Hairstory was born from the belief that haircare could be fundamentally rethought: its core product replaces traditional shampoo with a different way of washing hair.

The company also structured its ecommerce model to include professional stylists, allowing them to participate in ongoing customer relationships rather than be displaced by them. The result is a brand designed around long-term customer value, both in product and in economics.

Challenge: Creating Demand Without Search Intent

Hairstory does not fit into a clear search query, which makes certain traditional marketing tactics less effective:

“People aren’t waking up every day and saying, ‘I’d really like to figure out a different way to clean my hair,” says Board Chair and DTC beauty veteran Eli Halliwell

Because the problem is not actively searched, paid search cannot carry the business, and while social media can create awareness, attention windows there are narrow. “When we’re crushing it on Meta, average view time is seven to 10 seconds. When we’re not, it’s down to three seconds.”

Three seconds is rarely enough to reframe a routine behavior.

Conversion also tends to require repetition. “We need to touch someone multiple times to get to the point where you’re like, ‘I just have to give it a try.’”

The team needed a channel that could hold attention long enough to explain the problem and then support retargeting strategies. That’s how they came across Vibe.co.

Solution: Prospecting to expand, retargeting to convert

Hairstory approached their Vibe.co campaign build methodically: retargeting came first, then  prospecting, and traffic followed after a successful proof of concept testing round.

Retarget High-Intent Klaviyo Segments

By syncing with Klaviyo lifecycle segments, Vibe campaigns reinforced high-intent visitors and re-engaged lapsed prospects.

How the channel split worked:

How they validated it:

Once retargeting proved economically sound, it gave the team confidence to push further up the funnel and broaden the prospecting pool.

Learning Before Scaling

Early testing clarified how the channel needed to be paced: an initial acquisition campaign was ramped too quickly, performance suffered, and the team relaunched at a spend level that allowed the system to optimize properly. When the Vibe team proactively acknowledged the pacing bug and issued a credit for the affected period, it cemented the relationship as a genuine partnership.

Creative That Educates

Hairstory needed space to explain what the product actually does. The goal: get attention, surface a problem the viewer didn't know they had, and present the solution.

Rather than predicting a winner upfront, they put multiple versions of already-proven digital creative into market simultaneously:

No grand creative theory required. They tested, read the numbers, and followed the results.

Results: Scaled Reach with 5x Retargeting Efficiency

Hairstory now runs a coordinated growth program across prospecting, traffic, and retargeting.

To date, the program has generated:

Daily reach scaled 14x increase, while spend grew 10x and maintained blended profitability.

This is how it worked: the prospecting campaign expanded the audience pool, while retargeting converted that audience at more than 5x ROAS. Together, the system produced 2x blended ROAS while supporting continued reach expansion.

As Eli summarized it, “We have unlimited spending potential if the ROAS is right. We have zero spending potential if the ROAS is wrong.”

For Hairstory, Vibe.co works because it matches how the company actually grows, combining education, repetition, and disciplined unit economics in a single system.