An Interview with Hayley Barna, Co-Founder of Birchbox:  A Skincare Sampling Success Story  

A typical week for Hayley Barna is one not unlike that of many hard-working, professional women: busy workdays packed with staff one-on-ones, strategic planning sessions, and the occasional open air meeting in the park (it is finally spring in New York, after all), capped off by dinner with her husband and a stroll with the dog, with a few days of exercise squeezed somewhere between (she’s an avid SoulCycle fan). The big difference? Barna is the co-founder of Birchbox, the roughly five-year-old beauty sampling subscription service that’s practically single-handedly revolutionized how we can try – and buy – beauty and grooming products. Though her day-to-day is somewhat predictable, there’s nothing typical about being at the head of a tremendously successful young global company of nearly three hundred employees.

A Big Idea in a Box

While Birchbox does not disclose figures, estimates put their revenues at between $100 and $200 million annually – a big leap for the company Barna created with business partner and fellow Harvard Business School grad Katia Beauchamp just five short years ago. The two divide responsibilities at Birchbox, with Beauchamp’s focus leaning toward the external – PR, partnerships and business development – and Barna managing the internal side of operations, technology and customer service.

The company’s rise was rapid, but not without challenges. In fact, says Barna, “It was crazy! It was a total roller-coaster with growing pains all along the way as it relates to people, process, and understanding your customer.” She cites internal growth as one of their biggest stumbling blocks. “Early on we definitely weren’t hiring fast enough. Business was growing really quickly. We were busy serving the customers, but it was really important for us at that point to bring in talented, helpful people who could help us grow even bigger, so that was definitely a learning point – to make time for hiring,” she says.

Barna also received a crash course in developing the process side of the business in those early days. “When you start, you end up doing a lot of things manually. You don’t have time to build the perfect system, and you can push things to a breaking point. You’ve got to notice them and think, ‘maybe now is the time to invest in technology or systems to improve things.’” Her advice to entrepreneurs in the thick of the startup phase: understand that mistakes happen, but be aware of those errors and embrace them calmly for what they are: an opportunity to learn. “Because when you’re running a fast-growing startup, if you were to take the time to make everything perfect, you would leave a lot of opportunity on the table. You need to prioritize, and know what’s critical, and be OK with some things being handled later,” she advises.

Though Birchbox has advanced beyond the initial startup phase, successful growth also presents its own new challenges. “We run a really big, complex business now,” says Barna. “We have offices in four different countries (the U.S., France, Spain and the U.K.),  and close to three hundred employees, so a lot of my time is spent thinking about how to create clear communication of strategy, how to make sure people have the resources that they need, and that they’re working on the right stuff. That’s what gets me out of bed in morning: figuring out how to get the right info to the right people at the right time. “

“Open For Beautiful”

The Birchbox concept was created with the intent of “helping people find the best beauty and grooming products for them by being the most inspiring, effective place to shop for products in the category,” explains Barna. Their website breaks down the essence of Birchbox in a nutshell: Try, Learn, Buy.  While not their official slogan, Barna believes it really best describes their business model. Here’s how it works:

1. Try: Customers try products via a personalized subscription service.

2. Learn: Empower people with the information that they need to understand products or trends, including edit team active on social media

3. Buy: After sampling, customers “find their product love match.”

With a healthy assortment of thousands of products including prestige brands, cruelty-free and organic  items, many of them exclusive to Birchbox, “discovery is definitely part of the value proposition, whether it’s a new brand or a new type of product that they’ve never used before,” says Barna.

Funding Beauty

A crucial element to the success of any startup is securing funding, a topic on which Barna is very well versed by now. “The process has been really different at each stage of our business,” she says. “Early on, it was actually pretty difficult to raise money. What we were pitching was very new and different, and the people whom we were pitching to, we realized in retrospect, was anyone who was an investor, and we should’ve been more targeted in terms of talking to people who had experience and interest in our specific category. But ultimately, we were able to find those right people, and able to pitch to them at the right time in our business, when we really had a lot of momentum.”

She reflects also on how the process has changed as Birchbox has grown. “Later on in the business’s life cycle, it becomes more about the metrics and the numbers, and less about the vision and the dream. It’s about the results both historically and what the projections are. I think my advice for when you’re in that phase is to really know your stuff and be prepared, and balance the numbers with the big vision, and be really confident in what the business can achieve.”

What was Barna’s personal experience as a woman seeking funding? “In so many ways, being a woman and someone who consumes products in the category that we’ve built was essential –i.e.,  how could we have ever done this if we weren’t female? –  but it could sometimes be a handicap. I don’t know if it’s so much who we are, as much as most people in the investor community are men – they’re the vast majority – and it’s harder for them to make confident investment decisions in a category that they don’t understand as consumers. SO, you have to explain a little bit more, and get them educated about why would someone want to sign up for something like Birchbox, if they don’t understand it intuitively.”

Going Global

While Birchbox was still ramping up after only two years in existence, Barna and Beauchamp made the leap to acquire Joliebox in 2012, a Paris-based beauty sampling outfit similar to Birchbox. What prompted such a rapid global expansion? “It was really because we’ve always felt that the Birchbox business model makes sense to expand internationally, and we had (to make) the decision whether we would do that on our own, by hiring people in new countries,” she explains. “Instead, when we found the Joliebox team, they were people that we loved and would have hired — and they’d built a great business, so we felt it was a good way to expedite the process.”

The biggest challenge to the add? Streamlining the business throughout the Birchbox operation. “It was pretty early in our business life cycle — overnight adding three offices, three different countries, employees who aren’t sitting in the same building every day. So we had to think a lot about, first and foremost, cultural integration, and secondly, the process, and making sure that we really felt like one business,” says Barna.

Since Birchbox isn’t entirely alone in the beauty box delivery space, it’s easy to wonder if they’re prepared to make further acquisitions if a competitor challenges their position. “We were the first and the biggest, and we have a big lead, but there are a lot of subscription box companies now out there. We really think about our competition being more of traditional retailers – department stores and specialty stores. Our primary focus is growing organically through having great products that people love and want to talk about.” Still, Barna says, “We wouldn’t be opposed to making another acquisition if it was for the right reasons.” 

Glowing Growth Projections

With so much success and tremendous growth behind Birchbox already, what does the future hold? “We’re always working on new things,” says Barna.  “We’re thinking about more international expansion, we’re learning a ton about offline retail in our SoHo store, we’re working on plans for more pop-ups or potentially more permanent locations, and really thinking about the customer experience at the core of Birchbox.” In other words, they’re not focusing on just one thing; they’re focusing on everything.

And if anyone has the momentum (not to mention the track record) to do it successfully, it’s Barna and Beauchamp. From enhanced packaging, ingredient-conscious search filters (“that’s definitely where the customer is going”), and new sample choice options to expanding the mix of shopping opportunities for the Birchbox customer vis-à-vis  mobile, online and brick-and-mortar shopping, Barna and Beauchamp are covering all their beauty bases as they look to the future. 

And the Best Part Is…

There’s no question that Birchbox is thus far a tremendous success story for Barna. But what’s been most rewarding? The words spilled out of her enthusiastically: “It has been so much fun to take something from an idea, and make it a reality. My favorite part of the job is a balance between the people I get to work with every day who are not just my closest friends but are really talented, awesome people, the impact that I know we’re having on our customers in terms of the confidence that we’re inspiring, and the joy that a Birchbox arriving on their doorstep can bring to them.”

What one bit of advice or words or wisdom does she wish someone had given her in the beginning? With barely a pause, she replies, “It’s going to be so worth it!”

Photo: TechCrunch Disrupt NY 2014