LIZZIE Carter quit her job while on maternity leave to launch her haircare range, juggling a newborn while trying to run a business – but is now running her own company with a turnover of £500,000.
Lizzie, 32, spent her childhood trying to tame her frizzy mop, so decided to create the products which she had searched for her entire life.
The mum to Ettie, now 19-months-old, created Only Curls as a ‘side hustle’ while working full-time as a fashion designer.
She spoke exclusively to Fabulous Digital for #BOSSINGIT, our series about ordinary women who have launched incredible businesses.
She was 29 in 2016 when she launched the curly towel, using £500 from her own savings to get a factory to make a sample run.
As the sales kept coming in, Lizzie continually re-invested into her business, and in 2017 she launched her Only Curls haircare range – while on maternity leave.
The first year of sales saw a turnover of £11,000, the following year it was £180,000, and so far Lizzie has hit £500,000 this year.
With the business a roaring success, she decided to quit her job to juggle motherhood and the business, which was nominated for a Vogue Beauty Award earlier this year and counts singer Ella Eyre among its fans.
Lizzie, from Mortlake, London, explained: “I have really curly hair. I’d spent most years battling my curls and trying to figure out how to make the most of them really.
“I spent a lot of time straightening my hair, brushing my hair – doing all these things that are really bad for curls.
“I’ve battled with it their whole life, always trying to make it less frizzy and straighten it.”
She kick-started her business on Instagram, and had amassed around 10,000 followers on social media when the towel launched, which she then sent out to influencers.
After coming up with the name in the pub and realising the website domain was available, Lizzie snapped it up.
She said: “I remember launching the website and feeling so excited, but then nothing happened for a couple hours.
“Of course at this point you begin to doubt yourself, but then when my phone buzzed with the first sale it gave me the confidence that I was going to be able to make it work.”
As the orders came flooding in, Lizzie would stay awake into the small hours working on her business.
The mum, who lives with Ettie’s dad, event co-ordinator Hugo Lewis, 37, said: “I would wake up, get ready, I would pass the post office on the way to the tube and take the boxes there.
“I’d get to work for 9am and do my full-time job.
“I’d leave about 7 – 8pm, get home at night and work on Only Curls, packing the orders and then take them again the next day.
“It was hard to really grow it at that point because my full-time job was taking up so much of my time.
“But it was slowly gaining some traction and people were noticing us as a brand on Instagram.
“And I’d be on Instagram on my commute, with Instagram you’ve got to be active and just building relationships.”
All the orders were sent out in pink boxes, and Lizzie’s flat turned into a distribution centre.
She said: “When I started it I was in a one bedroom flat with my boyfriend and we would pack them in living room.”
As her business began taking off, Lizzie started to think about how she could take it to the next level, and set about creating her range of haircare products, Hydrating Curl Creme and Enhancing Curl Gel, made with no sulphates, silicones and isn’t tested on animals.
She said: “To begin with I was just selling the towel, then I got to the point where I thought I could turn this into a business.
“I had an idea of what I wanted the hair products to be, what ingredients I wanted, how I wanted them to feel and what I wanted them to do.”
The product development process took a year, and Lizzie continued to build her brand online and sell the towels alongside her day job – and she also fell pregnant.
The couple moved to a two-bed flat – and the pink boxes came with them.
She said: “I was finishing work, coming here, six months pregnant, decorating the house, getting back home at 11pm, packing the boxes.”
Lizzie went on maternity leave in November 2017, giving birth to Ettie the following month.
But the orders were waiting for them when they returned from hospital.
Lizzie recalled: “I remember coming back from hospital and me, my mum, my dad, Hugo, were all packing the backlog of orders.
“I was in labour for about two days, so there were quite a few orders to pack when we got back, and we all chipped in.”
While on maternity leave, she prepared for the launch of her haircare range, which came out last February when Ettie was only three months old, while Lizzie still had “baby brain”.
As Lizzie had been building up her online presence – now boasting 76,000 Instagram followers – she had an existing customer base “excited” to get their hands on the new products.
As the range expanded, their house became more cluttered with boxes – as well as everything for the baby.
Black Friday saw hundreds of orders come in and their entire flat was full of packaging, and Lizzie needed reinforcements.
She said: “Every spare floor space in my flat was covered with pink boxes. It was quite amazing.”
Eventually they outsourced packing, with Lizzie saying: “I’ve got my house back and timing wise, it worked out really nicely around the time Ettie started walking.
“So there was just no way I could pack the orders here now. She would be taking everything out of the boxes.”
As her maternity leave came to an end last May, Lizzie realised she was making enough to quit.
With Ettie now in nursery two days a week, Lizzie uses the time to work on the business, as well as when Ettie’s napping and in the evenings.
She said: “I look back now and think, how did I do it.
“There were times I remember struggling to get her to sleep and knowing I had work to do and getting her in the pram and walking her up and down the street until she went to sleep and rushing in and packing the orders, it has been tough at times.
“There’s been times I’m crying because I have a hundred orders to pack and I don’t want to stay up until 3am doing it.”
Despite the challenges, Only Curls expanded to include the All Curl Cleanser and All Curl Conditioner.
And the brand is launching three new products next year, with fans going wild for the sell-out range online.
You can find out more about Lizzie’s range at OnlyCurls.com.
In last week’s Bossing It, we spoke to woman who raised by a single mum but went on to make millions with her gold and diamond-encrusted turbans.
