1. Be authentic in your story: Connecting with your audience on a personal level fosters growth and resonance. Philomina's success illustrates how authenticity leads to genuine community engagement.
2. Leverage e-commerce for direct connection: E-commerce provides deeper consumer involvement compared to traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Philomina emphasizes that face-to-face communication enhances revenue and customer retention.
3. Innovate continuously to retain customers: Regular product innovation keeps consumers engaged and loyal. By introducing seasonal items, Philomina meets changing consumer demands and encourages repeat business.
4. Create content with substance: Avoid posting just for the sake of it. Each piece of content should inspire, inform, or entertain. Philomina's strategy ensures her content is impactful and aligns with the brand's message.
5. Treat your customers like family: Personalized, attentive customer service fosters loyalty. Philomina's "by the people, for the people" philosophy highlights how a human touch builds brand trust.
Meet Philomina Kane, Founder of KIN Apparel!
KIN Apparel is revolutionizing haircare with fashion and inclusion and in doing so, helping people to feel seen and heard. The brand offers hoodies, hats, and other accessories lined with satin, a soft and smooth material that interacts with hair in a gliding motion, so natural hair stays intact and protected. Whether it be a fro, twist-out, braids, curls or locs, KIN innovates its products with haircare in mind. KIN Apparel is here to disrupt the hair care-fashion space to affirm who people are, naturally.
Philomina traces her entrepreneurial path back to her freshman year at Princeton. “I grew up in The Bronx with a family full of hair stylists who took care of my hair. Suddenly, I’m on my own, stressed, and without money to pay for treatments – my hair starts to fall out. There’s a saying, ‘When a girl cuts her hair, she’s about to change her whole life.’ And that’s exactly what I did.” Philomina completely gave up relaxers that chemically altered her hair’s natural texture. “I became obsessed with natural hair care and started a YouTube channel to document my natural hair journey. This is a collective experience Black women share. Through my channel, a community known as the ‘KINfolk’ was born.”
Philomina’s YouTube channel reached 188,000 subscribers and she started selling satin merch to her audience. “I didn’t set out to start a brand,” she admits. “But they say when you are walking in your purpose, things fall into place. KIN is an acronym for ‘Keep It Naturally.’ KIN Apparel evolved very organically.”
Asked what excites her about working in e-commerce, Philomina answers, “This space allows me to connect with the KINfolk community in a way that wouldn’t be possible in a brick-and-mortar store. I love putting my marketing skills to use, and seeing them resonate, excite, and convert people. There’s no better feeling than coming up with an idea, making a video or meme, posting it and people becoming engaged.”
In 2020, Philomina left her full-time job working as a marketing director to completely focus on KIN Apparel. Leveraging solely off her YouTube channel and marketing skills on Instagram, KIN made $246,000 in the first year. A major turning point came in 2021 when Philomina was invited to appear on Shark Tank (season 13, episode 1). “We got a huge boost from the show,” she says. “It gave us incredible exposure, organic traffic, and credibility as a brand. Sales have increased every year – we have reached $8 million lifetime sales so far.”
As the face of KIN Apparel from day one, Philomina believes that storytelling and authenticity have been crucial to the brand’s success. “Many entrepreneurs are afraid to put themselves out there. Who better to tell your story than you? I have an inviting personality that people vibe with – my goal has always been to personally connect with our customers.”
Drawing from her marketing background, Philomina strives to create content that entertains, inspires, and/or educates her target audience. “I am not going to post just to post,” she says. “My content needs to have substance. I look at trends and think about how we can insert KIN, push a product, and communicate our message.”
In addition to Philomina, KIN’s team consists of 5 full-time and 3 part-time employees, all of whom work remotely. “In the beginning, I was answering all the tickets. As KIN grew, I had to hire people, but we are still a small company.” She values the efficiency of the KIN team and has no plans to expand any time soon. “My marketing manager and I are based in Philadelphia. Our director of operations is in Delaware, production manager is in Norway, and our communications lead is in Nigeria. I love that with a remote structure, I can hire talent from all over the world.” They are supported by a part-time social media manager and 2 customer service representatives.
“We are seeing 20% to 30% of our customers returning from month to month. They are coming back because we are innovating and offering new products – 1 to 2 new products each quarter,’ Philomina says. She reveals that innovation starts by “thinking about my day-to-day life and where I rest my head. I’m always asking, ‘How can I incorporate satin to protect my hair?’” KIN also listens to its customers – data and feedback are collected through surveys, Instagram posts and stories, and website reviews. “We’ve gotten a lot of great ideas from the KINfolk community. Anything that we bring to market has to resonate with them. Great examples are our satin bonnet pillowcase, a travel pillowcase, and satin car headrest cover, which offers protection while driving.”
Thinking of KIN as a seasonal business that fulfills the varying needs of customers year-round has also led to product innovation, and ultimately customer retention and increased revenue. “We are constantly asking, ‘What problem related to protecting natural hair are we solving this season?’ Someone may buy a satin-lined hoodie from us to keep warm during winter and realize they want the satin bucket hat for summer. We are getting ready to drop a satin-lined windbreaker for spring – no one has thought of it, but once they see it, they want to have it. This keeps our customers excited and coming back to see what's next.”
Evolving from its community-based roots, KIN’s CX is guided by a philosophy described as “by the people, for the people.” Philomina explains how this carries over the brand’s approach to customer service. “We want to really understand our customers – how they found us, their buying habits, and what they want right now in terms of protection and style. To do this requires that most of our customer interactions be handled with personal touch.”
To answer repeated questions from customers quickly and efficiently, KIN uses Gorgias to generate macros (pre-made responses). KIN also understands that natural hair care varies by the individual, and trains customer service representatives so they can provide accurate responses and information. “We are a very kind, welcoming, and fun team,” Philomina adds. “We want this attitude reflected in KIN’s CX.”
KIN will continue to cultivate a personal approach to customer service by training representatives to provide thoughtful and specific responses. Additionally, the brand is transitioning to having its representatives answer tickets 7 days a week (they were previously available 5 days). “People shop on the weekends,” Philomina points out. “As we grow, I want to maintain the same specialized coverage that we started with. At the end of the day, we are nothing without our customers. It’s important to serve and respect them.”
Gorgias
Loop
Shopify Plus
Attentive
Can’t-Live-Without-Tool: Shopify
Key Hiring Trait: Ambition, detail-oriented, and creativity
AI or No AI: I’m for AI but haven’t really leveraged it yet. I’d love to see a customer be able to input their size from head to toe along with style preferences, and have an AI feature present everything on the website that is available in their size and that would look great on them.
Favorite Book or Podcast: I am currently reading Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff, which looks at how people's minds work from a neurological perspective when pitching ideas. Another great book is The E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber.
Favorite Thought Leader in E-Commerce Cpace: Kim Lewis, CEO of CurlMix. In 2022, she raised an unprecedented $5 million on WeFunder. I reviewed her natural hair care products on my YouTube channel and recently got to meet her. She is brilliant, supportive, and a real goal-getter in the e-commerce space.
#1 Challenge as a Founder of a Company: Honestly, getting to the next level, especially as a Black woman founder, it’s hard to raise money. In 2022, it was disclosed that Black women get .001% of venture capital – the discrimination is very evident. It takes so much time and convincing to get people to believe in, support, and invest in your vision.
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