Female Disruptors: Nicola Wood of Hair Made Easi On The Three Things You Need To Shake Up Your Industry
Women disruptors in business can often be faced with challenges that are fuelled by inequality, gender bias and discrimination. Unconscious gender bias remains a constant barrier to women’s career progression and so it’s important to empower female disruptors by addressing these issues and creating a supportive business environment to challenge all biases. I’m lucky enough to work with some incredible male figures in business who inspire and empower me every day without creating bias. At Hair Made Easi, we thrive for equal opportunities, no matter your gender, sex, religion or race.
As a part of our series about women who are shaking things up in their industry, we had the pleasure of interviewing Nicola Wood.
With more than 35 years of hairdressing and teaching expertise, Nicola Wood, a visionary entrepreneur and seasoned hair professional, launched Hair Made Easi in 2016. Her goal: to simplify salon life. Beginning her career at just 13, Nicola identified a need for user-friendly hair extension tools in the market. Starting with the groundbreaking Easiweft, Hair Made Easi captured the industry’s attention after a successful appearance on BBC Dragons’ Den in 2018. Today, the brand boasts a vast global following and an expansive product line-up of 40+ items, making it the ultimate destination for salons committed to delivering unparalleled client and consumer experiences with industry-leading products, top-notch service, and unwavering support.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
My career in hair started at the age of 13 when I got my first job in a hairdressing salon. I’ve always had a huge passion for hair and worked in the hair industry all my working life. I started in salons, then got into teaching after having children, mainly so I could spend time with them in the school holidays. While working for a local college, teaching, I was headhunted to set up a Hair & Beauty Department at a 6th form college. My passion was always working with hair. There is no better feeling than when you transform someone’s look, giving them confidence as they leave the salon with a smile! It was time to get back in the salon on the shop floor where I belonged, fitting hair extensions, so, I opened a hair extension salon with a friend. I had no client base so had no money to employ a junior and it was during this time that I found it really difficult to organise the hair extensions without asking my client to hold them throughout the fitting. There was a huge lack of user-friendly hair extension tools on the market. There was a real gap in the industry and so I became determined to fill it hence why I decided to start Hair Made Easi in 2016.
Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?
“Hair Made Easi disrupts the industry by offering a carefully-curated, innovative range of high-quality products and tools — we aim to empower hair professionals and salon owners to work smarter, boost revenue, and enhance their clients’ experiences. We have become leaders in the hair market, experiencing double-digit year-on-year growth since 2020 and retailing in over 25,000 salons over the UK. We also have many ‘world first’ products under our belt as a brand and have brought over 40 inventions to the UK salon market including the Easiweft hair extension holder. Our latest consumer-facing invention, the XL Luxury Hair Wrap is 100% bigger than other wraps on the market and is also made from premium, anti-frizz microfibre towel material which provides superior absorbency for faster drying time. We also take pride in manufacturing our products as locally as possible, supporting the local economy, and contributing to a sustainable future by reducing our carbon footprint. Overall as a brand, we have reshaped and disrupted the market by creating state-of-the-art, innovative products and setting new standards that simplify and streamline all aspects of hair extension work.”
Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?
Being a naive, uneducated inventor, I foolishly thought I had everything sown up after designing my first product, the Easiweft. I knew all hair extensions specialists must have been struggling with where to hold their hair extensions and also clip-in hair extension wearers at home needed somewhere to wash, dry style and store their hair extensions. I was going to change the world of hair extensions!
I found a local injection molding tool manufacturer and we started to build our business. I had a meeting with our manufacturer a few months in and I was asked how many we would like to make on our first run? So now I’m thinking, well there’s around 40K hairdressers in the UK and hundreds of thousands globally so we are sure to sell out in no time. I’ll start with 5000! Next, we needed a website and images so a friend helped me with this and after around 6 months from thinking of the idea, it was time to go live on the website! We hit the button and sat back and waited for the orders to start flooding in. We waited, and waited, and 3 weeks later, we sold our first Easiweft! It didn’t take long to realise that I had a heck of a lot to learn. My expectations were ridiculous, I honestly thought the sales would come flooding in because everyone needed an Easiweft in their life. I look back at my business plan and projections and I honestly don’t know how I survived! Overall, this taught me how to be resilient and to never give up — luckily I’m a quick learner and I’m extremely stubborn so this was never an option! It taught me that patience is key and to celebrate every piece of success along the way. Good things come to those who wait so stay determined and maintain your motivation!
We all need a little help along the journey. Who have been some of your mentors? Can you share a story about how they made an impact?
There have been quite a few along the way. My first has to be Gary, my husband. He has been my sounding board every step of the way. He’s listened to all of my crazy ideas and reigned me in every time I’ve got carried away. He’s wiped my tears every time I’ve had a wobble and encouraged me when I’ve needed it most. Without him, there would be no Hair Made Easi and I’m incredibly lucky to have him cheering me on every step of the way.
Chris King, my now business partner, was there from a business perspective. We met at a hair and beauty exhibition when I had designed my second product, the Easibond. I was working my way around the exhibition hall very nervously and Chris greeted me with a big smile and asked ‘what have you got there?’ We hit it off straight away and he placed an order of 1000 units. That was a big turning point for the company and for my confidence as a business woman. It meant someone else understood me and my inventions. We kept in touch and he helped me with the stats I needed for my Dragon’s Den pitch and we’ve been good friends ever since. Fast forward 4 years and it made perfect sense for us to start working together — so Chris is now a director of Hair Hade Easi and we have some huge plans to take the company global.
