How a Gym Lesson Inspired a Haircare Business
A story brought to you by Cliff Standard Co.
Designers, entrepreneurs, and inventors find inspiration in all sorts of places. Isaac Newton discovered gravity by thinking about apples falling from trees. Marcel Proust wrote In Search of Lost Time after nibbling a madeleine. And Kia-Shun Voltz, CEO of ShampooTime found the answer to a nagging problem that had evaded families for years while watching her daughter at gymnastics. This idea has lead Kia-Shun to international success.
Back in 2016, Kia-Shun was washing her daughter Karter’s thick hair. Karter had shampoo in her eyes and Kia-Shun was suffering from an aching back and sore knees. Wash day was a weekly pain, a problem that Kia Shun’s own mother had struggled with.
Should it be this difficult? Kia-Shun needed to figure out a way to avoid pulling out her own hair and make wash day pleasant for both of them. She trawled the internet for some kind of product to help make it easier. “There’s gotta be something to help me with these wash days,” she thought. But she couldn’t find anything.
Time marched on and the difficult wash days just became part of life. But after four more years of struggle, she finally had enough. “A thought in my mind was like, what are you waiting on? Something has got to change. This is your opportunity,” she said. “I just started drawing what it should look like.”
She took the plunge and pursued her dream. By this point, Kia-Shun could think of little else and struggled to focus at work. She sketched some drafts, but something was missing from the designs. They weren’t quite right. So she continued to iterate. And then one day, while picking up Karter from gymnastics, she saw her daughter peacefully reclining on a gym mat.
“She doesn’t lay on the counter like that,” Kia-Shun said. “She was so free, relaxed.”
It was the Eureka moment: The Original Shampoo Mat was born.
“A thought in my mind was like, ‘what are you waiting on? Something has got to change. This is your opportunity,’”
Based on the gym mat, she designed a product that could be placed by the kitchen sink, to comfortably support children’s heads and necks, allowing water and shampoo to run away from the face. Parents wouldn’t be wrestling over a bathtub in pain. Kids could be distracted with a smartphone or tablet secured to a bar overhead.
Kia-Shun admits that at first, it started as a craft project. She had no experience building anything like this before; she didn’t know how to thread a needle, let alone sew. Encouraged by her aunt to learn, she taught herself how to stitch by watching videos on YouTube. No time was wasted sourcing materials and experimenting with different types of foam, vinyl, and PVC pipes for the overhead bar.
She worked on the project every night while her daughter was asleep, after a full day’s work. Eventually, the first viable prototype of The Original Shampoo Mat was created. “It was really ugly,” she said with a smile, referencing the first complete version. “But that was it; I knew it.” She posted a picture of her creation on Karter’s Instagram page (which has some 30,000 followers), and it quickly went viral around the world.
“Here at Tyler Station, everything has been amazing because everybody’s so supportive of one another...”
It was so popular that almost immediately people tried to copy the design. Kia-Shun’s aunt took notice and prompted her to take the photo down until she could secure a patent. “I didn’t realize it at the time, but she was right,” she said. After a lengthy and expensive legal process, Kia-Shun secured the patent rights which has helped her successfully ward off imitators.
Orders came in faster than they could be fulfilled. Initially, Kia-Shun was making the mats at home, using an electric carving knife to cut the foam. Her house was always strewn with raw materials. She needed a base to work from.
Kia-Shun first discovered Tyler Station while visiting The TX Studio, where Karter was having a photoshoot. Soon after, she met with Monte Anderson and found a space for her to move her homegrown operations. Around the same time, she secured a manufacturer and ran her first-ever Black Friday sale. While taking her first real vacation in years, she couldn’t help but watch as she sold thousands of Shampoo Mats in just two days. “I’ll never forget that moment,” she said.
Just like that, her business truly began to take off.
“Here at Tyler Station, everything has been amazing because everybody’s so supportive of one another,” she said. The community here has helped to kickstart her project. For example, the woodworking team at Stash Design volunteered to manufacture part of the first mats.
She credits social media as the springboard to success, but it wouldn’t be without help from others, such as Chuck and Tom, two mentors from Score. The platform connects small business owners with more experienced professionals, who offer advice to owners of start-ups.
Starting with just $200 to spend on materials, Kia-Shun has since amassed a revenue of almost $1m in two years. ShampooTime was a hit. TV appearances and multiple awards followed. Household name celebrities, including Serena Williams and some of The Real Housewives of Atlanta, are paying customers. Products have been purchased around the world.
One pleasant surprise was to learn that a portion of her customer base were parents of children with autism. One parent told her that her daughter screamed throughout because she didn’t like her hair being touched. But since purchasing the mat, her kid would lay back and watch the screen in silence. Other parents in similar situations have praised Kia-Shun’s idea.
With Tyler Station as a base, Kia-Shun dreams of expanding her brand, adding shampoos, conditioners and styling products, ultimately making the ShampooTime into a household name. “One day, when you tell your kid it's time for bath time, every product that you use will be shampoo time,” she said.
Considering her determination so far, her success looks likely to continue.
