Power Your Curls Founder on Customer-Obsessed Growth and AI-Driven Search in Haircare
Faisal Ahmed Hammadi, founder of Power Your Curls, shares how his curated, education-first approach to textured haircare is reshaping the market. From cutting out ineffective affiliate traffic to rewriting product copy for AI search, Faisal reveals practical strategies driving their $50K monthly revenue and nearly 50% repeat rates.
In this edition of the Ecommerce Authority Playbooks series, we dive into how
Power Your Curls grows, retains customers, and prepares for the future of search in 2025 and beyond.
The interview
1. What’s the quick origin story of your brand, and what makes your product or positioning genuinely different from other options in your niche?
Faisal Ahmed Hammadi: PowerYourCurls was borne from a place of frustration. There were thousands of “curly” products on the market. Few understood or took into account the biology of textured hair, let alone how to build healthy curls from the inside out without smothering them in shea or perfume. We launched the site with 40 SKUs and zero dollars in paid ads. We curated underexposed brands doing things differently (low pH cleansers, bond-stabilizing oils, gel-cream hybrids with barrier support) and put education at the front door to every product. In less than 16 months, we reached $50K in monthly revenue. Nothing about it was glamorous. It was all real. So much of the growth was the result of being aggressively boring and customer-obsessed.
2. Since launch, what have been the 1–2 real turning points for your brand-specific decisions, pivots, or experiments that noticeably changed your growth or profitability-and what did you learn from them?
Faisal Ahmed Hammadi: There were two inflection points. First, we eliminated the homepage carousel and substituted a simple banner and two CTAs, one for beginners and one for “ingredient nerds.” Bounce rate improved by 28% in three weeks. Second, we paused every affiliate deal that was generating clicks with zero AOV lift. That decision cut our traffic by 40% but tripled conversion among returning visitors. As it turns out, volume isn’t always the win. Conversion on a well-segmented email campaign beat Instagram shoutouts nine times out of ten.
3. Which 2-3 channels drive most of your revenue right now (for example SEO, paid social, email, marketplaces, influencers), and what have you learned about making those channels work in your category?
Faisal Ahmed Hammadi: As of this year, email/community reviews accounted for 65% of our revenue, SEO 35% (paid social generated almost nothing for us in hair space. Eyeballs but virtually no intent). Hair care is not impulse-buy. “Oh, I’m bored/I need something to occupy my thumbs” is the exact opposite of the mindset that causes someone to search for hair care solutions. People search when they feel bombarded and overwhelmed. Weekly micro-education via text/email (NO SELLING), as well as unretouched side-by-side photos showing before/after behavior of actual hair when actually swapping products, was what worked. $20 shampoo looked “meh” in one headshot, AMAZING when applied to hair after a scalp detox. Context is what sells. Algorithms won’t learn that.
4. How are you thinking about search in 2025 – Google, AI assistants like ChatGPT, and other discovery platforms? What, if anything, have you changed in your content or site to stay visible as AI search grows?
Faisal Ahmed Hammadi: Search in 2025 will reward real answers, not word salad. We’re moving fast to build a deeper knowledge layer into our content. AI assistants like ChatGPT are changing how people ask questions, and thus, how answers should read. We’re rewriting 60% of product copy in a more conversational tone, and trimming fat from blog posts so AI scrapers pick up substance, not fluff. Discovery platforms need clarity and context–we’re giving them both.
5. What do you do to turn first‑time buyers into repeat customers and advocates? Are there specific experiences, content, or community touches that work especially well for you?
Faisal Ahmed Hammadi: Our repeat rate is currently hovering around 47% and the crazy thing is we never gamified that experience. There are no points, no aspirational referral program. We just shared content that is useful and speaks to where they are in the journey. Top repeat triggers? Comparison guides, morning-after wash routines, “why your hair stopped liking your favorite product.” Community is important. Predictability is important. Tracking curl type, porosity, climate and how a product will interact with other variables in their routine make the journey feel personalized. It doesn’t have to be revolutionary. It just has to feel like you were paying attention.
6. If you had to write a short playbook for an ecommerce founder one stage behind you, what would you double down on over the next 12 months – and what would you stop doing entirely?
Faisal Ahmed Hammadi: If I were to write a very basic playbook for someone who was starting today: I would emphasize lifecycle retention. Ask yourself what should happen 3, 6, 12 weeks after a person purchases your flagship product. Automate that. Align education to that window. If I were to say one thing to stop doing: I would stop over-designing. I would guess 80% of our early landing pages were ego pages. Clean wins. Words that appear to be written by a human crush branded fluff every single time.
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