Two years ago, I was introduced to a finance company called Prestfield Wealth Management — John Myatt has been a godsend. He helped me to think like a successful business woman and helped to put things in place that I didn’t know I needed. He is always on hand for any business advice and has kept me grounded and in full control of the business.
In today’s parlance, being disruptive is usually a positive adjective. But is disrupting always good? When do we say the converse, that a system or structure has ‘withstood the test of time’? Can you articulate to our readers when disrupting an industry is positive, and when disrupting an industry is ‘not so positive’? Can you share some examples of what you mean?
In my opinion, industries that have old-fashioned ways of thinking and are in need of improvement should be challenged and disrupted to move with the times. Causing disruption is positive when you are contributing something new and beneficial that enhances consumer satisfaction. For example, Hair Made Easi recognised the need for simpler, easy-to-use salon tools when there was nothing available on the market and so disrupted the market by designing a long line of innovative, top tier products. We’ve also just disrupted the consumer retail hair market with our new XL Luxury Hair Wrap. We received lots of feedback from friends, family and retailers who have long, thick or textured hair; they constantly struggle to find efficient products that cater for their hair type. The XL Hair Wrap is 100% bigger than other hair towels in the market and is also super-absorbent and gentle too — it’s perfect for everybody.
On the contrary, disruption can be negative when it disregards ethical and environmental issues and fails to offer better alternatives — disruption should aim to provide greater experiences for the target market.
Can you share 3 of the best words of advice you’ve gotten along your journey? Please give a story or example for each.
Patience, analysis and disrupt.
My uncle John is a successful businessman and at the beginning of the journey of HME, I had no patience whatsoever. I wanted sales straight away, I wanted to know how to do everything straight away and I needed world domination as soon as I hit the button on day one of the website launch. My uncle reassured me that it would all happen, it was just a matter of time.
I went on a business course in the first year of trading with the Business Growth Hub, and it was all about the importance of analytics. I didn’t have a clue what to expect as I had no analytical evidence of my business at this point. Now, everything is analysed and it’s such an important part of our success.
After the Dragons Den episode went out, I was contacted by so many people that night and the next day and we had so many visitors to the website that it crashed. One man, Matt Lumb, reached out and wanted to meet to discuss the future of Hair Made Easi. He gave me so much advise and guidance and was the first person to help me realise how much I had disrupted the industry and how much more there was to do to disrupt the hair extension industry further.
We are sure you aren’t done. How are you going to shake things up next?
I can’t give too much away so you’ll have to stay tuned! But now that we have hair extension tools all sown up, our next step is to continue expanding our consumer retail line to prove all hair types a wide range of accessible, innovative products.
In your opinion, what are the biggest challenges faced by ‘women disruptors’ that aren’t typically faced by their male counterparts?
Women disruptors in business can often be faced with challenges that are fuelled by inequality, gender bias and discrimination. Unconscious gender bias remains a constant barrier to women’s career progression and so it’s important to empower female disruptors by addressing these issues and creating a supportive business environment to challenge all biases. I’m lucky enough to work with some incredible male figures in business who inspire and empower me every day without creating bias. At Hair Made Easi, we thrive for equal opportunities, no matter your gender, sex, religion or race.
Do you have a book/podcast/talk that’s had a deep impact on your thinking? Can you share a story with us?
They Ask You Answer’ by Marcus Sheradon is my bible! Sounds dramatic, but I started reading this for the first time about 4 years ago and it had the biggest impact in my career to date. Covid had just hit, I had just spent 20K on a new product and all salons were closed for the foreseeable future. I honestly thought that was the end of the business. All that hard work was for nothing! I was told about this book by a business owner that contacted me to see how I was doing. I will never forget reading the first chapter, it was like someone had flicked a switch. I got my notebook out and started scribbling notes on what I needed to do to change things. The book is all about educating people so that you become the knowledge within your industry. I set up a WhatsApp group with our followers on Instagram and we began to create educational content and we shared it on our Instagram account. No one else was doing this at the time so our following grew extremely quickly. People started sending content they had created to help others with tips and tricks that they had kept to themselves. The hairdressing community became so supportive of each other throughout the lockdown and although it was a horrible time for everyone in the country, the silver lining was that we had time to design and innovate and some of my best designs came from lockdown as it gave me time to step back and think about what the industry needed next.
I have read this book about 6 times now and every time I get something new from it. If you haven’t already read it, I can’t recommend it enough!
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)
If I could inspire a movement, it would be to believe in yourself and to never give up — pick yourself up time and time again when you fall. In business, especially nowadays where there is so much competition, it can be hard to stay motivated when you experience drawbacks. With over 35 years in the industry, my main piece of advice is to keep going and to remember that there is only one you!
Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?
No question is a silly question’ This was something that my favourite teacher in junior school would say to us on a regular basis. Mr. Ashforth allowed us to express ourselves through art, through English Literature, he showed us how to make cameras out of a tin box and we designed cars using a vacuum machine and thin sheets of plastic which was very state of the art back then. He allowed us to ask anything and he always took time to explain things properly and patiently. He was one of the reasons I’ve always loved creating things and why I’ve always been confident to ask anyone anything.
How can our readers follow you online?
Our readers can follow us on our website hairmadeeasi.com, our Instagram @hairmadeeasi and our TikTok @hairmadeeasi
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
