South Australian hair brush business Ugly Swan takes off

The friends are raking in cash after coming up with a million dollar idea thanks to their screaming children.

Two Aussie mums are raking in cash after coming up with a million-dollar idea thanks to their screaming children.

Marissa McLoughlin, 48, and Annette Short, 49, from Adelaide, started a business together that surpassed $1 million in revenue in the last financial year.

The women were friends through their work in sales and were on a business trip away several years ago when they had a light bulb moment.

“My husband rang saying my daughter was screaming about having her hair brushed,” Ms McLoughlin told news.com.au.

“It was such an awful way to start the day, he just whacked it (her hair) in a pony (tail) and sent her off.”

But the screaming had emanated through the phone call and she soon had to explain the situation to Ms Short.

“With two girls, I had been going through this for years,” Ms Short recalled.

The mums commiserated about how hard it was to drag their daughters’ already tangled hair through a painful brush.

“We started joking around about how to design our own brush. Then we thought ‘there’s actually a need for this,’” Ms McLoughlin said.

Soon they had launched their “scream-free” detangling hair brush business, called Ugly Swan.

This week, they struck a deal with a national hair dressing company, Price Attack, to stock their products in 65 salons from October.

The Aussie mums found a gap in the market.

They are now raking in money.

The two friends had been working the same job for 15 years and had been on the hunt for an idea to launch their own business when they discovered the gap in the hair brush market.

Ms McLoughlin and Ms Short pooled together $50,000 in initial investments to get the idea off the ground, a large part of that spent in “back and forward” conversations with manufacturers as they amended their prototype.

“We went back to what had changed in hairbrushes, in the good old days we had ball bristles,” Ms McLoughlin said.

“We looked at the fact we needed some hand-gripped nylon pins to do the detangling.”

They tested the products out on their own daughters as well as friends and family. They also waited outside their daughters’ schools handing out the brushes for free, knowing parents “kids telling their mums and dads” would form the bulk of the business.

In 2017, the pair launched Ugly Swan.

However, things were “slow at first”. They had to sink another $100,000 into the business and then didn’t pay themselves wages until 2020.

Ms McLoughlin and Ms Short each have three children.

TikTok influencer Leah Itsines is a fan of their brush.

Ugly Swan launched in 2017.

With a background in sales, both women wanted to work on the face-to-face side of the business and mostly stayed away from online marketing.

They aimed to go on 100 road shows to present their wares but this had to be cancelled because of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“It wasn’t really until third year when we started employing people to help with our website,” Ms McLoughlin said.

They had a lucky break at the end of last year when Australian influencer Chloe Morello, who has 1.2 million followers on Instagram, discovered their product and shared a positive review on her social media channels.

Since then, they have devoted more resources to the e-commerce side of marketing.

They now have 40 staff and in all, Ugly Swan has more than 280 wholesalers, which are predominantly hairdressing salons but also some chemists and sensory stores for children with sensory issues.

Since they launched, the business has sold more than 5200 products.

They’ve also expanded to other hair-related products – absorbent towels – after watching how long it took for their daughters’ hair to dry.