Meet Sumer Shaw, the Founder of CurlyLox Box and a young female entrepreneur in South Florida that promotes the idea of ‘loving oneself’ through her brand. She wants every woman to embrace their natural beauty and her monthly subscription box helps women with curls to achieve that gratification. She deeply comprehends the importance of accepting one’s individuality thus she has established a remarkable service that connects these women with affordable exclusive products that enhance their curly experience.
Uncover your authentic self
Sumer was born into a middle-class family with three sisters in Cairo, Egypt, and later moved to the United States. Her parents played a significant role in her entrepreneurial journey, they firmly supported her in getting a good education and learning a second language that helped her after moving to the United States. She was merely 15-year-old when she started her first business making jewelry and realized that deep down her true passion was entrepreneurship. Later, after many years, she went on to start a family and tried to sustain herself in the corporate world. But eventually, her love for her passion rejuvenated and she founded her business CurlyLox Box. It is a monthly subscription box for women who are blessed with curly hair. She started this box by understanding the need to find high-quality products that work for her curls. Like many girls and women out there, she too struggled to find the perfect styling products which can perform best and delivers great long-lasting results. Thus, she came up with an idea to create a monthly box that includes all-encompassing styling products for curly hair to resolve such issues. “We are also helping Curly girls SAVE money during the quest for the perfect product/s,” she says happily.
The tag line of CurlyLox Box is ‘Your journey to healthy curls starts here…’ which highlights the ideology of Sumer that every woman should be able to enjoy suitable hair care products. She shares that finding a perfect curly hair care product line can be a full-time job, and bringing your curls back to health can be a journey. Sumer’s company restores the faith in bringing health to your curly hair by bridging the gap of its subscribers through thorough and consistent research on their behalf and deliver the box right to their doors at a major retail discount. Her favorite part of the business is connecting with the customers and getting to listen to their stories about how they fell in love with their curls all over again because of the service that the brand provided.
“I wanted to start this subscription service to help women find the perfect products for their curl texture &pattern, and realize that they are not alone, and they don’t have to alter their look and their identity in order to please others. Yes, hair is part of your identity, you are born with curly hair, and changing it will be changing a part of who you are meant to be, in my opinion,” emphasizes Sumer.
Standing out from the competition
“A typical day at CurlyLox Box starts the same way that many businesses do: email checking, news reading, marketing, and problem-solving,” she states. While every day brings a different challenge which then turns into a valuable lesson. Having a lot of competition enables them to be nimble. “Competition is what I love about the United States,” Sumer emphasizes. She believes that healthy competition encourages businesses to focus on improvement—no matter what the task. It keeps one on the edge and teaches them to learn new ways to do things better than others. One of the key principles of the brand is to provide more value than received, thus Sumer and her team work very hard to bring customers the best value boxes for a small fee that’s less than USD 30. “We search high and low for the best and most versatile products that help curly girls in more ways than one,” she affirms. Moreover, it utilizes its social media platforms to give tips and advice on styling, product education, and more.
One issue that CurlyLox faces as an emerging brand is convincing larger and more established brands of the value that Curly Hair Care can add to their product. CurlyLox offers the brands’ products directly into the hands of their target audience. CurlyLox also creates and runs a major social media campaign for the brand during the month in which the company features its products. In addition to that, CurlyLox Box highlights their affiliates brands in their email blasts on weekly basis. “We might be small, but we are mighty effective,” she says. “It is challenging to get an established brand to see that BEFORE they work with us, however, once they take that leap of faith, they start coming back to take over more and more boxes!”
Encouraging Women to grow
Sumer believes that for an entrepreneur it is challenging to focus on other aspects of life. “We as entrepreneurs strive for balance in our lives because, in reality, we would want to work every waking moment to achieve our goals because we love what we do,” she asserts. Being a female business leader, she feels that she possesses an advantage over other similar brands in the market as she supports other women in business. She has made an incredible contribution in helping different social media influencers and entrepreneurs. She even started a community at CurlyLox Box that emphasizes the idea on which community is based on ‘Women supporting women in business’. As a leader of this community, she reinvests in the women who choose to be a part of this supportive Curly Community. She also takes pride and pleasure in featuring her subscribers on her web pages, social media, and email blasts to promote the idea of the service.
Sumer consistently encourages women to embrace their natural talents, abilities, gifts, and beauty to achieve advancements in their career, education, and even personal life. She states that women are creative beings and can be most creative when they are happy, and comfortable emotionally. Therefore, as a part of a society, she urges every individual to cumulatively lift any unrealistic societal standards that are obliged on women restricting them from achieving their desired goals.
She understands the difficulties one might face in the hectic business sphere and suggests aspiring businesswomen be more persistent till the goal is reached. She desires to keep inspiring such women to follow their dreams, take a leap of faith and act after carefully planning every bit. She also wants to be the reason behind women's realization over loving their natural beauty and embracing their uniqueness. Moreover, for her company, she wants to direct her tireless efforts in helping curly girls find their match in Curly Hair Care without breaking their budget.
Striving amidst Pandemic
Sumer feels despair while sharing the loss of many loyal subscribers as the COVID-19 struck into the lives of fellow US citizens. The subscription became a financial burden for them as the pandemic led to job losses. “However, we were able to expand and reach a new customer base since many people were laid off or lost their jobs temporarily,” she asserts. The biggest challenge faced by Sumer and her team was seeking new ways to adapt to subscribers’ budgets while still taking care of their hair and skin. She implemented innovative methods to resolve budget constraints of their clients without any compromise over curating their Curly Hair Care box.
Going ahead, Sumer’s primary goal is to overcome challenges that coronavirus has brought into the equation. Meanwhile, she plans to persist in working with major brands in the industry such as Curls, Mixed Chicks, Zotos, and others. Her company has broadened its spectrum by reaching various cities of Canada, and Puerto Rico. The aim is to continue to inspire women with curly hair to love and embrace their curls by teaching them how to manage their curls and care for them. Lastly, she will keep on educating younger generations about the importance of embracing their natural beauty and not conforming to the beauty standards of the world.
