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RetailCraft - digital retail, ecommerce and brands - Retail PodcastAuthor: Ian Jindal
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RetailCraft 62: "Full Circle: - in conversation with Lucie McLeod of Hair Syrup
Episode 62
Saturday, 28 February, 2026
This episode is for founders, brand builders, and retail leaders interested in how a genuinely accidental business becomes a credible, structured consumer brand. Lucie McLeod started Hair Syrup in her parents' conservatory while at university, posted one TikTok video that hit 600,000 views, and built from there — without a business plan, without investment, and without a roadmap. However this is no tale of luck, or a hapless fortune. To listen to Lucie it's clear that the brain, drive and character were ready for the tasks, the test and the chance to build her business. Cometh the hour, cometh the leader.Ian Jindal chats with Lucie about what it actually takes to grow a DTC brand through social, how to respond to a very public rejection on Dragon's Den and turn it into a marketing moment, and where Hair Syrup is heading as it moves from a single hero product into a full wash-day brand with retail distribution through Boots.Key themesAccidental origin, deliberate growth: Hair Syrup started as a personal solution to Lucie's own scalp problems, formulated using academic research and natural ingredients she sourced from health food shops. The first TikTok video was not a launch strategy. It was a genuine personal post that went viral from a standing start. The business followed the demand, not the other way around.Problem-led product development: Every product in the range maps to a specific, common hair or scalp problem — length, grease, breakage, dandruff. This was not a range strategy imposed from above; it was Lucie solving her own problems and extending outward. When she eventually worked with a chemist, he told her the formulas she had developed independently were already production-ready.Community over clinical claims: Hair Syrup has clinical efficacy data and dermatologist testing, but its primary marketing tool is customer before-and-after photos. Lucie is explicit that she dislikes prescriptive beauty content and avoids invalidating individual experiences. The community is built on openness and expectation management, not on performance guarantees.Dragon's Den as a marketing asset: Hair Syrup appeared on Dragon's Den in summer 2024, received six rejections, and then turned the episode's broadcast in January 2025 into one of the most-discussed brand moments of the year. The team trolled the dragons back on TikTok with memes — the sad hamster among them — generating 24 million profile views in under 48 hours and 100,000 new followers. The Sunday Times named Lucie Young Founder of the Year shortly after. The lesson she draws is blunt: you cannot engineer this. It worked because it was authentic.The hidden operation: The public face of Hair Syrup is Lucie on TikTok — informal, funny, behind-the-scenes. The private face is an SLT with experienced heads of sales, finance, and logistics, an in-house 3PL, and chemists with serious CVs. Most of their audience has no idea the latter exists. Lucie considers this balance a strength.Brand building beyond the hero product: Hair Syrup launched in Boots in late 2024. The NPD pipeline is structured around extending the brand's core peppermint oil product into a full wash-day system — shampoo, conditioner, scalp serum — all sharing the same scent, colour scheme, and purpose. Leave-in oils have not landed as hoped and are being rethought. The direction is deliberate specialisation rather than category sprawl.⠀What you'll learnWhy solving a genuine personal problem is still one of the most defensible starting points for a consumer brand.How to build a community that stays loyal even when the product does not work for everyone.What a rejection on Dragon's Den can teach you about the gap between conventional investment logic and TikTok-native brand value.How to structure a post-crisis response for a team that is depending on you, when you are not sure yourself what comes next.How to maintain creative authenticity and brand character while building a grown-up operational structure behind the scenes.Why gut instinct and structured decision-making are not opposites — and how to use both at the same time.⠀Chapter structureIntroduction — Who Lucie is, Hair Syrup's age and origin, and what the brand stands for todayThe accidental start — A personal hair problem, lockdown, a viral TikTok from a standing start, and the slow realisation that this could be a businessFormulation and early product range — Research, chemistry, working with a professional chemist, and extending the range along problem linesBrand positioning — Accessible, inclusive, mid-market, solution-driven, and community-centredDragon's Den — Six rejections, the edit, what it felt like, the conversation with the team, and the decision to turn it aroundThe TikTok counter-offensive — Trolling the dragons, the sad hamster meme, the BBC's reaction, 24 million views in 48 hoursStructure and scale — What Hair Syrup actually looks like behind the TikTok page, and the role of a senior leadership team the audience never sees2026 and beyond — Boots, NPD, the wash-day range, international ambitions, and staying open to where the brand might go⠀About the guestLucie McLeod is the founder and CEO of Hair Syrup, a UK haircare brand she started at 21 while studying at the University of Warwick, where she graduated with a first. She began by hand-making pre-wash hair oils in her parents' conservatory and built the brand through TikTok before establishing a wider social and retail presence. Hair Syrup now sells through Boots as well as direct-to-consumer, runs an in-house 3PL operation, and has a senior team spanning sales, finance, logistics, and product development. She was named Sunday Times Young Founder of the Year following the brand's Dragon's Den appearance in early 2025, in which she received six rejections and subsequently turned the episode into a widely covered brand marketing moment.Quotes"I was ignoring all of the signs. I had people saying, you could sell me this, and I think if I was an entrepreneur, my business brain would have thought, right, I'll take 20 quid, let's do it.""The moral of the story is make the best of a bad situation. The moral is not: try and do really badly so you can redeem yourself.""Behind the curtain, it's a really serious operation — with a lot of extremely skilled people dealing with distributors, international expansion, NPD, chemists with impressive CVs. And people just have no idea.""I wonder if I didn't have a team, if I was doing this by myself — might I have given up?""I don't like the idea that brands ever have to be pigeonholed. As long as you're open, honest, transparent and reactive, you can enjoy the ebbs and flows."-- Run time: 44 minutesINFORMATION:[ 🖥️ ]Hair Syrup - https://www.hairsyrup.co.uk/[ 👨👧 ]Lucie McLeod: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucie-macleod-775a60159/Ian Jindal: www.linkedin.com/in/ianjindal/ [ 📷 ] (c) Ian Jindal / www.instagram.com/ianjindal
