The Iron Society

What brought you to make your own hair products?

For the past 4 years it has been a one man, men’s salon or grooming studio. I don’t exclusively cut men’s hair but I feel like over the years it slowly went in that direction and now seems to be my main focus.

I wasted no time developing the products as it was sort of the first project of The Iron Society. I think that sort of set things in motion, and whatever I ended up working on became The Iron Society.

As someone with long, thick hair, your Old Fashioned Men’s Grooming Aid FIRM HOLD speaks to me. How much experimentation went into the creation of these different pomades?

I spent the better part of the first year developing the pomades, mostly trying on myself as I have sort of the middle of the road hair texture, and later on my clients with different types of hair.

The space wasn’t just a salon, it was where I manufactured the products and any other personal projects I had going on. Which were mostly motorcycle related. I ended up with a bench top lathe and a TIG welder in there to help out with any custom motorcycle parts.

The Iron Society has quite the presence on Instagram. Have you seen building a brand on social media affect your sales?

Social media has helped a lot with my business. I have found that I can only reach so many people hand-to-hand or in-person. Having a little bit of an online presence has been a huge help. It allows someone to be able to get a feel for the brand and lifestyle. Hair and grooming products are very difficult to buy online without trying them. So when you can at least look at an image of a haircut you might like or something similar to your lifestyle its a lot easier to get on board with it, and sort of become part of it as well.

How is The Iron Society preparing for the inevitable onslaught of holiday sales?

The Iron Society is fully stocked and ready to ship all orders out next day! Enter code TURKEYBONES for free shipping on all US orders! Offer expires Sunday at 12AM PST.

How has ShipStation helped you with your business?

When I first started shipping the pomade it was only a few orders a month, so I was just handwriting the labels and riding my bike down to the post office every once in a while to get those orders taken care of. Once things picked up, I needed something to help organize and simplify the shipping situation. I upgraded the site from WordPress to Shopify and added the ShipStation plugin. It keeps track of all my orders from the shop, and well as manual orders I have put in.

What’s your favorite ShipStation feature?

Shipping calculations are an easy and accurate and once they are setup, printing large amounts of labels couldn’t be easier. The batch printing option is easily the best part. I don’t feel like my business needs a full blown shipping department yet, so ShipStation has allowed me to operate on a much larger scale and still be a one person business. Regardless of the size of my business in the future I will always use shipstation as my shipping platform.