How Hairlust Uses Clerk.io's Search and Recommendations to Boost Online Sales

‍About Hairlust

Founded in 2017, Hairlust is a certified B Corporation and Danish hair care brand known for its clean, natural, and holistic approach. With a strong commitment to sustainability, innovation, and transparency, Hairlust offers a range of products that promote internal and external hair care. Each product is carefully produced to meet specific hair needs, from shampoos and conditioners to targeted hair supplements.

Since its beginnings, Hairlust has grown exponentially, surpassing 500,000 customers. With a growing global social media presence and community, the brand has expanded its customer reach to over 80 countries and is now available in more than 1,000 premium beauty stores.

• Industry: Hair care‍
• Headquarters: Copenhagen, Denmark
• Clerk.io’s Tools Used: Search and Recommendations

Hairlust's Results with Clerk.io

• In the last 30 days, Hairlust made 21,000 euros using Clerk.io’s Search and Recommendations.
• In the last 30 days, Hairlust increased their average basket size by 0.8 products across 12 domains.
• Hairlust has seen a significant improvement in its website’s capability to recommend the right products to each customer across the customer journey. 

Hairlust's E-Commerce Challenges

• Improving the website navigation.
• Increasing the average order value.
• Intelligently provide personalized product recommendations.
• Managing the general decline in consumer attention span.

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‍An Exclusive Interview With CEO Rasmus Serup

‍How did Hairlust come to life? 

RS: “We started Hairlust in 2017. At that time, we didn’t have any business plan for Hairlust. It was just my partner Sofie and I, and it was a side gig for us. We had other jobs, and I was still studying. We came from this previous job in London, where we met each other and where we were selling supplements, health products, and beauty products at an online retailer.  Sofie was responsible for starting their private-level brand. 

Fast forward, we moved back to Denmark. Sofie had a lot of experience due to launching three different brands for our former employer. And she saw an opportunity to create a supplement specifically developed for women’s hair. We wanted to do so while establishing it as a direct-to-consumer brand. At that time, there were no other supplement brands that were selling directly to consumers in Scandinavia. So that’s what we wanted to take that on: start a business with a one-product and direct-to-consumer brand.”

‍Where does Hairlust stand today?

RS: “Today, we’re much more than that. Now, we’re a full-suite hair care brand. We’re hyper-focused on hair. We do everything hair, but we don't limit ourselves to just shampoo, conditioner, or a supplement. We holistically think of hair care, from a pillowcase that can prevent your hair from frizz and damage while you sleep to an innovative hair balm.”

‍What’s your approach to running your e-commerce business?

RS: “We've always been very focused on our direct-to-consumer business. E-commerce is a big part of our business. Even though we are in hundreds of stores all around Europe, our main revenue is still from our own web shops. Here, we've got twelve local ones working separately on local domains. They look the same, but they're translated and localized in many different ways all around Europe. That's a big focus of ours.” 

‍How do you use Clerk.io’s AI-driven Search and Recommendations tools?

RS: “We run on Shopify and use Clerk.io. We've used Clerk.io for over three years for two different purposes.

We use it for our search feature. For many years, we didn't even have a search feature on our website because we had so few products. We started with one product, then we had maybe three or four, and since then, we have been increasing our amount of products. Today, we have around 150 variants of 80 unique products, so having a search engine is much more relevant. 

And we also use Clerk.io for upselling and cross-selling. We show similar product recommendations at the bottom of our product pages and on the cart pages.”  

‍Why did you choose to partner with Clerk.io?

RS: “As a Copenhagen-based e-commerce company, we’ve known of Clerk.io for many years before engaging in a partnership. I’d heard good things about it, and our Danish web development agency recommended it.” ‍

Which challenges did you face as an e-commerce business before using Clerk.io?

RS: “Three years ago, when we partnered with Clerk.io, our main challenge was insufficient navigation on the website. 

At the time, we had rebranded our website digitally and expanded our product catalog. So, we wanted to make it easier for visitors to navigate our website and find what they were looking for. We also wanted to increase our average order value and more intelligently provide personalized product recommendations.”

‍Which results have you seen since using Clerk.io? 

RS: “There are great dashboards to see our performance in our account, and great analytics for both Search and Recommendations. It's great that we have an overview of all our websites in one place. One great thing to look at is the total revenue we get through Clerk.io in a month. For example, in the last 30 days is 21,000 euros. It’s interesting to see that in some countries, the volume is much higher. If you look at the revenue for a full year, it's obviously even more. Plus, the average basket size increase is 0.8 products more.”

‍What improvements have you seen since using Clerk.io?

RS: “We are much better at recommending the right products for our customers when they're searching, but also on the cart page. Clerk.io is just really good at learning our customers' patterns and recommending what's relevant for them. Sometimes, our team may be very aware of our customers’ needs and purchase patterns, so we can even tweak Clerk.io’s logic by manually updating which products are shown in the product recommendations.”

‍How does Clerk.io compare to other tools?

RS: “We didn't look for alternatives when partnering with Clerk.io. We only compared it to one other option, which was the native search feature that Shopify had at that time, but they didn't have an intelligent product recommendations feature.

But today, the reason why we don't look other ways is because Clerk.io’s product still seems superior, and the integration works seamlessly. It's great to see its impact directly in our dashboard, and compared to what we pay for Clerk.io, it's a no-brainer.”

What challenges are you facing as an e-commerce business for the next year?

RS: “Attention span is very important. Consumers are getting used to scrolling and only quickly looking at things they're interested in, whether searching on Google or social media. It's very important in the e-commerce space to grab their attention right away. And to show relevant content tailored for the individual search intent not to waste our visitors' time.”

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A big thank you to Rasmus Serup for sharing the journey of Hairlust and his invaluable insights into navigating the world of e-commerce.

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