KEY TAKEAWAYS
- ✓Lead with product performance, not values. Customers buy because shampoo bars work, not because they're eco-friendly. The sustainability angle is a bonus, not the headline.
- ✓Two channels only: Meta ads for acquisition, email for retention. Deliberately deprioritize everything else until those two are dialed in.
- ✓Bootstrapping forces clarity. When you can't throw money at every channel, you're forced to figure out what actually works.
Hello! Who are you and what are you working on?
Jaimee Vilela's path to building a $3 million haircare brand started with a health crisis. In her early thirties, she was diagnosed with Stage 4 endometriosis, a condition that forced her to rethink everything about her lifestyle, including the products she put on her body. After years of working in magazine publishing and beauty marketing, where she'd been surrounded by high-end products loaded with synthetic chemicals, Jaimee went on a mission to remove inflammatory ingredients from her daily routine.
The transition wasn't easy. Most "clean" or "low-tox" beauty products available at the time were expensive, performed poorly, or both. Jaimee tried dozens of natural shampoos and found most of them left her hair feeling waxy, flat, or just wrong. Then she stumbled across solid shampoo bars and found a small Australian business selling them that actually worked. The bars lathered well, cleaned effectively, and didn't require plastic packaging.
In 2020, that small shampoo bar business came up for sale. Jaimee saw an opportunity to apply her marketing expertise to a product she genuinely believed in. She bought the business for a modest sum. At the time, it was generating around $170,000 per year in revenue, primarily through a small but loyal customer base and some organic social media presence. There was no paid advertising, no email marketing strategy, and no systematic approach to growth.
Jaimee's marketing background immediately shaped her approach. She understood, from years in the beauty industry, that consumers make purchase decisions based on product performance first and values second. So instead of leading with the eco-friendly angle, which is what most natural beauty brands did, she repositioned Cooki around performance. The tagline became "good, clean, fun." The messaging emphasized that the shampoo bars were ultra-foaming, salon-quality, and genuinely effective. The fact that they were also plastic-free, vegan, and low-tox was presented as a bonus, not the primary selling point.
This positioning decision was counterintuitive in the sustainable beauty space, where most brands lead with their environmental mission. But Jaimee had watched enough green beauty brands struggle because they prioritized virtue signaling over product experience. Customers might feel good about buying eco-friendly products once, but they won't repurchase if the product doesn't actually work well. By leading with performance, Cooki attracted customers who cared about their hair first and appreciated the sustainability story second.
The growth strategy was deliberately narrow. Jaimee decided Cooki would scale on just two channels: Meta ads for customer acquisition and email (via Klaviyo) for retention. Everything else, including PR, SEO, TikTok, Google Ads, Pinterest, wholesale, and affiliate programs, was consciously deprioritized until the two core channels were working profitably. This focus was born from bootstrapping constraints. Without outside capital, Jaimee couldn't afford to experiment on six channels simultaneously. She had to pick the ones most likely to work and master them.
The Meta ads strategy started small, with a daily budget of around $50 AUD. Jaimee tested creative constantly, shooting most of the content herself with her phone. She found that authentic, founder-led content outperformed polished studio ads. Videos of her explaining the product, showing the lather, and talking about why she created Cooki resonated more than lifestyle imagery or influencer content. The direct-response approach worked because the product had a clear, demonstrable benefit: shampoo bars that foam like traditional shampoo.
On the email side, Jaimee built flows for welcome sequences, abandoned carts, post-purchase follow-ups, and win-back campaigns. The retention engine was critical because shampoo bars have a natural repurchase cycle. A bar typically lasts 60 to 80 washes, which means customers need to reorder every few months. Email marketing kept Cooki top of mind and made reordering effortless.
The financial trajectory was dramatic. In 2023, Cooki did $170,000 in revenue. In 2024, that number jumped to $1.1 million. And by 2025, the company was on track for its first $3 million year. The growth was almost entirely organic in the sense that it was funded by profits, not investment. Jaimee reinvested revenue into increased ad spend and inventory, creating a flywheel where more sales funded more ads which funded more sales.
The team grew carefully. Jaimee hired for fulfillment first, then customer service, then content creation. By the time Cooki hit $3 million in revenue, the team was still only five people. There were no agencies handling the ads or email. Jaimee managed the Meta campaigns herself, wrote the email copy herself, and directed the creative herself. She credits this founder-led approach with keeping the brand voice authentic and the customer feedback loop tight.
Jaimee's biggest mistake was the June 2024 rebrand timing. She relaunched the brand identity, including new packaging, new photography, and a new website, during what turned out to be a critical scaling period. The rebrand temporarily disrupted the Meta ad performance because the new creative needed to be tested from scratch, and the website changes affected conversion rates. She lost about three weeks of momentum during a period when the business was growing rapidly. The lesson was to never rebrand during a growth sprint; save it for a slower period when you can absorb the disruption.
What makes Jaimee's story particularly instructive is the proof that DTC e-commerce brands can still scale without venture capital, agency partners, or complex multi-channel strategies. In an era where most DTC advice involves hiring a growth agency, running influencer campaigns, and diversifying across every social platform, Cooki scaled to millions by doing less, better. Two channels, founder-led creative, and relentless focus on product performance over brand values.
The business continues to grow. Jaimee is expanding the product line into conditioner bars and treatment products, entering wholesale distribution selectively, and starting to explore international markets. But the core philosophy hasn't changed: make products that work exceptionally well, talk about them honestly, and let the results speak for themselves. From a health crisis to a $3 million brand, Jaimee built Cooki the hard way and the smart way, without taking a dollar from anyone.