Alanna’s founders shifted focus from several body care products to just one. They share the story of this pivot Sometimes, it is the numbers that do all the talking. Rashi and Ankesh Mehra launched Alanna (beautiful in Greek), which produced body care products from “head to toe,” says Rashi. “I started the business in 2015, where I developed and sold several products like hair care, body wash, lotions, and creams that were all natural and vegan.” Rashi, a marketing postgraduate had eight years of experience working with several well-known firms. However, the “bug” got into her and made her restless. She quit her job and decided that she would make the most of the ‘natural” wave that is dominating people’s minds. “At the very outset, I decided to use my energies to market my products rather than manufacture as well. “This is because manufacturing is like running another business. You have to look into quality, raw materials, machinery, labour and so on. I searched for contract manufacturers and zeroed in on one from Gujarat. He was in sync with my philosophy of natural products and also had some experience working for a well-known cosmetic company. Our warehouse is in Pune. With him manufacturing my products based on my formulations, I could focus all my time on marketing.” Initially, she chose to sell her products on marketing platforms, Amazon and Nykaa. Alanna was doing fairly well till…her husband Ankesh who is also the co-founder and chief financial officer (CFO) noticed that among the body washes, shampoos and lotions, their lip wash was doing very well. Says Ankesh, “In fact, the lip wash made up for 70% of our sales. This was certainly telling us something.” And that something was to switch over and focus completely on lip care products instead of manufacturing several products. According to Rashi, our facial skin has 15 to 16 cell layers whilst the skin on our lips has just three to five cell layers. They do not have sweat glands or any sebaceous glands that help keep them moist. So they are the most vulnerable part of the facial skin yet most used and abused. “I developed a lip wash that could cleanse the skin of the lips and moisturise it without causing damage.” Says Rashi, “I knew from my personal experience as well as my friends and family that lips are the most used and yet we have nothing to care for them. Some years back people developed a face wash since the skin on the face needed special care, but why not the lips which are more fragile? Which is why I developed a lip wash and from the numbers looks like women too felt that they wanted something special for their lips but the market had nothing.” Except for lip balms. That according to Rashi “Simply provides moisture to the lips. But what about lipstick removal, and washing up? Women were looking for more for their lips.” In 2019 the couple decided it was time to pivot their business. They soon stopped production of all their other skin and hair care products and focussed on just the lips. More lip products Rashi in 2020 created a lip mask. “I added among other things peptides that helped in hyper-pigmentation as well as preserve collagen.” Bingo! This product was a big hit. Soon her marketing mind realised that using just Amazon and Nykaa was not enough. “We built our own website too and added a WhatsApp number so our customers could communicate with us directly.” Says she, “Women messaged pictures of their lips and told us about the problems they were facing.” This communication reinforced Rashi’s hunch that the skin on the lips was a neglected area and women wanted products designed especially for their lips. Creating products from scratch After the launch of the earlier avatar of Alanna, Rashi realised that she needed deeper knowledge of the business. She enrolled for a course at Formula Botanica and got certified as an organic formulator. With her personal experience and training, she began work on creating her butter mask for lips. “The lip wash took me eight months of trial and error till I got it right. We developed two separate formulations for men and women. It took me eight months of trial and error till I got the lip wash right. The butter mask took just three months. For both these products we spent about ₹3 lakh in research and development (R&D).” Like every product manufacturer, one has to know what will be the shelf life, the stability of the product and so on. Initially, Rashi would send this to a testing lab in Mumbai. “These tests are very expensive and one has to repeat these tests every time you make a formulation till you get it right. So once we reached a certain level, we partnered with the lab in Mumbai for the development process.” After pivoting to lip care products only in 2021, Alanna now has 10 products for lip care and cosmetics including one for men. “In fact, 40% of our lip wash is used by men,” she says. Funding While the lip wash took eight months and ₹3 lakh, the duo has invested ₹20 lakh in product development so far. Their revenues have been encouraging at ₹3.33 crore last year and a sale of over 100,000+ products in the last two years. Sales from their website account for 70% while e-commerce marketplaces account for 30%. Says Ankesh, “As we move forward we need to invest more and so we raised ₹1.1 crore in angel funding between FY 2021-22 & FY 2022-23. The march ahead From identifying a need in the market, using her skills and learning, developing products, and pivoting at the right time, Alanna has come a long way. But still has miles to go. Says Rashi, “We want to be a globally trusted brand that has lip care as well as cosmetic products. If you think of lips, you should think Alanna.” While they have plans to get into global markets as well, they have their ear to the ground. “When we started our lip care brand we realised that we needed to have our own website which paid us rich dividends in terms of insights and customer relation building. Now we realise that people want ease of buying. Everyone wants things immediately that is seeing the rise of quick commerce. So we have also enrolled our brand on these platforms as well.” While they do realise that competition is fierce, the truth is that Alanna was the first company in the world to have developed a lip wash. It is possible to outthink the global sharks, if you understand your customer’s needs better and work at meeting them. Wash your lips and watch this space!