Rajdeep Gahir | Wing It Cosmetics

Rajdeep Gahir is the founder of Wing It Cosmetics, a company which creates innovative, game-changing beauty products. After a testing experience with a false eyelash kit, Raj set out to find the best lash solution on the market. However, she soon realised that there was no product out there which made such a common beauty practice any easier. Out of this, Wing It was born to provide a natural-looking and easy-to-apply false lash experience. Wing It was started at the height of Covid in 2020 and in spite of the timing, the brand has taken flight since then. 

Hatching the Plans for a New Kind of Lash Solution

With the pace of her day-job significantly slowed down due to the pandemic, Rajdeep had a lot of time to reflect. Some realisations dawned on her which changed the course of her career:

“I had been in real estate for a long time, and then the pandemic came along and it really changed that industry. It just slowed everything down. I realised the only thing that we could do in lockdown was spend a lot more time online and I always found e-commerce quite fascinating. I thought of it as an interesting counterbalance to real estate so I really wanted to explore it. I started reading a lot around ecommerce and doing my homework,” Rajdeep said. 

However, an experience at a wedding with a malfunctioning false lash kit really crystallised the idea for Rajdeep’s brand. 

“At the last wedding I had been to before the pandemic started, one of my best friends and I had bought some false eyelashes for about £15 and we had to buy a tube of glue with them separately. I tried to put them on for the wedding and I literally got the tube of glue all over my hands, all over the lashes and completely ruined them. And I just said to myself, ‘What is this? How did this happen?’ I'm quite good with makeup and art, and I have quite a steady hand, So it just fascinated me that there wasn't a better false eyelash solution out there. It was just this feeling that in this day and age, there must be a better way to do this than to put a tube of glue on your eye,” Rajdeep told me.

These two forces- her mildly traumatic pre-wedding incident and a fascination in ecommerce- combined to give birth to Wing It. Wing It’s false eyelashes are a natural-look, non-toxic, vegan alternative to the gluey, not so glamorous lashes so common within the beauty industry. “I went through months of testing different styles and different materials because what I found is that traditionally lashes were not always of the best quality, even though you could pay quite a lot for them. They looked a bit fake, not very natural and had a one time use,” Rajdeep said, “so we just wanted to really make the best product in its class, a really lovely feel, luxury lash.”

Spreading their Wings in the Market

“The first product that we really launched to the market was a new type of lash and liner system. This included an eyeliner which had an adhesive in it, but you just put it on like a normal eyeliner, and then the lashes stick on very easily. It was quick to apply, waterproof and windproof."

Rajdeep didn’t only take inspiration from her own nightmare experience with false lashes, she also spoke to friends and colleagues who were too intimidated to even try lashes because of the complexity of trying to stick them on. “We wanted something which every woman could feel comfortable with,” Rajdeep said, “and that was the real problem that we were trying to solve.”

The name Wing It really encapsulates the ethos of the brand. “The whole idea was that you can give yourself wings,” said Rajdeep, “and you can wing it in the colloquial sense too with quick, easy beauty hacks and solutions. Once we hit upon the spirit of this, we realised that we had a really interesting segment of the market which was untapped.”

Building Confidence in their Customer Base and Themselves

After launching their product, it became clear to Rajdeep who Wing It’s audience were and what they were really selling.

"We're focused on functional tools and beauty tricks for women on the go. High impact solutions that are quick and easy. That's what we came to realise after the launch. We found that our audience was slightly more mature, and when I say mature, I don't mean old by any means. Our core customer is about 35 to 50. This is in complete contrast to a lot of cosmetic and lash companies that are hyper-targeted at a very young, glamour focused type consumer. It often completely excludes the kind of people who purchase our products," Rajdeep said. 

As they got to know their target market better, something which really struck Rajdeep was how linked to a person's self esteem these kinds of lash products were. "We often find it's women who are looking for solutions that solve confidence issues," she said. "A lot of our customers on the lash side, are women who have gone through cancer treatment who suffer from alopecia. In some of our recent reviews on Judge.me, we’ve even seen a few men leave feedback and say, ‘Hey, this was the most natural lash solution that we could find out there. Thank you.’”

It was this confidence-building effect which lit the path for the development of Wing It’s next product line. 

“Generally with hair, you want it in some parts of your face, you don't want it in other areas,'' Rajdeep told me. “It's correlated with building confidence. The next product range that we launched, which has done incredibly well, were Dermaplaning Starter Kits. Essentially it’s facial hair removal. Again, the reason we launched it was because it's tied to an audience who is just searching for something that is quick, easy, and gives them a confidence boost. What really differentiates us as a company, is that there’s no other brand out there that is really focused on what I call facial hair confidence - you want it in some areas, you don't want it in others.” 

Building Social Proof into the Business Plan

For Rajdeep, reviews and recommendations were always part of her strategy with Wing It. “It was just part of the business plan to have reviews built in,” she said. They provided invaluable feedback to help improve the customer journey and grow their business. She also employed some unique tactics when initially trying to get customer reviews. 

“In our first month of orders, I literally wrote about 300 handwritten notes. They were long notes because I was really touched by all the first orders. In them I said, ‘Hey, thank you so much for your purchase, can you please leave a review or recommendation? I think that when you write a long handwritten note to hundreds of people, it’s that personal touch that really gets you the review” Rajdeep told me. “We can't do it anymore of course, but we still put personalised printed notes into every order. I honestly think it would have been so much harder, without reviews from the get-go because we were an unknown brand. The only thing people can go on is how good your website is and what other people are saying about you.” 

Due to Wing It’s focus on social proof, Judge.me became a really important fixture for the brand from day one. “Having such high levels of automation within the app’s features made things so much easier,” Rajdeep told me. “It makes a big change from sending 300 handwritten notes!”

For Rajdeep, there really was no other option when it came to review apps. Judge.me simply came out on top for a multitude of reasons.

“I don't know what things  would be like without it! Judge.me was the first review platform that we really used. We kicked off our business with it right off the bat. I think we tested Yotpo and we tested you guys, and I just really preferred your interface. Generally, that idea of social proof is really working for us. It’s really good for us to see our average rating too because if it goes up or down, we investigate why that’s happening and how we can improve. I also love that you can reply personally and publicly. We tend to do both with everyone which is quite cool,” Rajdeep said. 

There was one thing that put Judge.me head and shoulders above the rest for Wing It though.

“Well the customer support is the best out there. Seriously, I really mean that,” Rajdeep said. “When I set it up initially, I think I just emailed support and said, ‘Hey, I need help with this, this and this’ and your team was on it straight away. Everything I asked for was live within a day and it looked great too! Anytime that we've had any issues, there's always someone available. I feel like everyone who works at Judge.me really cares about customer support. It's not an afterthought or a chore. It's really built into the DNA of the company. So yeah, it's awesome. I would say out of all the apps we use on Shopify, Judge.me has the best customer support. I have no qualms with saying that.”

What’s next for Wing It?

“I would say with any business, I've learned that it's definitely a game of patience and belief. You know, you always want things to move faster than they sometimes do at the start. And you've got to really test and treat, learn, and keep going,” Rajdeep told me. “We’re at the point now of scaling, but it’s also understanding the natural journey of a business and being patient with.” 

Expect to see a lot more growth and expansion from Wing It in 2022, and make sure to follow them on their journey as they continue to build confidence in their customer with every new product.

Wing It are part of Judge.me’s influencer programme. If you are a content creator or a brand interested in joining the influencer programme, why not drop us a line at hello@judge.me? We'd love to hear from you!

All photos courtesy of Wing It Cosmetics.