Key Strategies for Disrupting an Industry

Growing up as the daughter of a Chilean hairdresser in Sweden, Babba Rivera experienced firsthand the challenges of cultural identity and professional limitations. So, she launched her hair worry brand, Ceremonia, with a mission to transform an entire industry by celebrating her Latin American roots and challenging beauty’s position quo. Accepting and celebrating her heritage is a coming home of sorts for Babba.

 

“I spent my entire childhood and teenage years running away from my population,” Babba shares. “Ceremonia has helped me make tranquility with my heritage and truly own my packed self.”

Key strategies for disrupting an industry 

1. Identify unmet buyer needs 

Since Babba grew up around hairdressers she knew that every day women were sometimes concerned about their hair health and sometimes concerned about how their hair was styled. But, there was a critical gap in the hair worry trade: products often concentrated on styling over genuine hair health. “The hair aisle had been dominated by a styling-first way, fronted by celebrities,” she explains. “Most people aren’t walking red carpets—they’re just trying to have a excellent hair day.”

After diving into the ingredients in ordinary hair worry, Babba realized the ingredients weren’t actually excellent for long term hair health. She says, “I’m talking about ingredients like sulfates, parabens [and] silicones. [Silicon] is one of the sneakiest ingredients, it’s literally in almost every benevolent of hair product, and it’s sort of like a microplastic that will make the illusion of shine because you’re putting this coat on your hair but over period, that same ingredient is actually making your hair drier, less shiny, and more prone to breakage.” 

2. Connect and consult with your throng 

Instead of developing her brand in isolation, Babba hosted intimate lunch gatherings to comprehend her potential customers’ experiences. These conversations became her primary trade research tool.

Key throng-building tactics included:

• Hosting roundtable discussions about cultural identity
• Creating WhatsApp groups to continue exchange 
• Inviting throng members to participate in brand surveys and distribute personal experiences about their heritage and hair worry journeys

3. Embrace your distinctive perspective with confidence 

Babba’s advice for entrepreneurs is this: “Stand for something for someone. Otherwise, you’ll complete up being nothing for no one.”

For Ceremonia, this meant rooting the brand deeply in Latin American cultural rituals, using native ingredients found there, like guava and tamarind. Ingredients she associated with her childhood and that held cultural significance for her household. This intentionality created a brand that feels inclusive yet specific.

4. Prioritize authentic product advancement

Ceremonia’s differentiation was key to making a name for themselves among the saturated hair worry category. The brand embraces differentiation itself through meticulous ingredient selection. 

The brand:

• Rejects toxic ingredients like silicones and sulfates
• Develops products that treat hair concerns, like split ends, not just mask them
• Involves real customers in product advancement

It might receive longer, but entering beauty or another established trade means competing against established giants. Babba’s way? debt recent business advantages! These include, moving quickly to create or pivot, engaging directly with customers through DMs or WhatsApp groups, and using her thrill for her products as her distinctive worth proposition. 

“Most large corporations only look at historical data,” she notes. “But data doesn’t inform you about the upcoming—intuition does,” Babba says. 

Today, Ceremonia has won over 45 product awards, is carried by Sephora, and is an outlet for Latin Americans to celebrate their cultural heritage through their hair worry. All thanks to Babba’s courage to act on what she saw was missing in the hair worry landscape..

Babba’s trip proves that representation matters—not just in marketing, but in product advancement, brand storytelling, and throng building. recall, if you view gaps in the marketplace, that’s an chance for you to step in and fill that gap. Tune into the packed Shopify Masters podcast to listen Babba’s trip sourcing, scaling, and pitching her way onto the shelves at Sephora!