Named one of the Forbes Top 50 Women Behind Brands in 2019, entrepreneur Chaymae Samir is shaking up the overpriced, overcomplicated world of skincare with her revolutionary brand, madebySUNDAY. Chaymae is obsessed with crafting “no BS”, sustainable, conscious products that really work and delivering them to madebySUNDAY’s die-hard fanbase at prices that disrupt the beauty and wellness market of good quality skincare. A successful and sought-after columnist and speaker, Chaymae is passionate about inspiring others to achieve their goals and settle for nothing less than the extraordinary.

Chaymae stepped up to the mic for a special episode The Change Officer Podcast at the 2022 Step Conference to share why she chose to bootstrap madebySUNDAY as a woman in business, how she focuses on offering real value to her customers and the harmful impact that the glamorisation of entrepreneurship can have on new startup founders. Her episode can be found here.

Do you want to do things differently with your startup? Keep reading to dig into 9 of Chaymae’s most valuable lessons for founders who want to bootstrap their companies.

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#1 Start small and grow from there

It’s a familiar adage, but there is something to be said about keeping things simple. Chaymae started madebySUNDAY with one product: a makeup sponge that absorbed 70% less foundation that the other sponges on the market. Choosing to launch her company without any external funding meant that she prioritised different things in the early days of madebySUNDAY’s story. Instead of concentrating on flashy marketing, she focused on delivering a lifechanging product into the hands of customers who resonated with her brand’s message and understood the value of what they were getting. After its humble beginnings in Chaymae’s living room, in 2022 madebySUNDAY will be opening a store on Oxford Street, as well as opening a warehouse and offices and the Middle East and expanding their e-commerce trading operations. Starting small pays off.

#2 Give customers real value

As an industry outsider, Chaymae had no interest in conforming to the conventions of current beauty and skincare industry. Her background is in investment, not cosmetics. After moving to the UK, she noticed that everyone was into makeup and beauty and skincare. She also identified that there was a huge need for a brand to meet the needs of a consumer like herself: the consumer who doesn’t have the time or attention to sift through thousands of expensive, overcomplicated options to find something that worked for them. madebySUNDAY was started on the foundation of bringing something refreshing, easy to use and uncomplicated to anyone who has ever needed good quality skincare, but felt drowned by the number of options and excluded by the exorbitant pricetag.

#3 Control your production

Her status as an industry outsider made it easy for Chaymae to recognise the inefficiencies in the way that most skincare companies create their products. She decided to handle things differently at madebySUNDAY, and this allowed her to focus on what mattered most: her customer’s needs and experience. If you want to learn more about how madebySUNDAY got started, check out their brand story on their website.

#4 Have a vision and a mission

madebySUNDAY’s vision and mission are simple: 1) Make the best product. 2) Offer it at the best prices. 3) Dismantle the narrative that only those with a lot of money get to have the best things in life. These three statements guide everything from how the business is run to how their products are marketed and how they engage with their customers. This clarity and single-mindedness is evident in their online presence and is a testimony to how clearly defining your vision and mission from the outset can guide your startup in the right direction from the get-go.

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#5 Use marketing that aligns

Chaymae didn’t come from the beauty industry originally. She frequently speaks about how she’s not a beauty influencer. As an industry outsider who doesn’t agree with how overpriced and sometimes pretentious conventional skincare brands are, she angled her marketing in a more authentic direction that goes against the grain of industry conventions. The results? A large, loyal online fanbase and passionate customers of all gender-identities that connect with madebySUNDAY’s vision and mission.

#6 Don’t glamorise entrepreneurship

Stay true to your roots. It is evident from how Chaymae structures her social media presence that she has no interest in being anything other than radically authentic and dismantling this notion that being entrepreneur is all sunshine and rainbows. It takes courage to go against the grain, but it also pays off. With 227.2K followers on TikTok, 31.2K followers on Instagram and 3.8K followers on LinkedIn, Chaymae has attracted an engaged and invested audience who not only care about madebySUNDAY, but also want to hear what she has to say. There’s great value to be had in standing out and sharing your unique perspective on your industry.

#7 Focus your efforts wisely

This statistic is one of the reasons Chaymae chose to bootstrap madebySUNDAY. Raising money takes time. Chaymae estimates that she would have spent at least 6 months raising the investment she would have needed to start madebySUNDAY. As a growth-minded leader, she chose to rather spend that first crucial period building the business and building her team. She used the profits from selling her makeup sponges as the capital to get madebySUNDAY up and running instead of seeking external funding. While some founders are better suited to the CEO role and taking that on with all the fund-raising responsibilities as a full-time position, Chaymae recognised that her advantage lay in being a business builder, and chose to rather focus her efforts on constructing a company that would attract investors on its own merits later down the line.

#8 Create jobs that people love

COVID-19 has forever altered what people expect from their jobs and working environment. The effects of the pandemic caused many employees to reconsider the way they were working and who they were working for. For example, remote or hybrid working options are now expected by many employees, and many of them want to work in a position they’re passionate about instead of just mindlessly plodding along for a paycheck at the end of the month. As someone who grew up in Morocco and saw high levels of unemployment, Chaymae has always been passionate about creating jobs, but she also recognised the current climate in the workplace and has committed to making the positions at madebySUNDAY attractive to the right people. She wants to switch her employees up and make them feel passionate about what they’re doing. She believes this can be accomplished by giving her team members a sense of belonging and making them feel like they are a part of something.

#9 Hire the right people

After a lot of hiring and firing, Chaymae has figured out exactly what she is looking for in a new madebySUNDAY team member. She gives a lot of space of trial and error when hiring new people because she’s realised you can’t really tell from someone’s resume or how well they interview. If you want to dig deeper into the topic of working for a startup, you can check out our blog post on 10 Hot Takes On Startup Culture with RIZEK founder and international keynote speaker Abdallah Abu-Sheikh where he unpacks some of the common mistakes employees make when joining a startup.

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