Trends Have No Loyalty. Do you?
So, this isn’t my first rodeo… I know, surprising.
One of my first brands was a natural skincare line. Clean, plant-based, intentional. That was the vision. I have drama-queen skin and I HAVE to use minimal ingredient, fragrance free, everything-free skincare else my skin will act out - ROYALLY. So, I was like boom someone else wants this too.
Now that African beauty is a thing, I was yearsss ahead of the game. I had Tamanu, Moringa, and Boabab oils - Shea Nilotica… just saying…
But somewhere along the way I got lost in trends. If it was popular and made from something that grew out of the ground, I was probably selling it. Herbal blends, sage (I lost my mind with that one), Bolga baskets (they were made from elephant grass!), African wash nets (that didn’t grow out of the ground, but..) I had access, so I started selling it. And people were buying it - mainly because I was on Etsy at the time, which is great if you want to move product. It is not great if you want to build a brand.
I remember getting a business coach early on, and he pulled up my shop, looked at it for maybe fifteen seconds, and said, “You’re selling everything but socks.”
Bruh.
But he wasn’t wrong.
What happened to me is what happens to a lot of brands. You start with a reason. A real one. Something that made you say, I need to build this because nothing out there is doing what I want this to do. And so you build. And maybe the building gets good, so you’re like - ooh! This is selling for xyz, let me finesse this into my offerings, too..
But there’s usually a tradeoff: more line items equal more confusion. So, now you’re not just building, you’re expanding… and you’re drifting.
There’s a reason the most recognizable brands in any category tend to be the most focused ones. Not because they had less ideas, but because they protected the one thing that made them them.
When you get it right
In 2013, Jess Hatzis and Bree Johnson co-founded frank body with $5,000 and one product: a coffee body scrub made from recycled café grounds. But they didn’t just launching a body scrub, they launched a whole personality. Frank was the cheeky, flirty alter ego at the center of the brand who spoke directly to the customer in first person across every single touchpoint. The website, the packaging, the captions, the emails. Frank never broke character. And the customer, who frank called “babe,” felt like she was in on something.
The conversation with the customer was built in from day one. Customers were encouraged to share photos using the product with the hashtag #frankeffect (2013, remember…). frank body paid attention to what resonated how their babes were talking about the scrub, what they loved, what they kept coming back for, what they wanted more of. And only after years of building a deeply loyal following around one hero product, the coffee scrub, did they begin expanding the line. And even then, every new product had to sound like frank, feel like frank, belong in the frank world. They weren’t chasing every request or trend. They were listening for what their customer genuinely needed that they could deliver without losing the identity their community fell in love with in the first place.
When Ariana Grande launched a very, VERY similar, competing coffee scrub at Ulta, the frank body team braced themselves. But their babes didn’t flinch. Because frank body’s customer wasn’t just buying a scrub. She was buying into frank, the voice, the vibe, the relationship.
That kind of loyalty doesn’t come from a good product alone. It comes from consistency. From staying exactly who you said you were, even as you grow.
Your Why is not a tagline
A lot of brands treat their why like a mission statement. Something to put on the About page and revisit it regularly. But your why is actually what determines every decision, what you add, what you cut, who you speak to, how you show up, what you say no to.
When you’re clear on it, decisions get easier. When you’re not, you open yourselves to too many options.
And that’s what actually builds loyalty: people don’t love what you sell. They love why you sell it and how it makes them feel. The brands that people genuinely attach themselves to are the ones where the reason behind the product is felt in every touchpoint. The packaging, the tone, the brand experience.
I went to a Mastermind recently. I mentioned I have an infused honey brand where honey is used as a metaphor to start sweet, move slow and just flow. During lunch another attendee asked me about it and was like, “I wonder if your brand is the same one at the Pilates studio…”
Me: Posh Life Pilates?
Her: Yes! Omg, they have names right, like one was Renee? I took a picture of it! The bottle, the intention, and the honey was just AMAZING!!
She didn’t take a picture because the honey tasted good. She took a picture because she wanted to capture the experience.
Without knowing who created the brand or my why, she still felt the intention behind it. That’s branding, baby.
When your why is intact, there’s a coherence to everything. Your customer feels it even when she can’t articulate it. That feeling is what makes her come back, tell a friend, feel a connection with the brand.
Paying attention is everything, if you use it right. Nothing, if you don’t.
Paying attention to your customer is one of the most useful things you can do while you’re building. It shows you where your messaging is landing and where it isn’t. It tells you how she’s describing your product to a friend, which may be even more useful than how you’re describing it to her.
But listening is not chasing, hon. And it usually starts with something that sounds completely reasonable. Our customers are asking for this. People keep requesting that. This is what’s performing right now. So you add it. And then something else. And at some point the brand starts to look less and less like what you started with…and why.
There’s a good Cleaners up the street, and I always take dresses to them to get fitted (I really need to break out my sewing machine and do it myself, but that’s another post for another time). So, I go up there with the dress, put it on, stand on the round thing, and the tailor comes in and takes it in where it needs to be taken in, adjusts where it needs to be adjusted. The design doesn’t change. The fit just gets better.
That’s what listening the right way does. It refines what’s already there, not leave you with a new dress.
…and then, there’s you
So all of that is true for your brand, but it's true for you too… because the way we compromise in our brands is usually the same way we compromise in our lives.
We say yes to the collab we’re hesitant about because we don’t want to seem like we think we’re better than. We ignore our intuition and take on take on the client with the weird vibes, because the money made sense. We add the product because everyone else is doing it and we don’t want FOMO. Babes, you’re shrinking the price because you don’t feel like you’re worth the full one.
Value lives in you before it ever lives in your business.
This doesn’t show up out of nowhere. It shows up when there’s a gap between who you actually are and what you’re putting out into the world.
Owning your brand begins with owning who you are. Your why doesn’t start with your product or your positioning. It starts with your experience, what you’ve lived, what you know, what made you say this needs to exist. That’s the thing worth protecting. In the business and outside of it.
So, maybe you’ve been adding things because they made business sense, not because they made brand sense. Maybe you’ve been listening to the loudest voices in your comments and slowly drifting from what you set out to build. Maybe you just have that feeling, the one where things are technically fine but something is off, and you haven’t been able to name it yet.
Your customer is telling you things constantly, through what she buys, what she shares, what she asks, what makes her hesitate. The question isn’t whether to listen. It’s whether you know yourself well enough to know what to do with what she’s saying.
Make it stand out
Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.