EP9. Men's Grooming Products Get a Make-Over with Regal Gentleman

Hello and welcome to the Formula Botanica Green Beauty Conversations podcast. If you're interested in taking one of our award winning online organic and natural cosmetic science courses, then head over to formulabotanica.com and check out our free sample class. In this episode, I chat to Josh from the Regal Gentleman about male grooming and the expansion of their business. Enjoy. Hello and welcome, Josh.

Hello. Thank you for having me. Pleasure to be here.

Oh, it's really great to have you. And I know we've been waiting to do this interview for a while and Lorraine kept saying to me, you need to interview Josh, you need to interview, you've got lots to say. So if you could give us a little bit of introduction to yourself and the Regal gentleman and what you do, how you got started.

Yeah, cool. So, yeah, I'm Josh. So I'm 24 and four years ago, all from a bad haircut experience. Really. Me and my best friend from school got the idea to start start an online men's grooming company called Regal Gentlemen. And essentially it all came from. I went to get a haircut and the barber forgot to do one side of my head and I didn't even realize. Terrible experience. So after that we was like, you know, we're going to go to a nice barber shop and when we went to that in London, in Soho, we were just surrounded by all these great products with, like we say, natural ingredients and we'd never seen them before. And the idea just came from allowing everyday guys to it easier for them to purchase. That's where the idea came from. But the last four years has been a very interesting journey. And when people say your business is like a little baby is 100% true. Like, you've seen it grow and you think what it was like when it first started is completely different now. So, yeah, it's just been me and Liam and yeah, we're on a mission to redefine the modern man.

Yeah, so you started because of this awful experience with a haircut. So what was your kind of business model? So I've seen your website and everything and you were selling different sorts of products and.

Yeah, so we started off as a retailer and a reseller of other branded products. The categories we started off in range from beard because we started within the beard boom. So we started off with beard, skincare, shaving, hair care and fragrances. At the start, we probably split ourselves too thin. Rather than focusing on two or three key categories, we tried to have a little bit in every category, which looking back was probably maybe not the Right. Strategy. And then really focusing on content. And that's something that's really gone forward a lot more with the company. But yes, selling other branded products ranging from Dr. Harris, which is some skincare, Malin Gaultiers and all brands like that in hair care and skincare.

Okay, cool. So people would essentially find your website and then they could buy all these sorts of male grooming products. Yes, but you did hair, you did beard, did you do skin?

Yeah, we did skin. We did everything from cleansers, toners, exfoliators, and we even dabbled in some eye cream. And we started getting some eye cream and testing some eye stuff as well.

So I went onto your website just to do a bit more research about you and. And I saw that you can't actually buy anything there at the moment. So let's have a little chat about how things have changed for you guys.

Yes. So for the last three years, we were selling other branded products, but that was never our long term vision. We just felt like selling other branded products at first was a great way to educate ourselves. Everything from ingredients to actually running a business to selling online. And it got to the point at the beginning of 2017 that we started the process of making our first range of regal gentleman products, which is going to be in men's hairstyling at first. And for the last year, we've been in development and manufacturing of. That is quite an eye opener to know how long it takes to make these products. I remember when we spoke to the manufacturer at first and he was like, you know, this could take at least a year to make. And I nearly fell off my chair. I was like, you don't realize how much work goes into it. So. And then at the end of December last year, so end of 2017, we sold off all of our last products and we're now looking to launch in July 2018. So at the minute, if you go onto our site, it's mainly educational content that we're focusing on.

And if you go and check out their Instagram, they've got some really cool examples of haircuts. Really?

Yeah, if you want some hairstyle inspiration.

So for me, it was quite interesting researching what you were doing. And I know we had a little email exchange before we started recording the podcast because like I mentioned to you, most of our audience is female and 98% of our students are female. And slowly but surely, we're getting a few more male students who are creating ranges for men. And it got me interested in the topic of male grooming because I Think that it has. It's a little bit political in a way, because it has in the past been, you know, seen as effeminate or relegated somehow to the area of women. And here are you two guys with this really cool website and this really cool Instagram page, making male grooming seem quite trendy. So tell me a little bit about that and your experience with it. I mean, do. Do you think that male grooming has been seen as sort of something that's sort of effeminate and, you know, something that, you know, it gets kind of stereotyped into, like, oh, you know, real men wouldn't worry about their hair or their beard and those sorts of unhelpful stereotypes.

