Nov 2, 2022
Tiffany Ju is our guest on Female Founder World!
Tiffany’s bootstrapped hair accessory brand, Chunks, hit $40k in sales in her first year, $500k in year two, and in her third year, 2021, made over $1 million in sales—all without paid ads.
After being let go from her first 9-5 job in 2012, Tiffany began building her first business. She started dying tights in her kitchen and selling them on Etsy, which immediately went viral. She quickly discovered hand-dying tights wasn't a scalable business, and sales declined over time as the trend faded.
Tiffany eventually closed her tights business and took a year off in 2018 to create art and explore her interests. She found a gap in the market for unique, high-quality hair clips, and Chunks was born. Things lined up: Tiffany already had experience manufacturing, the margins looked great, and there wasn’t much competition in the space at the time.
Her tights business left Tiffany in debt, so she knew she had to bootstrap and be extremely resourceful this time around. Tiffany worked with manufacturers who accepted small orders, created her own website, invested in photography, and began testing the market.
Chunks began primarily selling via wholesale since Tiffany was able to tap into her existing network from her first business. From there, the online orders began trickling in.
In 2020 with stores closing and wholesale slowing down, Tiffany continued developing her customer base online and saw ecommerce taking off.
Today, Chunks' business is split about 40% ecommerce and 60% wholesale. The business is doing over a $1 million in annual revenue and manages a team of 14.
While Tiffany has prioritized hiring, she's refocused herself into a marketing director role, deciding that it's too early to bring on someone externally for that position.
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