How Nicola Wood Shook Up The Hair Extension Industry

Medium writes 'As a part of our series about women who are shaking things up in their industry, we had the pleasure of interviewing Nicola Wood.'

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?

My career in hair started at the age of 13 when I got my first job in a hairdressing salon. I’ve always had a huge passion for hair and worked in the hair industry all my working life. I started in salons, then got into teaching after having children, mainly so I could spend time with them in the school holidays. While working for a local college, teaching, I was headhunted to set up a Hair & Beauty Department at a 6th form college. My passion was always working with hair. There is no better feeling than when you transform someone’s look, giving them confidence as they leave the salon with a smile! It was time to get back in the salon on the shop floor where I belonged, fitting hair extensions, so, I opened a hair extension salon with a friend. I had no client base so had no money to employ a junior and it was during this time that I found it really difficult to organise the hair extensions without asking my client to hold them throughout the fitting. There was a huge lack of user-friendly hair extension tools on the market. There was a real gap in the industry and so I became determined to fill it hence why I decided to start Hair Made Easi in 2016.

Can you tell our readers what it is about the work you’re doing that’s disruptive?

“Hair Made Easi disrupts the industry by offering a carefully-curated, innovative range of high-quality products and tools — we aim to empower hair professionals and salon owners to work smarter, boost revenue, and enhance their clients’ experiences. We have become leaders in the hair market, experiencing double-digit year-on-year growth since 2020 and retailing in over 25,000 salons over the UK. We also have many ‘world first’ products under our belt as a brand and have brought over 40 inventions to the UK salon market including the Easiweft hair extension holder. Our latest consumer-facing invention, the XL Luxury Hair Wrap is 100% bigger than other wraps on the market and is also made from premium, anti-frizz microfibre towel material which provides superior absorbency for faster drying time. We also take pride in manufacturing our products as locally as possible, supporting the local economy, and contributing to a sustainable future by reducing our carbon footprint. Overall as a brand, we have reshaped and disrupted the market by creating state-of-the-art, innovative products and setting new standards that simplify and streamline all aspects of hair extension work.”

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Being a naive, uneducated inventor, I foolishly thought I had everything sown up after designing my first product, the Easiweft. I knew all hair extensions specialists must have been struggling with where to hold their hair extensions and also clip-in hair extension wearers at home needed somewhere to wash, dry style and store their hair extensions. I was going to change the world of hair extensions!

I found a local injection molding tool manufacturer and we started to build our business. I had a meeting with our manufacturer a few months in and I was asked how many we would like to make on our first run? So now I’m thinking, well there’s around 40K hairdressers in the UK and hundreds of thousands globally so we are sure to sell out in no time. I’ll start with 5000! Next, we needed a website and images so a friend helped me with this and after around 6 months from thinking of the idea, it was time to go live on the website! We hit the button and sat back and waited for the orders to start flooding in. We waited, and waited, and 3 weeks later, we sold our first Easiweft! It didn’t take long to realise that I had a heck of a lot to learn. My expectations were ridiculous, I honestly thought the sales would come flooding in because everyone needed an Easiweft in their life. I look back at my business plan and projections and I honestly don’t know how I survived! Overall, this taught me how to be resilient and to never give up — luckily I’m a quick learner and I’m extremely stubborn so this was never an option! It taught me that patience is key and to celebrate every piece of success along the way. Good things come to those who wait so stay determined and maintain your motivation!

 Discover the full interview on Medium Magazine! Uncover the best bits here.