Sponsored by PUMP Haircare
Natasha Jay was still a teenager when after dealing with months of ongoing pain, she finally had an answer for her constant discomfort. Being diagnosed with endometriosis provided her with a sense of relief, allowing her to pinpoint exactly what was wrong.
Yet for Natasha, her relief didn’t last long when she found out the endo had a direct effect on her hair, leaving it feeling thinner and lifeless.
“My hair was half the thickness it was before. Being a hairdresser, this was a struggle. I needed to style my hair every day and with such thin hair, that was hard to do,” Natasha told POPSUGAR Australia.
Natasha tried multiple products on the market in an attempt to get her hair back to the way it looked and felt prior to her diagnosis with no luck. It was at this point that the hairdresser had a light bulb moment.
What if she could create her own product, that was custom made for her own hair needs?
It’s one thing to identify a need for a product, but it’s a whole other to create one. While Natasha was on a mission to make it happen, not only for herself but for her clients and others who she wanted to help too, she said it certainly wasn’t easy.
Natasha spent the nights after putting her son to bed researching all of the things she needed to make a haircare range a reality, from ingredients, to products and formulators.
“I knew what ingredients I wanted and knew what I didn’t want, but I had no idea how to put it all together. I managed to reach out to an amazing chemist, and together we created a formula,” she said.
Natasha spent a year on the formulation and the end result was an Australian-made, plant and botanical based, organic haircare range that actually worked (minus the nasty ingredients).
She gave the products to her own clients to test out and as they returned to the salon, Natasha noticed a difference in their hair and scalp quality.
“Then came the hard part of finding a manufacturer that would take a chance on me to produce a tiny batch. This came at a high cost, so I knew I had to put the products online to increase the volumes,” Natasha said.
The first product Natasha launched was the PUMP Growth Shampoo and Conditioner, both of which she received phenomenal feedback on.
“I went from selling a few bottles a day, packing them from my dining table to selling hundreds a day and taking them to the Australia post business centre three times a day to now selling over a thousand a day worldwide,” she said.
After seeing the early success of PUMP Haircare, Natasha was driven to keep the momentum, continuing to juggle working full time as a hairdresser as well as being a parent and using every spare moment she had and every resource she could get hold of to make PUMP Haircare what it is today.
“I worked in the early hours of the morning until sometimes 2am, packing orders myself, creating content and writing to customers to advise them on what to get. Whenever I could, I would get the family involved to help, and my son was great at folding boxes!” Natasha laughed.
Starting in her house, Natasha eventually moved into a shared office, then a large office space and now she has her own combined office and warehouse. It’s here that over 50 unique products are now created, with her own proprietary formula for each.
“I believe it all comes down to the actual ingredients. Every PUMP product contains ingredients that have been thoroughly researched, tried and tested. So before I launch a new product, I know it works,” she said.
Another important factor for Natasha that sits at the core of the PUMP Haircare ethos is that her brand is environmentally conscious with a zero carbon footprint. It’s for this reason that all of their tubes are made from eco-friendly sugarcane and all of their packaging is biodegradable.
“All of our bottles are made by Australia’s first carbon neutral recycled plastics manufacturing facility with our bottles made from post-consumer recycled plastic,” Natasha said.
Much of the magic of PUMP Haircare begins with their Help Me Choose personalised test. It helps you to find the right combination of haircare products to give you the hair you’re after without the tricky guess work.
By providing some details including your hair type, texture, your main concerns, your hair ‘goals’ and a photo of your hair, the experts at PUMP will them come back to you with individually tailored recommendations. And sometimes, the person coming back to you is Natasha herself.
“The ‘Help Me Choose’ tab on the website goes directly to me to offer the best advice on what to purchase,” she said.
As well as running her online store, PUMP Haircare is now stocked in over 350 salons worldwide and has been sold to customer in over 100 countries. Natasha said the secret behind her success is made up of three key parts.
“Finding the right balance between natural and efficacy, supporting customers by giving them a personal experience and a one on one consultation like they would get in a salon and that my products are created to find a solution to every hair problem,” Natasha said.
To find out more about Natasha Jay and try the Help Me Choose personalised test yourself, you can visit www.pumphaircare.com.