Yeah, totally agree. I mean, the perfect example, if you go back to mine and Liam's dad's, they look at what we're doing and think, what is it? What are all these products? Like, what is crazy? So I definitely think it's a generation thing. I still think that there's a perception that maybe is a feminine thing, but I do think it's improving. And I think there's certain. How can we. I think there's certain points in time that's slowly changing the perception of men's grooming. I think the beard boom was an amazing step forward for men's grooming, period, because beard is a very manly thing, but it got men in the habit of openly showing how they look and looking after themselves. And it's kind of like a habit. Like, you go gym, you go gym a lot, and then you start want to eat healthy. And what we found with men is they've got their beard looking good now they're like, okay, how do I make my hair look good and my hair looks good? How do I make my skin look good? And I think it just comes down to playing on the fact of men ain't buying. It's not. They're not grooming. They're not buying grooming products. They want to do it to look and feel their best. And I think it's changing the perception of what is the goal for men's grooming? You know, the goal isn't to use a cleanser and exfoliate. Your goal is to look your best, feel your best, and go about your everyday life how you can. I think there's a great link between the stereotypes you put together and the recent raising awareness of men's mental health, where men are still struggling to say, I'm not good at this, or I'm struggling with this. And I think it's just a male perception that has to change. But I think it will only change by companies showing it's okay to groom in a normal way. And I hope that's what Regal Gentleman aims to do for the everyday guy especially.

Yeah. Well, I mean, I found your Instagram really quite inspiring because. Because, like I said, it made it seem, you know, it just made it seem fun and.

Yeah.

Trendy. And you've. I guess you've got all sorts of celebrities like David Beckham, because I saw that you had one of the recent. Yes, yes.

Always got. David always got an example of someone.

Who has probably challenged quite a few stereotypes around male grooming, isn't he?

Yes. He's a massive positive stereotype, I think, and there's a lot more. David Gandhi is another positive stereotype from a style and fashion point of view. And I think even little things like the new Marvel film 4, where he's gone from his long hair to his short hair, and to some people, that might mean he's just had a haircut. But it's the transition of how these big characters, manly characters, are looking. But I think it's. And I know I just said man, I think it's trying to get away from that term manly, because what defines manly? Just because, you know, do you still want people to rub dirt in cuts? Does that define manly? In our opinion, at regal, Defining man is celebrating who you are and being your best version of you. That, to us, is manly. And David Beckham is a great representation of that, you know.

Yeah. And being able to say, I guess I'm, you know, I want to take the time on looking and feeling good and that's okay.

Yeah. 100. And I think it's focusing. Trying our best to focus on that point. And I think, like, from my opinion, I think the next big trend that's going to be great for men's grooming is men's makeup. Okay. I think that's going to have a great impact on the sector, period. Because not everyone in five years is going to be wearing makeup. I think that's fair to say. But when it gets to that point, probably cleansing, exfoliating, hair care will become the norm.

Yeah.

And it's that gradual process in the generations that's going to make the industry hopefully grow.

Yeah. And really start to challenge. There's some really, you know, those unhelpful stereotypes. And obviously, like we were saying before, you know, women have stereotypes attached to them and. And we have some really unhelpful ones attached. Yeah. To men as well. And you know, why shouldn't men be able to celebrate who they are? And if for them that means having a skincare and a hair care regime, then, you know, yay.

Amazing. I think that's a great one. I think what we found, it's easier to get men at the moment showing off things like beard and hair care rather than skincare. So I think it's gradually getting there, but mainly because beard and hair is something a lot more visual rather than sharing the skin. But 100%. I think stereotypes is a big thing we want to change. And even away From Instagram, our YouTube channel is a really important view to that. Just because it's actually putting a personality behind the stories and it's saying, look, we're two everyday guys. I find grooming important. It makes me feel better. And, you know, if that works for you, then why shouldn't you be proud of that?

Yeah, exactly. And I think, I guess I underestimated the amount of work that goes into a haircut because I was seeing those haircuts.

Yeah.

On the Instagram page and I was like, wow, that's a work of art.

No, it's amazing. That's the one thing we've learned from working with all the barbers. They do see that as like a masterpiece and like they see it as a canvas and they want to make that canvas look as beautiful as possible. It's an amazing. It really is how they look. It.

Yeah. It is very enlightening. I haven't really looked that in depth at male haircut. So just moving on to the natural and organic sector. So I know that you're developed some of your products and you want them to be natural. Do you think, I mean, obviously we teach natural organic skincare and hair care.

Yes.

Do you think men. And traditionally, just to repeat myself, the natural organic market has been dominated by products for women. But do you think men are starting to have more of an awareness about, you know, what's in their products, what they don't want to use, what they do want to use, and that they might be transitioning or they might be like a. Like you said, you know, I want to have a healthier lifestyle. I want to start looking after myself. And then they starting to look at the types of products as well, for their face, for their skin, for their hair, for their beards.

