Women in wellness: Jaimee Lupton on scaling a beauty brand while navigating ivf

Jaimee Lupton - Founder of Monday Haircare

This week we spoke to entrepreneur Jaimee Lupton, the founder of beauty brands MONDAY Haircare, Osāna Naturals and Châlon, about scaling her businesses whilst navigating IVF.

I have followed Jaimee’s journey on Instagram ever since those iconic baby pink bottles hit supermarket shelves. After all, whose curiosity wouldn’t be piqued by a glamorous, bold young woman gatecrashing the New Zealand haircare industry?

Jaimee grew up on a farm in Kumeū, a town on New Zealand’s North Island, riding motorbikes with her sisters. Her mum was a social worker and her dad was a butcher, and they taught her the value of hard work. “I wouldn’t change a thing about my childhood, I’m very lucky.”

So how did she go from riding motorbikes on a farm to putting those pretty pink bottles into our showers? Prior to launching MONDAY Haircare, Jaimee worked in luxury communications and publicity for Black Communications in Sydney, which saw her working with luxury brands like Hermes and Range Rover. “That experience really taught me how key those strong, positive relationships are, not just with press but with everyone in your wider business ecosystem.”

In 2019, Jaimee returned to Auckland with a desire to create a product herself. A self professed “beauty junkie”, she was regularly testing new beauty brands and observed that while there were plenty of exciting brands democratising the skincare space, the same couldn’t be said for haircare. “When it came to haircare there weren't any premium, modern brands available in the same way. It was hard to find brands in a mass setting that ticked all those boxes like being cruelty-free and sustainably minded, not using ingredients people were increasingly conscious of, while also being something you’d want to have in your shower. I knew there was a chance to connect with discerning beauty consumers in a new way with something they could genuinely be excited about.”

And so, after years of poring over every detail, MONDAY Haircare was launched, bringing premium, cruelty-free, recyclable haircare to the mass market. ”It was important to me that it reflected these values while being something that would look good in your shower or bathroom, and didn’t cost more for the sake of it.”

The venture was completely privately funded and remains so to this day.

I asked Jamie if she suffered from imposter sydrome or fear of failure during the launch, to which she replied “I was so nervous and eager to see if it would be successful. Crazily, it was essentially an instant success: the brand was profitable within the first few months, and we’ve gone from strength to strength. We’re stocked in 50,000 doors with more than 100 major retailers in 33 countries and counting.”

Amazingly, Jamiee scaled MONDAY Haircare all whilst she and her partner Nick (a fellow entrepreneur) were undergoing IVF treatment to conceive their first child. She admitted that it was challenging balancing the two. “The urge can be to throw yourself into work, but I constantly have to remind myself that having a family is something I want more than anything, and it’s OK to prioritise that. I’ve been lucky to have the support of Nick and of my amazing team who can step in for me when I need to prioritise things like appointments and procedures and taking a little time out generally.”

Jamiee has been incredibly brave for sharing her four year fertility journey online. In April 2022 she announced that their little girl (nicknamed Gingernut) had been born “too soon.” This led her to launch a charity called Gingernut’s Angels to financially assist families whose fertility journey is not straight forward. “Something that came up time and time again when I would speak to people on their fertility journey was how cost prohibitive IVF and other fertility treatments are. Rounds of IVF can cost tens of thousands of dollars, and while we’ve been in the fortunate position to be able to afford these costs, not everyone is. It breaks my heart to think that finances would be a barrier to someone getting their wish for a family. I started Gingernut’s Angels to financially assist families whose fertility journey is not straightforward, whether for IVF or other treatments. The hope for our first year is to make 100 grants in Gingernut’s honour, and we’re matching donations dollar for dollar.”

