From L to R: Adrien Flammier, Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer Francois Viargues, Co-Founder and CEO
Kerry Dacas Johnson, Co-Founder and Marketing Expert
Slash Beauty has a mission to make haircare on-the-go easy. They want to accompany women throughout their day - from the gym to work, home to dinner, near to far. They aim to be in every woman's purse, making her excited for a 10-minute beauty break in her busy day.
Co-Founder Francois Viargues will pitch Slash Beauty in the 10th annual CVC-NY Demo Night on Wednesday, October 14th. Slash Beauty will be one of five teams who will participate in our second all-virtual Demo Night event.
This year’s events are a little different than years prior. The New York Demo Night will feature exclusively E-commerce & Retail businesses.
The all-virtual nature allowed more teams to apply from all over and will also allow a larger group of attendees. While we will miss the in-person event, we are excited to host all of you that might not have been able to travel to these cities. Remember to RSVP!
Francois’ career took him from E&Y in Paris, to New York Fashion Week, to launching his own venture. Having now worked in the Beauty industry in NYC for 14 years, he is now currently living his American Dream as the CEO of Slash Haircare. (On-the-go haircare, in under 10 minutes!) Before Slash he was the GM of Rene Furterer USA, a premium haircare brand and previously was the CFO of Pierre Fabre USA, also a leader in the Beauty and Pharma industries. He co-founded Slash 3 years ago.
What Inspired you all to create Slash?
The three co-founders worked together backstage at New York Fashion Week, and got along very well. We also organized professional hair shows in New York and Los Angeles and we had a chance to work on product development together.
We realized we share the same passion about haircare and we love to work together. We all agreed there is no easy-to-use and easy-to-carry haircare brand on the market for the busy woman of 2020.
Considering our different backgrounds and personalities were great assets for entrepreneurship, we decided to create Slash. Our ultimate goal is for our clients to have beautiful hair anytime and anywhere, and to be the new success story within the Beauty industry.
Tell us about your Team’s development process.
The three co-founders have extensive experience in the haircare industry - covering all aspects from product development, to hairstyling, to marketing.
We are passionate about hair and we love to get feedback and insights from our customers. With different backgrounds in the beauty industry, we know what works and what does not.
We have partnered with innovation labs to create the perfect formulations, using new discoveries and the best ingredients.
“Validated by our community of Slashmates.”
Each product is tested extensively and is validated by our community of “Slashmates” - we send our new product prototypes to a panel of 100 women and if needed, we update the formulas based on their feedback.
What words of wisdom would you share with earlier-stage founders?
First be sure you have the guts to start such a project and be ready to be on an emotional roller coaster.
Teamwork is key.
Two co-founders are better than one, and three are probably better than two.
The more diversified the team, the better the startup.
Challenge yourself, listen to your partners, stakeholders and mentors. Ask for feed-back on your prototypes from industry experts and from your future clients and users.
Look at what the competition does well, read a lot about your industry, and be open-minded.
Your startup is a priority, don’t be distracted, and get a clear road-map of the project with many milestones (branding, product development, validation of the concept, launch, etc.)
Celebrate and advertise the achievement of any milestone.
Fundraising is almost a full-time job. It is key to have a great deck and to update it on regular basis. Understand there are different kinds of investors (friends & family, business angels, seeds VC, PE..) for every step of your startup (concept, prototype, launch, $1M revenue, $5M revenue..).
Bootstrap as much as you can, even after fundraising. Freelancers on Upworks can do as well as an agency for cheaper.
Has working remotely been challenging, or beneficial?
We started working remotely from day 1, since the 3 co-founders are based in 3 different locations: NYC, NJ and SF.
The other members of the team, the distribution center and free-lancers are all over the US too.
We have a co-founders formal 4 hour Zoom meeting every Monday, and then we handle everything through calls, emails, and texts.
This remote organization is really efficient, and we save a lot of time and money. Some events such as photo/ video shoots give us the opportunity to meet in person occasionally.
Thank you Francois! We look forward to hearing you pitch on October 14th. Don’t forget to RSVP!