How Hair Syrup went from a viral TikTok to a £5m beauty brand

When Hair Syrup founder Lucie Macloud first told her parents she planned to start selling hair oils, their response was swift. “They said, ‘you won’t be doing this under our roof’,” she recalls, laughing at it now but recognising just how pivotal that moment was.

It wasn’t a cinematic declaration of entrepreneurial destiny, she insists, but more instinctive. “It wasn’t that I had these crazy ambitions to build one of the fastest-growing beauty brands in the UK,” she says. “It was just this thing inside me…”

Macloud’s journey began not in a corporate hub or a start-up accelerator, but in rural Pembrokeshire, south-west Wales. “I come from a really small town. Everyone knows everyone. It was amazing – I had a really great upbringing.”

Growing up without entrepreneurs around her, she never imagined she’d build a breakout beauty brand. The idea for Hair Syrup came not from ambition but personal need. Struggling with her own hair health, she started creating her own blends as a 21-year-old student. Through trial and error, she eventually perfected a formula that revitalised her hair.

Before it was a business, though, Hair Syrup was a viral moment – a TikTok video created without strategy or expectation. “Social media was completely new to me, I didn’t know how to make a viral video,” she says. She simply shared her hair transformation and the DIY oils behind it.

It racked up more than 600,000 views overnight. Life moved on, but even after she deleted the account, people found ways to contact her, asking for help with their hair. Six months later, the initial spark caught fire and the brand was born. She bought £300 worth of supplies guided by a single principle: don’t overspend. “If I can sell 10 bottles, then I’ve made my money back,” she reasoned.

Her early operations were an instinctive, almost extreme, exercise in cash-flow discipline. Despite admitting that she dislikes numbers, she scaled in small, cautious increments, moving from 10 bottles to 20 to 30 and only scaling when the risk felt manageable. “I’ve always been very, very good with cash flow,” she says. “I never spent so much that I felt I was putting myself or the business at huge risk.”

In 2024, she was approached by the producers of Dragons’ Den to appear on the show, but she was in the throes of one of the hardest parts of her entrepreneurial journey. “Everything that could go wrong just seemed to be going wrong,” she recalls. “I was at a crossroads. I didn’t think I was cut out for owning a business. I’d got to a point of beyond despair, thinking something’s got to give here. I’ve got to have my lucky break.”

Her pitch preparation was chaotic. She was running the business alone, buried in paperwork and operations. She learned her script in the car the day before filming. On the morning itself, she felt fear. “I was really nervous… something felt a bit off. I was scared.”

Walking into the den was like stepping into a furnace: bright lights, intense silence, five Dragons and, unexpectedly, a full audience behind them. The grilling was relentless. They challenged her on dividends, exit plans and financial strategy – and she didn’t always have the answers. She stood there for three and a half hours.

In the end, Touker Suleyman offered the full £190,000 but with strings attached: repayment within three months plus equity. The other Dragons warned her against accepting. When she stepped back into the lift, she felt clarity. “This is a sign. This is the cherry on top. They don’t like it. I shouldn’t be doing this.”

But then came the moment that shifted everything. She realised she had entered the Den looking to be rescued. “I saw them as guardian angels. I thought, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing, they can just come in and help me.’”

Peter Jones gave her the moment that changed her entire trajectory: “I’m not here to save you. If I take away this learning opportunity from you, it won’t be very good for your character. I think you have so much potential as an entrepreneur. I’m excited to see where you'll be in five, 10 years.”

His message was simple: stop looking for someone to run your business and become the person who can. That’s what she did.

Since then, Macloud has focused on putting the right people around her: experienced operators, a future head of marketing, fractional CFO support and seasoned industry advisors. She has also found a mentor she describes as indispensable.

Hair Syrup hit £5m in turnover in 2024 and placed number 13 on the Sunday Times 100 Fastest Growing Companies list. It’s on track this year to achieve between £10m and £12m in revenue.

The next chapter is global. With strong traction in the UK and growing brand recognition – from social media to events, press coverage and Dragons’ Den – she is now expanding into European markets with distributors and preparing for a US launch in 2026. “It would change the business entirely,” she says.

Watch this space.