Rajkumari Sharma Tankha
After her schooling from Welham Girls School, Dehradoon, Tressmart Founder Sargam Dhawan Bhayana moved to New York for further studies, where she graduated from SUNY, Buffalo, the State University of New York in 2016.
Back in India, she was raring to go. She had envisioned herself as a businesswomen with her own beauty and hair care brand, and she begun working for it. A chance meeting with the promoters of DAFNI, the hair straightening ceramic brush, motivated her to set up Tressmart Marketing Pvt. Ltd (in February 2016), a distribution company. Six years later, Tressmart carries premium and luxury skin, hair care and beauty products, like DAFNI, MakeUp Eraser, and stylIdeas.
“Initially, I put in my money, and also took the support of my family, but soon Tressmart started generating revenue, which was then put back into the company for a smooth flow of operations, marketing, and sales,” she says.
In 2020, Tressmart took two major steps. One, it launched its e-commerce platform for hair appliances, and two, it launched Glow by Tressmart – a portal for skin care and makeup.
“Currently, we are retailing our beauty and wellness products at salons and stores like Kunchals, JCB Salon, Salon Magnifique, Salon BeSpoke, Fragrance Lounge,” says Sargam, adding that plans are afoot to have Tressmart’s own range of hair and skin care products and stores. Excerpts from an interview:
How has been the journey in the last six years, business wise?
Full of ups and downs, learnings and experiences, adapting and adopting new strategies and ways of working our way up to where we are today.
In 2020, our innovative strategies that focused on customer service and creative marketing solutions resulted in a 138% increase in revenue. The next year (2021) was even better. The company saw 1120 per cent growth, after which we launched StylIdeas. Since then, Tressmart is moving from strength to strength.
The last six years have taught us that the Indian market is extremely volatile and price sensitive, and hence one has to always remain on toes. Prior to the pandemic, only 25 per cent of beauty brands sold through digital platforms globally; however, in the last two years, there has been more than 85 per cent increase in beauty industry sales through digital/e-commerce platforms. So competition is tough.
What sort of changes have you seen in customers’ demands so far as hair appliances are concerned?
People these days are far more aware and open to experimenting and investing in hair appliances than what they used to be a few years back. In the comfort of their home, they can style their own hair with various hair appliances available in the market from tongs to curlers to straighteners.
With the digital medium seeing a boom these days and YouTube tutorials teaching people about different or new products and how to use guides taking the centrestage, people are updated about the current/ new or the fastest selling products and tools in the market.
With so many clean and natural brands available, how do you pick and choose the ones for your platform?
The market these days is flooded with products that are vegan, organic, cruelty-free and natural. Post-pandemic, people have become more conscious. They evaluate and pay more attention to what they are actually putting inside their bodies, and invest in good quality products which are reasonably priced. The market is competitive and so are the ever increasing number of products. People are also conscious of their environment and hence want to go for products which are specifically clean and sustainable.
Keeping these needs and demands in mind, we have been conscious enough to choose products that cater to our customers while maintaining their pricing as well.
The MakeUp Eraser is a game changing product that removes makeup without using chemicals or oils and uses only water making it sustainable and Eco Friendly. Created by Elexsis McCarthy, this magical product is a patented discovery that actually protects Mother Earth, one less makeup wipe at a time.
You tied up with MakeUp Eraser in the thick of pandemic… that was a bold decision. What was the customers’ response to it?
We have always been patrons of a clean and sustainable environment. People are quite vocal about their concerns when it comes to products that are eco friendly and so are we.
We tied up with MakeUp Eraser because we wanted to bring innovation to the Indian market. Eyes were bound to be raised with this never-seen-before product entering the Indian beauty market. MakeUp Eraser is a brand from the US and is dedicated to creating the most sustainable makeup removal product using only water, and this impressed us. We truly believe we can eliminate the third most wasteful product in the world: WIPES. The Original MakeUp Eraser was the first ever reusable makeup remover in the world and was founded by Elexsis McCarthy in 2013. It is said that just one Original MakeUp Eraser is equivalent to 3,600 makeup wipes. Another plus is, it’s double sided – to erase and exfoliate.
All these features made us take the decision to go ahead with the tie-up. Our happiness knew no bounds when our customers welcomed this product with open arms.
How has been 2022 so far, considering the markets opened up after the pandemic?
After two years of pandemic, 2022 came with a ray of hope and a better future for our industry. Our industry is resilient and has seen a radical transformation as a whole. This sector has expanded through digital channels and a significant drift has been seen in shifting to premium and specialty products. Globally, more than 85 per cent of sales of beauty products are online, but more importantly, the development of online sales has changed the potential market reach of brands that once were considered as selective.
What are your future plans?
We are currently working on expanding our offline channel through retailers, salons and collaborating with the hospitality industry for quick and efficient use of our products.
Our immediate plan is to create a professional panel of skin and hair specialists that would help guide our customers to choose the right products for their skin and hair care needs.
We are also working on launching smaller and lesser known brands that boast innovative products. We also plan to launch our own line of hair and skin care range targeting customers belonging to the age group of 15-60, both men and women. And we also have plans to launch our own stores.
Further, we are also working on introducing the option of Product comparison on all our platforms because we do realise that it can get confusing and intimidating for our customers to choose between multiple brands that sell products that target the same concern for skin and hair care needs.
We also have our eyes on Baby products and Apparel market – we would like to start “Glow baby” and “Glow Fashion” ranges.