Yeah. 100. I think we've even had a lot of comments saying, guys, are you doing gluten free products? Are you doing vegan products? Are you doing organic product? Which is an amazing step Forward. I think there's a time lapse between, in my opinion, anyway, men saying, are you doing these products? And men actually buying these products. And the opinion from that is when we started off creating our hairstyling products, we was going down the route of we want this to be organic and we really want to focus on it being organic. But when we did customer development and spoke to customers, they were like, guys, at moment, we're still. The most important factor for us is the performance of that product. You know, it can be organic, it can be gluten free, but if it doesn't hold my hair or it doesn't give me that finish, I don't really care. And what we found as well, and this will be something we probably still need to learn as founders, is creating a fully organic product and getting that performance just right is still quite difficult. And I still think the education and the development side is still catching up, and that's what we found. So we can put in organic extracts into our products and, you know, start using it gradually like that. But I don't, personally, I don't think we're at the stage yet where we're ready to bring out a fully organic product we know will do the job for the consumer in hair care, but 100% men are starting to be very. There was a story in a barbershop where a guy brought a product back because it wasn't vegan. Okay, so we're slowly starting. Yeah, we are slowly starting to get.

There because obviously, yeah, veganism in skincare and hair care is really booming. And we will be doing a podcast on vegan skincare and hair care. So it's interesting that you're seeing that, you know, overlap into the. Into the male sector. I mean, do you think there's going to be a more demand as, you know, you kind of develop the products more that people will be saying, okay, right, you've got the. The product right. It holds my hair and I like it, but I want it vegan, I want it gluten free, I want it completely organic.

Yeah, totally agree. I think if you can make a product that does all those factors, I think you've created an amazing product, and I think that's the aim for us to move forward every day in creating that product. I think what we found interesting from customer development is. And it's kind of, once again, what people say is different to what people do. Yeah, we're still in that kind of phase where people will say, yeah, I want it to be natural, I want it to be organic. But when they're looking at products to buy, they're still looking at, okay, it's a high hold matte finish and they're not looking at the ingredients still, which I think it's an interesting one. So for men, I think it's working out. How do we, is that something that's just going to take time or can we do something better as educators to make it realize? But I think yeah, over the next five years, I totally agree with you. I think there's going to be a very high demand and I think food is a big thank you factor in that. I think it's correlating with people going gluten free and vegan with the food and they're thinking, okay, I'm watching what I'm putting in my body now I need to watch what I'm putting on my body. And it's a slow correlation, I think.

Yeah. It's interesting that you're saying about education because one of my next question was going to be, I mean, what role do you think you're going to be able to play as educators? Because you have really popular Instagram page, your YouTube channel is great. You know, you guys are both full of energy and you obviously have a following that, that respect you. I mean, do you think that you're going to be able to educate people more about, you know, seeing as you've gone through the development process with products so you understand a bit more about how challenging it can be to get tick all the boxes?

Yeah, totally. So the first step, especially on the education YouTube side is we wanted to vlog creating the products. So actually telling people, okay, it's going into safety testing. What does that mean? Look guys, we had to go through six samples to get to this. What does this mean? Sole aim on YouTube is to provide education conveyed in a simple and relatable way. And that's just based on our personalities. So how would we like to receive information? We wouldn't want to start getting very technical if we feel like we can't explain something in a very simple and relatable way, we're even not there educated ourselves to do that or we need to look at it better. And I think especially when it comes to organic and gluten, that will be the aim to be able to educate people. Okay, guys, this is the benefit that Fiddis has. And I think as we go through the journey, I mean even one of my pet hates is with some products that claim that they're organic when they're going to Use some organic ingredients. That doesn't mean to say you're organic. And for us, educating customers on saying, look, don't fall for this, okay. Just because they're organic ingredients ain't a fully organic product. Education like that I think is important. Once customers know that, then they'd be like, okay, well what's an organic product then? Yeah, and this involves. So yeah, it's a really fun part for us, the videos and I suppose.

What the trade offs are, you know, because I guess if you say someone's looking for like maximum hold matte finish and you guys are trying to also use completely natural ingredients and saying, hey guys, we might have to compromise here. I mean, do you think you will have to compromise on some of the performance if you're using completely natural and organic stuff or do you think you can tick all of the boxes?

It's a good question. I think what we've found is normally there's always something you'd have to compromise in some way. So for example, the product we've made to get the finish and the hold, we've had to compromise slightly on the washability. Where it's an oil based product, they'll need to use a bit of shampoo to get it out.

Yeah.

I think if we made a fully organic product, maybe with certain hair types, it might not hold as well.

Okay.

Or it may even something little as it might not last as long.

Yeah.

Fully organic ingredients isn't going to last as long as a normal hair product. So that might, in some customers eyes they might think, well, do you know what, I want my product to last a lot longer than that. The aim is to get the most perfect product possible. That's what we're striving to. But I think with that I think he's just being open with customers and not lying. And not lying with people. Just if there is something where you think, guys, this is great here but you need to watch out for this. I think we need, as a sector, we need to be more honest and open and that's what hopefully we want to do.

