Speaking from her office just over a month before the launch of her new business, Sarah Hamid sounds incredibly calm.
“I am not stressed because we have our roadmap,” says the member of Berlin’s WeWork Sony Center. “We are aware that nothing will work exactly as expected, so we are mentally prepared. That said, it is still very scary and exciting at the same time.”
Her business is called Mansome, and it’s exactly what men who want to look and feel their best have wanted for a long time. It doesn’t involve choosing from among the store brands in a chain pharmacy or sniffing tubes of facial scrub in a fancy boutique. It’s a monthly delivery of high-quality men’s grooming products.
“Men don’t want to spend too much time searching for grooming products,” says Hamid. “But when you talk with them, they say that they’re totally willing to try something new.”
Hamid says the challenge is that men aren’t always comfortable shopping for themselves.
“Men aren’t educated about personal grooming in the same way that women are,” says Hamid. “I mean, my mother bought me my first makeup. Most men don’t have a similar experience.”
That’s why Mansome sends men exactly the kinds of products that they want. The packaging of each product is always eye-catching and sophisticated—Hamid is a great curator. She says the whole experience should feel “unique and innovative.”
“We don’t pick products just because they look manly,” says Hamid. “You can get men to try a product with a super-cool design, but if they don’t like the product itself, they won’t trust you the next time you recommend something.”
Born in France, Hamid started her business career in London. She spent most of her time in the high-stakes field of finance. But even in this fast-paced environment, Hamid felt like she needed a different kind of challenge.
“I always wanted my own company,” she says, “but I didn’t know quite what it would be.”
When she was offered a job at a startup in Berlin, she jumped at the chance. She says she learned a lot from the experience, but the job wasn’t the right fit. That’s when she started thinking more seriously about launching her own company.
Her first idea was a platform to book last-minute appointments at the barbershop, but that didn’t work out. Then she remembered the men in finance she had once worked with for 12 to 14 hours a day, and how she used to give them tips about their personal grooming routines. The result was Mansome.
Since last year, she’s been working on the idea at her office in WeWork.
“It is inspiring to see so many young people taking risks and starting their own companies,” says Hamid. “They make the decision to take a chance rather than pick a job in their comfort zone.”
Looking ahead, Hamid says she knows exactly where she wants to be within a couple of years. She wants a company that has grown organically, building on its success rather than pushing to expand too fast. She wants to go beyond grooming products to just about everything in a man’s life.
Put another way, she wants Mansome to be the first thing people think of for anything having to do with a “gentlemen’s lifestyle.”
Photos: Marjolein Van der Klaauw