Ouai has a marketing strategy most companies would consider risky. It lets customers write its ad campaigns. When the nearly $300 million hair care brand launched its St. Barts fragrance as a hair and body mist, the product description didn’t focus on traditional perfume notes like orange blossom and dragon fruit. Instead, it used actual customer comments: “It smells like I passed out drunk in my pool chair and my pina colada melted” and “Smells like you got upgraded to the pineapple suite.” That fragrance is now Ouai’s No. 1 bestselling global SKU and represents 25% of its business at Sephora.
This approach of systematically turning customer language into product decisions and marketing campaigns has been core to Ouai’s strategy, making it one of the beauty industry’s most-followed brands.
Co-creating with customers—from product decisions to marketing copy
Ouai has built a repeatable process for involving customers in everything from bottle cap selection to campaign creation. It’s especially useful when the team is stuck on a decision.
“It’s really just as simple as saying to the people who love the brand and buy the product, ‘Which cap do you prefer?’” says Hannah Beals, Ouai’s former CEO.
This feedback is gathered in a variety of ways, like Instagram polls and custom-built communities organized by customers’ hair type and product preferences. Ouai also uses Try Your Best (TYB) for its digital loyalty program and maintains a superfans community on Instagram for deeper crowdsourcing.
The St. Barts fragrance story shows the full system in action. What started as a limited edition hair and body scrub for Sephora became a permanent fixture in Ouai’s body care line and as a fragrance because of customer demand. “People were so obsessed with the scent, like, they went feral for it,” says Hannah. By listening to what its customers wanted, Ouai created a bestseller.
Speaking to emotion, not ingredients
When the Ouai team looked at their shampoo and conditioner business a few years ago, they saw a problem. They had 12 SKUs that represented only 11% of the business—far below the typical 30% to 40% for hair care brands. The products were organized by problem and solution: volume, curl, smoothing. But since most people have multiple hair concerns, the team realized this structure made it hard for customers to choose. They pivoted to organize by hair type instead: fine, medium, and thick.
The team built community groups for each hair type and asked about their biggest concerns. The responses were gold. “Women with fine hair were like, ‘My hair’s greasy or flat by 2 p.m.’ or, ‘When I put it in a ponytail, I look like a Founding Father,’” says Hannah. “And then women who have thick hair were like, ‘I have biceps from blow drying my hair,’ or, ‘I break every hair tie that I use.’"
Those vivid customer descriptions became the foundation for Ouai’s ad campaigns. For fine hair: “Is volume just a button on your phone? Fine hair. We got you.” For thick hair: “Conditioner so rich, you’ll sign a prenup. Thick hair. We got you.” Even medium hair got its moment, says Hannah: “When your hair feels like the middle child. Medium hair. We got you.’
“We really speak to the emotional reasons why you need something or why you buy something," Hannah explains. The relaunch transformed the business, growing wash care products to more than 30% of the company’s revenue, with fewer SKUs.
Being bold to grab customers’ attention
For limited-budget founders, Hannah’s advice is simple: Figure out what resonates quickly. “Create incredible content … which doesn’t mean expensive content. It doesn’t mean highly produced content. It just means content that resonates or breaks through,” she says. Test founder content, behind-the-scenes storytelling, product education, and fun series you think your audience will love. Double down on what performs best.
To break through with its audience, Ouai opts for a cheeky and memorable voice, naming holiday kits “Three Ouai” and “Swing Both Ouais.” “We’re in such an attention economy where you’re just constantly competing with a million different advertisements,” Hannah explains. “So, if the boldness and the sense of humor is what makes us stand out, then I think that’s worth all the risks we’ve taken.”
“Some of the best marketing campaigns of all time have said hardly anything,” says Hannah, referencing Nike’s Just Do It tagline. “And so, I’m always challenging the team to be bold and say less and assume that people will get it.”
At scale, Ouai now operates like an in-house ad agency, creating custom content for every platform. The content ranges from highly produced brand campaigns for some channels to completely unpolished content for others.
Gamifying loyalty at scale
As Ouai continues to grow, it’s focusing on gamifying loyalty and finding ways to reward customers for comments, feedback, purchases, and even wearing merch. For an upcoming February launch, the team hand-picked everyone who’s already bought something in a particular fragrance. “We’re going to do something personalized and high touch for all the customers that we know love the scent,” Hannah says. It’s a continuation of the same principle that’s driven Ouai from the beginning: keeping the human connection alive, even at a $300 million scale. “Human is the key word of 2026,” says Hannah.
Catch Hannah’s full interview on Shopify Masters to hear about some of the mistakes she made along the way, and how the Ouai community helped solve them just as quickly as they came up.
