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50 March 2014 | beautystorebusiness.com what our customers need. The one thing they needed was something to help their hair; with chemical treatments and color- ing, hair was getting drier. I wanted to create something that would work based upon the history of using pure oils in your hair. My grandmother put oils in her hair every dayÑitÕs a tradition in IndiaÑand she had amazing healthy hair. I knew if I created a product, I wanted it to imme- diately help hair issues and provide both short- and long-term benefits. I started with about two SKUs, including a pure oil blend, and we had incredible growth. Now we have about 20 productsÑskin care as well as hair care. We just launched our new shampoo and conditioner and an innovative facial-steam product. The brand continues to grow. It has a life of its own! I always consider it my third baby. [She has two boys.] ItÕs something I always wanted to do. Each product developed is tested and created to solve a beauty concern. Also, the beauty of having an ecom- merce channel is that you can communicate with your customers and get instant feedback. During the first iteration of the hair oil, some people said the fragrance was too strong, so we immediately had that reduced. You can get real-time info and adjust according to customers and what they want, which is pretty innovative. Are there heightened concerns about using credit cards online after recent security breaches with major retailers? Since Internet ecommerce started, the biggest concern has always been breach of security data. So within the online commerce world, weÕve already dealt with it and know how to handle it. We have encryption so customer data can never be seen. ThereÕs always a concern, but itÕs about setting up your security structure properly and really valuing customer privacy. As a consumer, IÕd be more hesitant to use my card offlineÑwhere people can see and copy the numberÑthan online, which has so many security measures that have been in place for so many years and tested. But you always have to be careful. What about when shipping companies can't keep up with demand for increasing online orders—which happened over the past holiday season? It was crazyÑIÕve never seen UPS and FedEx experience such a failure. Even my own holiday packages didnÕt arrive on time! The holidays are a big time of year for us; fourth-quarter sales are usually double the previous quarterÕs sales. Since we started in 2007, every holiday our No. 1 priority is to assure customers that they get their holi- day presents on time. This was the first year where we had a number of complaints about not getting packages, particularly second-day and next-day packages. We contract with UPS, which assures us of guaranteed delivery times, but obviously it didnÕt manage its packages well due to an increase in ecommerce sales. Every retailer was offering free second-day or low-cost next-day shipments, and UPS probably didnÕt project. As a site, we have to handle customer service really well: apologize, offer credit and refund any shipping cost in the hopes theyÕll come back to us. But it was terrible. Please tell us about your StyleBell.com Pro Program. This was in beta in spring of last year and launched over the summer. IÕve had this in the back of my mind for almost three years. I talked to manufacturers that wanted to sell products only to beauty professionals and looked at customer analytics. The increase in professionals was growing drastically, so we created the professional program based on salon/stylist surveys and what Continued on page 66 T h e O n l i n e E m p r e s s . i n d d 5 0 The Online Empress.indd 50 2 / 4 / 1 4 1 : 3 5 P M 2/4/14 1:35 PM