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Advancing The Line
The Year We Hit The Big Leagues
Founded in 2014, a good part of The Longhairs’ early story is told in Blog Post #156: Three Years Long and Strong. The essence of that post was that if you do something for 156 weeks in a row, good things are going to happen.
That couldn’t be more true as we celebrate five years in business, capping off a decade and the most important year in the young history of The Longhairs.
2019 started with a phone call between El Rubio & El Moreno on New Years Day, where we seriously considered canceling The Great Cut.
Our backs were against the wall. We had two months to make the final push and the mountain ahead seemed impossible. There was real fear.
We laid out every possible scenario, every reason to cut our losses and call it off...but it was too late, we concluded. We were beyond the point of no return.
In that moment we recommitted to The Great Cut, and believing with everything in our hearts resolved, “WE ARE F***ING DOING THIS!” And there was no going back.
A few days later we found ourselves at the ISSE Hair & Beauty Show in Long Beach, where we relentlessly recruited for The Great Cut, laying everything on the line.
From that trip forward we essentially ignored our business and focused 100% of our energy on The Great Cut. With that commitment came opportunity, as we appeared on KUSI seven times and dozens of other news outlets helping to build momentum.
It’s well-documented the record was broken just weeks before our attempt, which perhaps created the urgency we needed to galvanize a mission—and a community.
In the end, the sacrifice paid off. We did it, and it’s well worth revisiting in this dramatic recap of The Great Cut.
We somehow pulled it off and broke the record, but more important were the connections made between the people who participated, the pure energy and pride they felt, and the warmth in their hearts from doing something special.
Coming off the record-breaking event it was time to refocus on the business. First up we launched the long-awaited Epic Cleanse & Ideal Conditions with this legendary shampoo & conditioner review for men, and from there we were on a roll.
Over the next several months we continued pumping out content, highlighted with guest appearances by San Diego Padres Pitcher Matt Strahm, BMX Pro Ratty Maty, Chris Watts from The Titan Games, San Diego Music Hall of Famer Mark Goffeney, Powerlifter Jesse Marvin, and the big man himself.
We tackled curly hair head-on with new guest contributors and curly hair specialists Sergio Gutierrez and Andrew Reed, and we teamed up with Jefferson Jay, offering our support for The Hunt For The Holiday Spirit.
We even revealed the origins and etiquette of C’YA!....all the while, El Moreno continued his long and arduous hair journey, joined by millions of aspiring longhairs in Grow With Moreno.
In October we released eight explosive new collections of Hair Ties For Guys V3.1, with The Vikings and several other collections selling out in an unprecedented matter of days.
Soon after we traveled to Dallas, Texas, visiting the Mark Cuban Companies team at the Dallas Mavericks headquarters, culminated by an ownership meeting with Mark Cuban himself and a Dallas Mavericks home game.
A week later we traveled to Livonia, Michigan for the Children With Hair Loss Charity Ball, where we reconnected with the children and their families, many who attended The Great Cut, and we truly felt the impact of The Longhairs’ involvement.
Accelerating towards the finish line we launched a new line of hard lids, followed by all new soft lids, then customizable hair ties with The White Ties.
With the help of a record Black Friday - Cyber Monday we reached $1M in lifetime sales, a modest benchmark but no less meaningful for two guys who made an idea real. Just as we reached five years in business we published our core focus and values in blog post #300, marking 260 consecutive weeks of original, quality content.
As the year comes to an end we are winding down, closing up shop and completely dissolving our web agency, Round Two Creative Group. Though we have been “full time” with The Longhairs since we left our office in Little Italy, we have kept the agency alive part-time with a single client, Straight Line Landscape, which to this day we claim as the best landscape company website on the internet.
Having fulfilled our obligations and achieved our purpose, with great reverence and appreciation we bid fond farewell to the business that made The Longhairs possible.
While penning this letter we learned Children With Hair Loss has provided a hair replacement to 608 children in 2019, the most they’ve ever helped in a single year. Every person who donated their hair, who helped make The Great Cut a success, and who purchased from The Longhairs in 2019 helped make that possible.
In the waning moments of 2019 we are closing our campaign for The Great Cut. With over 30 donations in December—including an extremely generous donation of $6,000(!) from Jon Renau—we’ve reached $48,000+ for Children With Hair Loss, over 95% of our goal.
We’re urging family, friends and supporters to make a year-end tax-deductible donation and help us reach $50k.
This brings us to December 31, the end of the year in which The Longhairs has had the greatest impact. And yet, with your continued support, there is far greater impact to be made.
Today The Longhairs is in a position to build this community into something far greater than anyone could have imagined.
It was the year we cracked into the big leagues. What we can tell you is The Longhairs is built on the rock, not on the sand.
Most appropriate we felt for closing out the year, would be sharing the message Mark Cuban shared with us in Dallas:
You guys are doing things exactly the right way. Don’t forget...you are a community. It’s about the community, it’s about the members...it’s about what it means to have long hair. Make it special to be part of The Longhairs.
We hope you’re enjoying this time of the year with family and dear friends, and we’re thankful to consider you part of The Longhairs family.
Happy New Year, here’s to 2020 and beyond...the best is yet to come.
Fraternally,
The Longhairs
