Sharmadean Reid: How a pandemic pivot led to 39BC

In part one of our podcast conversation with Sharmadean Reid, the serial entrepreneur explained how growing up watching Rotary Club lunches in a Wolverhampton hotel restaurant taught her to read the codes of business – and how she used those learnings to launch her first business, WAH Nails.

Picking up the story in part two, Sir Richard Harpin asks what came next, once the early success threatened to overwhelm her. The answer involves a virtual reality (VR) nail bar, a chatbot called Kimmy and a fortieth birthday spent lying in a Wolverhampton garden working out where to go next.

It is also the story of how a lucrative exit from Reid's third business, BeautyStack, has cleared the way for her fourth. 39BC is a new bathing and fragrance brand built around a rule Reid wishes she had learned years earlier: know what to say no to. In our interview, you will learn about:

• Why Reid built a VR nail bar and chatbot to seduce investors, not customers
• How a pandemic mistake forced BeautyStack to reinvent itself
• How a fancy-dress birthday party gave Reid the inspiration for 39BC
• What's on Reid's 'not-to-do list' – and why she wishes she'd had it years earlier

How Sharmadean Reid learnt to say no

After starting WAH Nails, her first business, Reid tells the Business Leader podcast that she wishes she had started a ‘not to do’ list. As well as running two successful salons, she was making additional revenue from work with brands at private events and had just welcomed her first child into the world.

“I was like a floating dinghy in the sea saying ‘Yes’ to everything,” recalls Reid. She also found that while Topshop brought her prestige and footfall, she had lost some of the magic of her original, more chaotic and creative salon in east London.

Her second standalone WAH Nails salon in Soho, London, opened in 2016 as a “tech-enabled salon of the future”. It included a virtual reality booth where you could ‘try on’ nail designs and a chatbot to help with nail appointment bookings.

Reid used a tech-savvy friend she’d met in the early days of the business to create the chatbots. “I collect and save people,” says Reid, “because I know if I work with them, some magic will happen.”

All these conspicuous tech embellishments were designed to enchant investors, making the salons important showcase spaces to build brand equity.

“Physical stores aren’t just places to do retail; they also showcase the aspirations of your brand and are a way to impress investors.” The tactic worked, helping her secure investment from venture capitalist Saul Klein and later Index Ventures.

When BeautyStack was born

Reid’s fascination with tech led her to close WAH Nails on its tenth anniversary and go wholly digital. Reid had realised that customers were figuring out their own workarounds when tech failed to make things effortless.

They would screenshot pictures of her nail art on the Tumblr social media site and then ask for quotes, in a clunky process. As Instagram took off, nail artists were soon posting their work and organising jobs by direct messaging.

Wouldn’t it be easier, she thought, if customers could simply click on the image of the nails they wanted and book that technician or nail artist directly? This became the blueprint for her second business, BeautyStack, a dedicated digital platform for nail artists.

BeautyStack launched in late 2018 and raised £6.5m from investors impressed by Reid’s track record, including those futuristic salons. “It was ‘Gen Z beauty’ before that existed,” reflects Reid, referencing a community of women entrepreneurs in the emerging gig economy.

But unlucky timing was nearly BeautyStack's undoing. Just as the business was gaining traction, the Covid pandemic brought everything to a halt. Nail appointments weren’t possible and her business model was paralysed. With the prospect of running out of cash, Reid decided on a radical pivot. In 2021, after a year of lockdowns, she pivoted to The Stack World, an online community for female business entrepreneurs, which offered self-development and business coaching. At its height, it had 30,000 members on the platform, forming around 600 different sub-communities.

When lockdown restrictions lifted, it also moved into in-person events, like an annual conference. “It saved people during the pandemic,” says Reid, of the business that only existed because of it. She recently sold it to another beauty entrepreneur for an undisclosed amount.

Third-coming with 39BC

After turning 40, Reid took some time at home in Wolverhampton to figure out her next move. She wanted to use her hard-won expertise and network to build a billion-pound company. Beauty retail is an undervalued market, she believes, as “people still don’t think of it as a serious industry” compared to something like tech.

Her new venture is called 39BC and was inspired by a birthday party where she came dressed as Cleopatra, impressed by her research into her “badass queen” ancestor from Egypt. Reid felt bathing was a sub-category ripe for disruption, since many offers in this space didn’t go beyond the “coconut or vanilla” fragrances, as she puts it.

Her product combines novel fragrances with body washes for long baths (Reid herself confesses to taking two baths a day, as a way to find focus), each one with a brand story woven into the story of a historical figure. “With all my brands I want to pique people’s interest,” says Reid. “Make your product undeniable: ‘What is that? I need to know more!’”

Reid’s vision is a product that can be sold wholesale to retailers and one that’s perfect for repeat customer purchases, but also works for selling to airlines, hotels and the gifting market, aiding customer discovery. She’s avoided glass packaging because of the transport costs.

Reid has noted multiple successful exits in the body care sector. Nearly 12 months into the journey, she says she’s on course to hitting £1m in revenues.

“I’ve thought about scale from the beginning of building this business,” she says. But perhaps her biggest learning from all her previous ventures is to know when to hold back. “You’ve got to phase it correctly,” says Reid. That might mean saying no to mainstream retailers, avoiding exciting but ultimately poor-fit partnerships, or steering clear of developing mainstream products.

She distils it down to one message: “Every decision about the brand is about increasing the valuation.” With this determined focus, the support network she’s collected over the years and her finely-honed anthropological insight, Reid hopes to have just the formula for a breakthrough bathing business.

Sharmadean Reid’s four lessons for leaders

Document your playbook from day one. Reid’s biggest regret with WAH Nails was never writing down what made the salon special. That left her as the only person who could recreate its magic, and made her the accidental blocker of her own business’s growth.

Build showcase moments that speak to investors, not just customers. The VR booth and booking chatbot at WAH’s Soho salon weren’t really built for footfall. They were deliberate signals to the tech community and to investors like Saul Klein and Index Ventures that Reid understood their world as well as her own.

Know your own advantage before you try to compete on someone else’s terms. Facing younger, celebrity-backed rivals, Reid didn’t try to out-market them. She built on what she actually had: two decades of trusted relationships across fashion and beauty that a bigger marketing budget couldn’t buy.

Judge every decision against one question: does this increase the brand’s valuation? It is the rule Reid says she wishes she’d had years earlier, and the one now shaping 39BC, even when it means turning down retailers, partnerships and products that would once have tempted her.

You can listen to the full conversation with Sharmadean Reid on the Business Leader podcast.