I do.
Vivian Kaye: Yeah. And you know, I will say Oprah plus Gary Vee plus that party emoji, that’s me.
Kurt Elster: Party emoji.
Vivian Kaye: The party emoji. But I would like to say KinkyCurlyYaki will still keep going, but you’re going to certainly see more of Vivian Kaye, because I’m just trying to just get everyone to just see their potential.
Kurt Elster: Well, and on that topic, I see that you are more than just an eCommerce merchant. You are also a business coach.
Vivian Kaye: I am.
Kurt Elster: Tell me about that.
Vivian Kaye: Well, you know, I’m the queen of the pivot, so I always like to… I thought about especially in 2020, the supply chain went to shit, so I had to figure out what could I control? I can’t control supply chain, so what can I control? I can control me. And a bunch of people who have brick and mortar stores or did in-person events suddenly needed to be on Shopify, so guess who helped them get on Shopify? This girl.
And again, because I was… I’d gone about this in a very unconventional way. I thought, “Well, who am I to teach people how to do that?” And I’d be like, “Vivian, do you not remember you built a million-dollar business on your own? Do you?”
Kurt Elster: Even you have imposter syndrome at times.
Vivian Kaye: Even I have imposter syndrome at times. But what I realize is the reason why I have imposter syndrome is because… You know, and I don’t want to sound like a victim here. These are just the facts. That again, the system is not rigged for me to win. And so, then I thought, “Well, I’m gonna win anyways. I’m going to be the opposite of what success looks like.” And so, then I started to help people get their businesses online and I’m very proud of that.
And you know, and I did it in such a way that I just did it in the Vivian way. I didn’t do it in the bro standing in front of a Maserati on YouTube with girls and a nine-bedroom mansion behind him. I did it in my pajamas with my kid screaming in the background, right? So-
Kurt Elster: So, where could I go to learn about Vivian Kaye?
Vivian Kaye: Oh, I am an absolute pleasure to follow on the Instagrams. My Instagram stories are legendary. Or you could come see me, or even on Instagram ItsVivianKaye, I-T-S-V-I-V-I-A-N-K-A-Y-E. You’ll see me, I’m the girl with the crown and balloons. Black lady with the crown and balloons. Any platform, by VivianKaye.com if you want to hire me. But yeah.
Kurt Elster: I loved having you here. This was… I’m so glad. Thank you. Thank you for doing this and thank you for being yourself. Thank you for being Vivian.
Vivian Kaye: Well, you are absolutely welcome.
Kurt Elster: And all of those links are in the show notes. Please check it out. Connect with Vivian. She seems fantastic.