Just as Jennifer Aniston’s many trendsetting hairstyles have evolved over the years, so has her LolaVie haircare company, as she will soon celebrate the second anniversary of having her products out on the market.
Reflecting on the past two years of business, Aniston, 54, being the founder of LolaVie, told me this week, “I didn’t even expect the amount of people that come up to me that do and just go on and on about how it’s changed their hair and they couldn’t be more grateful. Or their children’s hair – bathtub is not a torture experience anymore with tears and crying with the [LolaVie glossing] detangler. Our ingredients are natural – that was a really big piece of this that had to be a part of our product and that it was also effective. Now, we get to sort of launch out, take our baby steps into the next level and have a wider audience, slowly but surely, and we love the places that we have been expanding into.”
For the first year and a half following its launch in September 2021, LolaVie products were sold exclusively on its website. Then this past spring, LolaVie partnered with its first retailer Ulta Beauty, selling its products in-store, as well as on Ulta’s website. Today, Aniston and her team have announced their newest partnership with Credo, a retail company known for its clean beauty products.
Joel Ronkin, Aniston’s LolaVie co-founder alongside Amy Sachs, also spoke with me about their company’s gradual expansion into the retail space, “At first, our customers weren’t able to really see and feel and smell our products, and Ulta allowed them to do that. Now with Credo, we’re gaining a set of eyeballs that are really a very targeted audience that care deeply about the ingredients and the packaging of our products, and that fits perfectly with our ethos and our mission, so Credo made a whole lot of sense to us.”
Meghan Lim, senior merchant at Credo, said of the new collaboration with LolaVie, “Partnering with Jennifer Aniston and co-founders Amy Sachs and Joel Ronkin has been a dream. Credo has set the bar very high for our brand partners, as every product we sell must comply with our industry-leading Credo Clean Standard, and LolaVie’s values completely align with our passion for clean, quality and sustainable products. We are excited to embark on this journey together and bring the LolaVie brand to our clean-conscious consumers.”
Sachs clarified for me LolaVie’s latest rollout with Credo, saying, “We will be available in all their stores and online. It gives us access to this consumer who really cares about what products they are putting onto and into their body.”
Being the hairstyle icon that Aniston is and has remained for nearly 30 years, ever since “The Rachel” haircut became a leading trend with women during Aniston’s time on the hit sitcom Friends (1994-2004), I wondered if she has now come to embrace her longtime hair icon status.
Aniston said, “I’ve always had a lot of hair and it’s always been a challenge for me because of my wonderful Greek heritage. My mom had curly hair, so it’s never been an easy job to blow dry my hair or brush my hair. It’s kind of ironic at the same time that it’s iconic because it was sort of that, ‘Ugh, do I have a good hair day? Am I going to have a bad hair day?’ And like every women, we still do – and as you get older, your hair is also changing. Yes, I have embraced it, by the way, but there’s challenges for everybody and I’m included in all of that everyday.”
Aniston went on to say that before the SAG-AFTRA strike began, people involved in hair departments within her entertainment industry would call her up, asking to use LolaVie products on-set and for red carpet events. She also admits that the past two years of LolaVie have been a productive learning process for her and her creative team. For instance, when customers were vocal about having some difficulty with LolaVie’s initial restorative conditioner bottle, Aniston said, “They were right – and so, we were able to step on that and get that handled pretty quickly. The ability to connect with the consumers is really great.”
So what makes 2023, with all of the strategic marketing and the technological advances happening around us, a great time to be in business?
Ronkin said, “Social media is both a blessing and a curse, right? What’s really interesting that goes hand-in-hand with that is the immediacy of customer feedback and the data that goes along with that. What I find interesting and what’s totally different than even five years ago because you get such immediate feedback is you can make decisions faster, but you have to learn how to synthesize and distill that data in a meaningful way. You can see a trend really quickly that might not really be a trend – it may be a blip and you’re reacting to something that is not what you should be reacting to, and the ability to figure that out is going to make a big difference.”
Aniston added, “Navigating social media, since I’m a sort of a ‘newbie’ to it in the world of all of this – Instagram – this is a learning experience for me on many, many, many levels – but yes, what Joel said, it is! It’s immediate and it’s incredible how fast.”
As Aniston continues to choose to have an active role in several leadership positions across various industries of business today, I was curious what she has been enjoying most about this stage of her life and her career, perhaps in ways that she had not felt or experienced until recently.
Aniston said, “I think being able to get behind the curtain and behind the scenes of development, whether it’s film and television and producing. It’s been so satisfying and I love it so much and I miss it so much. Being able to branch out into this entrepreneurship has been very exciting and keeps your mind going and keeps you excited and all the possibilities that are out there.”
As Aniston, Ronkin and Sachs keep their sights set on growing the public’s awareness of their LolaVie products, I wondered what they are monitoring most from their original mission, as they continue to expand the brand’s reach and accessibility.
Sachs said, “I think our biggest thing is to continue to find innovative, natural, plant-based ingredients that can perform as well as the high-tech, synthetic ingredients that aren’t so great for your hair. So, it’s really staying focused on what’s next.”
As I began to conclude our conversation, I asked Aniston if there are any new LolaVie haircare products in the works that customers should expect to see out on the market in the near future.
Aniston said, “We have a lot of new stuff on our roster. Five different products – each have their own purpose. One also that will be for dogs, dare I say? That’s a little hint. And men – but men can use most of these products, but there’s one that they will really love.”
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