When Adria Marshall started buying groceries to make homemade hair care products, she could hardly have known that a decade later her experimentation would lead to a multimillion-dollar business.
Marshall, the founder of Clarkston-based Ecoslay, started her journey in her kitchen in 2015 over bubbling pots of flaxseed and marshmallow root. A few years later, in 2019, she had $75,000 in annual sales. By last year, sales had grown to $3.6 million.
What pushed her to start was a frustration with expensive hair care products that never gave her the results she wanted and had low-quality ingredients.
The products that came closest to what she was looking for “were the ones that had flaxseed, aloe vera, horsetail, marshmallow root,” Marshall told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
So Marshall began trying to make her own gels and curly creams, all while working full time at Mailchimp. At first, she was focused on just finding things that worked for her hair, but then things started to gel — literally.
She developed her first product, an orange-scented styling gel made with flaxseed, aloe and other plant ingredients, and started selling it online. For the first few years, she estimates she had maybe seven sales a month.
But that changed in December 2018. Marshall sent the gel to a woman who ended up posting about the product on social media, and it went viral.
Marshall got a thousand orders in 15 days. By August 2019, she had quit her job at Mailchimp. She developed more products and saw a huge amount of growth in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic pushed women out of salons and into figuring their hair out at home.
She has also been selling on Amazon since 2022, and now sells about 3,000 products a month across Amazon, wholesale and her website.
Marshall has been very clear about the values behind her business since Day One. She is passionate about sustainability, so she sources ingredients from local farms, uses pouches instead of bottles to reduce plastic use, has set up a recycling rewards program and recently became a certified B Corp, meaning her business meets certain environmental and social standards.
Marshall tells other entrepreneurs it’s crucial to be clear on what their values are, because that is what will keep them going through the ups and downs.
“Don’t come up with your values for what you think the market wants. Come up with your values according to what breaks your heart,” she said.
Marshall also measures monthly how well Ecoslay is meeting its values by looking at how many times employees volunteered or how many pouches were recycled.
“When you look at those metrics alongside the financials, then you don’t get so anxious, … because there are some months where our revenue isn’t great, but we still helped a lot of people,” Marshall said.
She has also been able to grow her business by hiring others to handle tasks that are not her strong suits.
“Find people that love what they do and hire them to do those things, and don’t be so concerned about keeping all of the money for yourself,” Marshall said.
Although building a business requires dedication and focus, she said it’s imperative to also keep yourself a priority. Before checking email or social media in the morning, Marshall meditates, exercises and makes breakfast, because if she doesn’t prioritize herself, “You forget what you’re doing it for, and you’ll neglect yourself.”
AJC Her+Story is a new series in The Atlanta Journal-Constitution highlighting women founders, creators, executives and professionals. It is about building a community. Know someone the AJC should feature in AJC Her+Story? Email us at herstory@ajc.com with your suggestions. Check out all of our AJC Her+Story coverage at ajc.com/herstory.
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