Happily, Jamiee is due to give birth to her second baby very soon, having just had a dreamy baby shower in her garden over the weekend. I asked her what her fertility journey has taught her. “I can be a bit of a control freak, and it’s quite uncomfortable for me not to feel like I have control of something. The biggest learning through my fertility journey over the past couple of years is that it’s something that absolutely is not up to you. There’s so much you can’t control, and you have to learn to give in to that, and just try to maintain hope as you go along.”

It is challenging enough to start and scale a business, let alone doing so whilst grieving the loss of a pregnancy. Jaimee shares that her friends and family were instrumental through the grief process. “I’ve found it really comforting to have them share in the highs and lows. That said, grief is such a difficult thing for anyone to go through, and the loss of a child is uniquely difficult. It’s something that only others who have experienced it can fully empathise with, like a club that no one wants to be a part of. Since sharing about losing our Gingernut, I’ve connected with hundreds of people in New Zealand and around the world who are also dealing with their own losses, and I’ve found a lot of comfort in that.”

MONDAY Haircare is now stocked in 33 countries (including the UK) and in more than 100 of the world’s biggest retails. What did she find the most imperative while scaling the business? “We tend to do things incredibly fast, and so establishing processes and ensuring they’re followed has been a learning curve, and these processes are something we’re constantly working to improve and make more efficient.”

When it comes to advice, Jamiee turns to her partner and to other female founders. “My partner Nick is a wealth of knowledge when it comes to business, retail and innovation, as are many people within our business who are specialists in what they do. I also have made some amazing friends in other female founders; I’ll often seek their advice and vice versa.”

“My background is in marketing and publicity, so those are my strengths. When I first started MONDAY, I had a crash course in things like sales, finance, manufacturing and product, but was lucky to be surrounded by a team who had those strengths. I think that’s key in any business.” She has compiled a team of people based in Auckland, Sydney, Los Angeles, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Copenhagen, Chicago and Ontario who are passionate about beauty and the brands they are creating, and who are experts at what they do. “This would be humanly impossible to do on your own and I’m lucky to have so many talented individuals on what I like to call the ‘rocket ship’.”

I asked Jamiee if she found it natural assuming the role of founder/boss or whether it was something she had to grow into. “Leadership is something that takes constant work to be the best leader you can be. It’s been a big work-in-progress for me to not show stress to my team and the people who count on me. Everyone is looking to you for solutions—sometimes I call myself the CPO (chief problem officer)! They say you never work as hard as you do when you work for yourself, and I’d agree completely.”

As for tools that she used to market MONDAY Haircare in a competitive industry, Jamiee considers early adoption of TikTok as a key digital marketing strategy. “When we launched, TikTok was a virtually unheard-of app that basically only housed dancing videos. Now it’s a behemoth that has been downloaded over 4 billion times worldwide, with incredible potential for brands. We were early adopters of the platform, and it now forms a key part of our digital marketing strategy. We’re the #1 haircare brand on the app with 400,000 followers and 20 million likes on our content.”

Favourite philosophy? Back yourself.

Favourite health habits? As anyone who has struggled to fall pregnant can attest to, you try anything and everything you think might help in some small way. It’s so hard to know what works and what doesn’t, but the things that have stuck for me in helping me to feel good through the pregnancy have been regular massage, acupuncture and doing pre-natal pilates.

Favourite way to move your body? I love doing Pilates with Anna Miles or working out in our home gym. I have to remove the element of travel, or else I just won’t make time for it! 

Favourite podcast? Call Her Daddy. Alex Cooper is an incredible host and interviewer; she really knows how to connect with people and completely disarm them which always leads to amazing conversations.  

Favourite book? Erin Deering’s book Hanging By A Thread. Erin was the founder of Triangl swimwear and is an incredible businesswoman. I admire her a lot.

Favourite way to unwind? In a quiet cafe getting through my emails! I can only dream of inbox zero.

 You can find MONDAY Haircare in ASDA, ASOS, Beauty Bay, Boohoo, Boots, LOOKFANTASTIC, PrettyLittleThing, Sainsbury's, Superdrug and Tesco!