What Jaimee Vilela learnt building a $3m haircare business

Hair care brand Cooki did not arrive at scale in the way FMCG brands are often expected to, and much of that came down to how its founder chose to grow it. For Jaimee Vilela, scaling was less about acceleration than restraint. There were no agencies, no external capital and no rapid headcount expansion, only a narrow set of deliberate choices, founder-led execution and a close, continuous feedback loop between customer response, creative decisions and commercial outcomes.In this Q&A, Vilela reflects on the decisions she made to keep Cooki capital-light while scaling from $179,000 to $3 million in revenue, the trade-offs behind repositioning the brand beyond its early eco niche, and why evidence has shaped both its performance marketing and its entry into retail.IFMCG: Cooki’s growth has been capital-light and founder-led. What were the most consequential decisions you made in scaling from $179k to $3m without agencies, investors or additional staff and where did you deliberately choose not to scale?JV: I really subscribe to the philosophy that ‘strategy is what you say no to,’ and that became my mantra as we scaled. Bootstrapping forces clarity. Despite coming from a content and editorial background and having a bias towards those channels, I decided very early that Cooki would scale on just two core engines: Meta ads for acquisition, and email for retention. Everything else – PR, SEO, TikTok, Google, Pinterest, UX changes, wholesale, affiliate – was deliberately deprioritised until the business could fund it from profit.Meta became our growth engine. Straight after we bought the business, which was doing four sales a day at the time, I put all my energy into teaching myself media buying, making ads, and iterating until we carved out a ‘honeyhole’ niche where acquisition was consistently profitable. I think channel addiction is a huge trap for founders, particularly those of us who’ve led large marketing teams before and know what ‘best practice’ looks like on paper.Cutting distractions and ruthlessly focusing on your Meta CPA is deeply uncomfortable, but it’s what worked for us. You can fritter so much time and cash away by diluting yourself across too many channels before you’ve found true product-market fit. I had to resist shiny object syndrome every day and avoid getting distracted.Alongside acquisition, I invested heavily in retention and community building via email marketing, with Klaviyo becoming our second-highest revenue channel. Choosing not to outsource during those critical early days gave me direct feedback loops and prevented expensive misalignment with agencies. That hands-on control is what allowed us to scale profitably, not just quickly.IFMCG: You’ve spoken about repositioning Cooki away from a niche ‘eco’ audience. What signals told you the original positioning was limiting growth, and what changed in tone, packaging or creative to unlock the next phase of demand?JV: Gut feel. When we took over the original brand, I knew I wouldn’t buy the product with its current brand and that there was room in the category for something more natural that was also more fun. It was also already named ‘Cooki’, which is obviously quirky and dessert-adjacent, so I wanted to lean into colour and lightheartedness for the brand. I think the day of eco being your core positioning is over – that’s table stakes now; customers expect brands to be more conscious with their packaging decisions. People loved the product once they tried it, but the ‘eco’ framing narrowed down our audience to only those who bought purely based on those principles. It felt worthy rather than desirable – and I knew performance beauty doesn’t grow at scale if it feels like a compromise.We had customer feedback that people weren’t primarily buying Cooki because it was plastic-free; they stayed because it worked better than their liquid shampoo and was also ideal for travel. That told me the product deserved broader positioning.I rebranded in June of 2024 with the new brand platform ‘good, clean, fun’, positioning it as ultra-foaming, high-performance haircare that incidentally happens to be low-tox and plastic-free – not the other way around. Packaging became more colourful and design-led, and creativity leaned into authentic results, and our tone moved away from activism toward assurance. That unlocked stronger Meta performance, lower CPAs, and ultimately made the brand retail-ready.IFMCG: Solid shampoo remains a behavioural shift for many consumers. From your data and customer feedback, what finally converts sceptics, and what misconceptions did you have to design the business around?JV: The biggest misconception is that solid shampoo won’t foam, won’t last, or won’t feel ‘salon-grade’. Almost all scepticism comes down to fear that the product just won’t perform, and occasionally expense is an issue too if people don’t understand how much more concentrated a bar is than a liquid at first glance.I quickly found that what converts people is proof, not persuasion – so video after video of the lather, heroing the thousands of 5-star reviews that talk about softness and shine, and clear messaging around the economical factor and longevity. Once customers understand that a bar can outperform liquid – not just match it – the mental barrier disappears.We also designed the entire business around reducing risk to trial the product: generous returns, education at the point of sale, and creative that shows the product in use rather than talking about sustainability. Once someone tries it, retention takes care of itself – our returning customer rate sits at 40 per cent. So the real challenge isn’t loyalty; it’s getting someone to take that first leap.IFMCG: Your Go Vita rollout came from direct outreach to stores, not traditional wholesale pitching. Why did that grassroots approach work, and what does it suggest about how emerging brands should approach retail partnerships today?JV: I polled a few hundred customers on where they wanted to shop us in store, and the resounding answer was Go Vita – so we knew that was where we needed to be. We were lucky that Go Vita is a co-op, and therefore each store is able to curate an element of their buy locally. This made it lower risk for both them and us to trial a few units per store first, without having to pitch ourselves in at the national buy level. Once we got into our first few stores, we then drove our customers in-store to support us, and the products moved faster than anyone anticipated. There was clearly pent-up demand within our base for skipping online shipping fees and us being more accessible.In terms of rolling out nationally, this happened earlier than expected because demand was visible. Instead of selling a promise to a buyer who then had to take a risk on us, we first created pull at the store level. Scores of customers were already asking for Cooki – and store managers were already trialling it – before the national team had even heard of the range. So that meant the buyer ended up approaching us after we had significant momentum in a dozen stores, rather than the other way around. When we signed with Go Vita as our distributor, we got picked up by 100 new stores in the first month, which usually takes a lot longer, but we’d sent samples and been having active conversations with the stores so they were primed. We became the fastest-selling new brand Go Vita had seen in a decade in our first two months of distribution, because we mobilised our base.I think retailers are increasingly risk-averse, and what they want isn’t a beautiful deck – it’s evidence. Velocity, repeat purchase, and customer advocacy. If you can show that customers are actively pulling your product through the channel, the conversation with buyers changes completely.IFMCG: Meta and email remain your primary growth engines. As performance marketing becomes more crowded and expensive, what have you learned about sustaining conversion and repeat rates without diluting brand or margin?JV: As we’ve all learnt the hard way, you’re only as good as your creative. We’ve maintained our campaigns at the same CPA for two years as we’ve scaled, because we’re wildly strict with ourselves on profitability. We don’t chase volume at the expense of margin, so if spend creeps up, that’s a signal that the creative is not hitting and we need to do better. Chaotic Andromeda updates notwithstanding.We’ve found the best way to keep our ads profitable is by keeping the brand focused on really authentic, review-based creative and leveraging social proof. We treat Meta as our live testing environment, and it teaches us so much about who the customer is and what they respond to. If anything is gimmicky, it won’t work for us. So we’ve definitely worked out our own formula over the years. I think staying on top of algorithm changes and trends within media buying has also been really key. It’s a blend of the creative and the buying structure being right, but ultimately it’s the creative that’s going to get the brand where you want to go.