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Covid-19 has caused the demise of many businesses around the world but it has also accelerated the growth of some others. One such business is Rush Brush, an Alexandria-born direct-to-consumer (D2C) brand of hair styling products that claims to have seen its sales grow by 300 percent (YoY) during the first eight months of 2020. The startup that sells different electrical hair styling tools and products including straighteners, dryers, curlers, and volumizers, mainly relies on online sales made through its website.
Ahmed Helmy, the founder of Rush Brush, who started the company in 2015 told MENAbytes that over 80 percent of the sales of Rush Brush come from online channels and the rest from different offline partners including hypermarkets. He said that as Covid-19 restricted people’s movement, a lot of them turned to online mediums and that is primarily what has resulted in the surge of sales at Rush Brush.
Most of Rush Brush’s sales come from Egypt and GCC. It now plans to launch its product in the United States next year. Rush Brush said that it is a US-registered brand. The startup had started with a straightening brush but has since expanded to launch different other products.
Rush Brush manufactures all its products in China but said that the products come with ‘durable American components.’
Ahmed believes that Covid-19 was a blessing in disguise for different ecommerce businesses. He said that a lot of their sales this year have come from Facebook and Instagram. The startup has 1.8 million likes on its Facebook page and close to 250,000 followers on Instagram.
The Egyptian entrepreneur said that social media-powered commerce is going to increase even further in the future. “The social media platforms are starting to empower the entire shopping experience – from browsing a catalog to checkout. They are becoming the new storefronts, enabling users to buy without having to visit a website or download an app,” said Ahmed.
The startup is a subsidiary of Stylish Eve, a company that runs a namesake magazine with about 25 million followers on Facebook. Rush Brush also said that it has raised a significant amount of investment this year without sharing the details.
Update – Sep 24, 2020 – 10:15 AM GMT: A previous version of the article listed Rush Brush as a Cairo-born company. It had started in Alexandria. The article has been updated to reflect this.