I completely agree with you. And yeah, I think that that's where the education plays such a big part. Because you can say, hey, we've created all natural, all organic vegan product. But you're going to have to understand that it might not last as long as the other ones. Yeah, you get all of these great benefits, you know, and it ticks boxes.

Yeah, exactly. I think the main thing comes down to is what do people care the most about. Yeah. And Creating a product designed about what they care the most about. If in two years, maybe the ingredients is more important than the performance, then that completely switches the focus on what we're creating as a product. But we just don't want to get into the habit of creating something that we think is good. That John on the street is like, lads, I don't even want this product. This ain't what I want. So having that balance, I think it.

Sounds like you did a lot of research. So can you tell me a little bit about the kind of customer research and things that you did in the lead up to launching your own range?

Yeah. So this is the fun part of what we do. Where we were lucky enough, we've been doing it three years. We've built up a community. A lot of men. So we've met customers for coffees, we spoke to them on the phone. I've gone out and surveyed just random guys on the street. Everything we could do to just speak to men and then kind of ask them real questions. So not just would you buy this product to be like, why is that important to you? And that's how we come about with men more focused on feeling more confident about themselves rather than looking good. It's the confidence factor. So we've spoke to probably 200 plus people when we started creating our hair styling product. And that's where our complete thoughts changed. We thought organic was so important, but at this stage, it was more the performance. They was like, guys, you need to get that performance right. But we've been from everything from coffees to phone calls to random surveys, anything we could do to talk to people. We've created a Facebook group full of our community and we just send them loads of posts and say, guys, what do you think? Because at the end of the day, we're creating that for them, we're not creating it for us.

It sounds like you're really engaged and I guess, you know, it takes. You have to be quite confident to be able to. To do all that sort of stuff to be a young person in business, you know, talking to people, talking to lots of men about a subject that's traditionally been. Can be a bit tricky with some people. So how has that experience been, I mean, for you guys? I mean, how did you get all this confidence that you have?

We made a lot of mistakes. The perfect example is we started four years ago and in our original plan was to start YouTube, but it took us three years to build up the courage to do it. We only started at the end of Last year, and you could say that. Was that an insecure factor of how will people perceive us? Was that an unconfident factor? So I think the main thing I want to get across is that confidence has been building every day for four years. We weren't like that when we first started. We were quite held back. We was worried about talking to people. We created things that we thought was good that we didn't. And just if you work on something every. It's like the baby thing. If you, if you work on something every day, that confidence just naturally comes. But in no way, shape or form was we like that at the start. It's just come as we've grown as people.

And what do you think is your biggest learning curve in business? Just as my final question, you know, how has it been working with your best friend? I mean, at one of our conferences, someone said, don't ever work with your best friend. But Lorraine and I have been friends for a really, really, really long time. So what have been the kind of biggest ups and the biggest downs?

Oh, biggest up. So biggest up. He's definitely doing it. William, I totally agree that working there, I've got some friends who I know for a fact I could not do this with. But luckily enough, me and Liam just balance each other out very, very well. We're two completely different people. So I suppose that's an up. One of the downs, I suppose, is getting over the mental side. A lot of my challenges all come from mental things. Everything from being impatient to thinking something should be done. Even, you know, we should be here now and we're here and having that perception of that you're not doing good when you actually are. It just growing a business takes time. Every challenge for me has come from my own makeup belief, story in my head, you know, that I think we're not where we should be. And impatience, I think the biggest learning curve from a business point. So anyone who's got a business listen to this, they can is really focused on your customers and retention and the community. I think, you know, we're in the startup world and we're in an accelerator and you hear a lot of make, sell, sell, sells, but no one talks about, okay, you've made that, so how are you treating that person after you've made that? So how are you, what are you doing for them to make them want to come back? How good is your product? We don't talk enough about that. And for me, I'd much rather even some people might think going to have a coffee with a customer is a lot of time consuming. For me, that's the best thing we can do to build the business we want to build. There was a saying that money comes and goes, but community stays around forever and I totally believe in that. I think that would probably be the biggest thing.

Oh, that's great. It's very inspirational talking to you.

Amazing. Thank you.

Thank you so much for joining us. And I will make sure I include the link to all of the regal gentleman's channels and Instagrams in the show notes for this podcast so you can go and have a look at some of the really awesome haircuts yourself. Thanks so much for joining us Josh.

Thank you for having me. I hope everyone has a great day.

I hope you enjoyed the interview with Josh and that it provided some enlightening opinions on male grooming and the male skincare industry once again. If you're interested in one of our award winning online natural and organic cosmetic science courses, then head over to formulabotanica.com and check out our free sample class. Again, thank you so much for listening and thank you for your time.