When Suzanne Cooper’s Hair Started To Fall Out She Panicked. Then She Formulated GLOWWA

Now this hair food supplement is taking the industry by storm.

by CATHERINE | CONVERSATIONS

Have you noticed how everyone’s talking about GLOWWA?  Since launching three years ago, this hair food supplement has not only won a slew of beauty awards (it will shortly achieve TGA certification, the highest accolade you can get for a food supplement), it’s also taken the hairdressing industry by storm, with one prestigious name after another extolling its virtues. Yes, everyone’stalking about GLOWWA and they’re all saying the same thing: this stuff actually works!

GLOWWA was created by Suzanne Cooper, a nutritional therapist whose hair started falling out after going through a particularly stressful phase in her life. “I started to panic,” she says, “and the first thing I did was to look for a supplement because I was used to dealing with really high-gradenutraceuticals, but everything I looked at either had toxic colourings in or was stuffed with not very nice bulking agents. So I self-formulated and my hair started to recover really quickly. And that led to the original hair food.”

GLOWWA is not like other hair supplements. While most concentrate on getting nutrients into the hair follicle, Suzanne’s expert blend of ingredients including biotin, vitamin B5, zinc and vitamin C addresses the body as a whole and focuses on overall health and wellbeing, making them perfect for those recovering from life events such as the postpartum period. The capsules are vegan and completely free of colourings, flavourings and genetically modified organisms (GMOs), making them suitable for a multitude of allergy sufferers and for men and women alike. What’s more, Suzanne is focusing on hair salons as her retail partners.

“Hair loss due to modern lifestyle – stress, poor diet, hormonal imbalance – is such a common problem nowadays, but there didn’t seem to be a solution available in-salon,” says Suzanne. “Every hairdresser I spoke to about it had to send their clients to Boots or Holland & Barrett and I just thought, ‘There has got to be something better than this.’ I knew I could help people with my formulation, so I said to my partner, ‘I’m going to make this into a product and take it around salons.’ And he said, “Well, that’s different because there isn’t anything like that in salons.’ And that was five years ago, when the mission actually first started.”

“It was literally me knocking on salon doors and saying to people, ‘I’ve got this product, you’re going to love it.’ And it wasn’t easy because there were so many hair supplements out there promising the world and not delivering the results.”

“I had zero marketing budget so it was literally me knocking on salon doors and basically saying to people, ‘I’ve got this product, you’re going to love it.’ And it wasn’t easy because there were so many hair supplements out there promising the world and not delivering the results, and influencers on Instagram putting their names to products that didn’t work, so there was a huge amount of scepticism. The owner of the first salon I visited – who has since become a good friend – said to me, ‘This isn’t going to work, hair supplements don’t work.’ But she had a client who’d been told by multiple psychologists and doctors that her hair would never grow back and she was just about to get fitted for a wig. She used our original product and two years down the line her hair is nearly fully recovered. Now that salon owner comes to all our events and helps us convince the sceptics!”

And that’s the thing about GLOWWA. It gets results. At the time of our interview, the company was conducting some consumer trials and 91 per cent of people who’d used GLOWWA for three months felt more confident and felt that GLOWWA had positively impacted their self-esteem. And that’s alongside stronger, shinier hair, reduced hair breakage and split ends and a healthier scalp. In recent months GLOWWA Hair Food has been joined by GLOWWA Hair Food Meno, a supplement designed to support hair health and wellbeing before, during and beyond the menopause, with consumers reporting it’s improved their energy, mood and sleep quality, as well as their hair health and growth.

GLOWWA’s results-driven approach is the reason why they’ve just appointed Sophia Hilton as their global ambassador. “The reason we find Sophia so exciting is because she will say when she doesn’t like something,” says Suzanne, “and initially she’d been sceptical about supplements. But addressing that stigma is something we’ve worked really hard on over the last three years – to show that our products work. Sophia has been a GLOWWA stockist for over a year, so it’s totally authentic, she’s seen the results first-hand and it’s a real testament to the brand that she believes in it. That’s what makes the partnership genuinely brilliant – that we’ve been able to take her from not believing in supplements to saying I absolutely love this brand and I’ve brought it into my salon for my clients.”

GLOWWA works exclusively with hairdressers – from individual freelancers all the way up to big groups. “We don’t judge on the size of the business,” says Suzanne. “We simply ask ourselves, Will it help this hairdresser help their clients? And we only want to work with hairdressers – we keep it very exclusive and that helps keep it special. We made GLOWWA for the hairdressing industry and we’re working really hard to protect it and keep it that way.”

“This is a space where we know we can help bring knowledge and confidence to hairdressers, and also where they can make great revenue as well.”

To become a stockist, you apply via the GLOWWA website and the company reaches out with all the information you need. Crucially, all stockists have access to a free education programme devised by GLOWWA that covers hair and nutrition, giving you the confidence to understand why your clients need to take this supplement. “I go back to that day when I asked, ‘Why is there not a nutraceutical brand for hairdressers?’” says Suzanne. “This is a space where we know we can help bring knowledge and confidence to hairdressers, and also where they can make great revenue as well.”

So, if you’ve got a client sitting in your chair, what’s the best way to steer the conversation around to GLOWWA? “I’d start by asking my client if they’d any changes in their hair health since their last appointment. Is there any more shedding when you’re washing your hair when you’re brushing it out? Have you seen any recession or thinning? I would also be asking, ‘Have you got any concerns with your scalp or your hair?’ It’s a really delicate subject talking about hair loss, so it’s better to ask your client about concerns, rather than telling them you’re seeing this big patch of hair loss at the back of their head. And the third thing I’d ask about is their routine, because hair loss is triggered from what’s going on within the body. So, that leads nicely into, ‘I think there’s a real space here for us to work from the inside to get these results for you.’ And that’s when you start naturally talking about GLOWWA.”

At the start of the interview, Suzanne described GLOWWA as “a mission”. “It really is,” she says, “and it’s why we’ve not had a weekend off in about three months. There is this feeling at head office that we’ve got a product that can make a huge difference, and that’s what gets us going every day.” And the mission continues with more GLOWWA products in the pipeline, including one that will launch this autumn (Suzanne won’t be drawn on what it might be).

“GLOWWA is for everybody,” she says, “from the age of 16 upwards and we’ve had success stories for alopecia right up to one of our brilliant case studies, Jane, aged 82, who’d been written off by a doctor who told her, ‘It’s your age, your hair’s not growing back.’ There’s no age limit on GLOWWA, and it’s completely gender-neutral. Even the Meno version can be used by people who just want to sleep better. We just say, ‘Yes, ignore the label and just go for it.’”