For the 16-year-old hair-care company Rahua, offering “clean” hair products was no longer enough to stand out. With clean formulations table stakes by 2025, the brand founded with a focus on plant-powered hair-care products sourced from the Amazon rainforest needed to find new ways to keep customers coming back.
“We were actively looking for a way to engage our community, and so we were looking at everything from Facebook groups and the Instagram broadcast channels to doing, of course, the usual loyalty programs like Yotpo,” said Rahua CEO Farah Azmi. “But we were trying to find a way to engage with our audience a little differently.”
Rahua found a solution in Rediem, which allowed the brand to build out its own loyalty program on its DTC channels. Since going live in April, the Rediem-powered loyalty program has seen 45% of customers, roughly 5,000, sign up and a nearly 70% increase in revenue from loyalty customers month-over-month.
“This past year, my key focus has been a lot of brand awareness,” said Azmi, who joined Rahua as CEO in 2024. “A lot of brands that try to get a lot of brand awareness get a lot of new eyes and a lot of first-time purchases. But I want to make sure that, after that first-time purchase, they come back and feel bought into the Rahua mission.”
Large-scale retailers like Sephora and Ulta are already known for their loyalty programs, which keep consumers coming back with birthday rewards and tiered perks like free samples. For individual brands that can’t necessarily compete with those robust rewards programs, Rediem hopes to offer a platform to keep customers engaged with customizable loyalty programs.
But keeping up with consumer demand means catering to consumers who don’t just want a functional product and a seamless buying experience, but they also seek an emotional connection with their purchases.
“We’ve got a lot of tensions in the market. We have the economies of scale of people buying at a Sephora or an Amazon, which really depersonalizes the experience but makes it super efficient,” said Rediem co-founder and chief ideator Regan Plekenpol. “But then you also have, on the other side, this high-touch demand from Gen Z, where they want to feel very close to the brands that they’re trusting. … They kind of want to feel like the brand is both their best friend and their therapist.”
Plekenpol and Sarah Ganzenmuller began building Rediem in 2023 and launched to the public in 2024. They raised $1.2 million in pre-seed funding in 2024 and count consumer brands like Sun Bum, Olipop and Rahua among their clientele. Rediem founder said the company is focused on working with “mission-driven” companies rather than just boosting sales. By letting each partner tailor their rewards perks to their own brand identities — like giving Rahua consumers points for uploading photos of their empty products or upcycling their empty bottles — Rediem’s founders believe they can tap into consumer values.
“Sephora sells, like, 500 brands online. They have these generic, ‘get an eyelash curler’ or ‘become a VIP’ sort of special perk. But you can get so specific with one brand’s mission,” said Plekenpol. “It’s their own community that they’re fostering. And that’s how these beauty brands have these cult followings. They have people who just really identify with either the celebrity founder or the mission behind the brand.”
Gen-Z consumers have already shown a propensity for brands that offer experiential shopping experiences. Pop-ups from the likes of Owala and Rhode drive thousands of consumers to wait in line for hours to obtain free merchandise and capture content. Brands are also experimenting with paid brand trips for consumers rather than influencers to reward longtime shoppers and cultivate a sense of community.
But retaining loyalty can be challenging when customers also know they can shop for most beauty products in a number of retailers now and are willing to hunt for the best bang for their buck.
“A customer doesn’t really care where they’re buying it. They’re ultimately going to search for where they can get the best deal, and where they can get it the easiest and quickest,” said Azmi. “Customers buy into [loyalty] because they want something extra. They don’t want to just buy a shampoo anymore. They want to buy something in hopes of getting a promo now or later. And with the loyalty program, we’re not just offering a promotion, we’re offering them long-term opportunities to get promotions or little perks.”
Similar to Sephora’s VIB program, Rahua’s loyalty program offers three tiers based on accumulated points. Members of the highest tier can obtain perks like early access to new launches. And according to Rahua and Rediem, customers can also earn perks while shopping outside of Rahua’s DTC channels, such as by uploading receipts of their purchases of Rahua products from retail partners like Erewhon. That provides brands with valuable insights into their customers’ shopping habits outside of their own websites.
“We support rewarding purchases that are happening beyond the DTC channel, and we support relationships that are based on more than that end transaction,” said Rediem CEO and co-founder Sarah Ganzenmuller. “It’s supporting the fact that these brands are still able to create that relationship without owning that end purchase. If anything, it’s a boon to the Sephoras of the world.”
Rediem founders say they considered launching a consumer-facing app initially before switching to a B2B format. While they haven’t ruled out launching their own Rediem app down the line, for now, there is plenty of engagement to sow in existing beauty communities.
“These fandoms are so significant, like the Rhode girls or the Selena Gomez girls — they go deep,” said Plekenpol. “We’re giving them that space to be able to create that community.”
