Recently, The Cut Buddy, a haircut shaping tool for men’s grooming and maintenance, and PuffCuff, an easy-to-use hair clamp that doesn’t damage hair or cause pain while creating a variety of hairstyles for curly, textured natural hair entered into a mutually beneficial business partnership to cross-promote each other’s brands and patented personal care products.
(Joshua Esnard, Founder of CutBuddy. Image: CutBuddy)
According to a recent press release, the union of PuffCuff and The
Cut Buddy will help both parties reach more men and women with the promise to ease the struggle that comes with styling kinky to curly hair textures and achieving a “barber-quality” line at home. The price points are right along the same lines with The Cut Buddy being priced at $14.95 and PuffCuffs starting at $16.49.(Ceata Lash, Founder of ThePuffCuff. Image: ThePuffCuff)
Instead of working in silos, the two companies came to the conclusion that working together was much more beneficial for the growth and scale of their companies. They share the common strategic goal of wanting to expand their distribution to brick and mortar retailers and hope that by cross-promoting brands they can increase awareness and sales in order to achieve their objectives.
What actions does this partnership include? They have been cross-promoting on each other’s social media platforms and offered promotional codes via incorporating each other’s brand names. Additionally, they’ve created a fun lifestyle video that showcases both products as well as a third product/brand they’ve collaborated with, Self-Cut System.
There is something to be learned here. If you are in business, start looking for strategic partners who lend themselves to a mutually beneficial relationship. Neither company is new to the market. The Cut Buddy launched in 2016 and became successful after a video on YouTube went viral and reached 11 million views and PuffCuff launched in 2013 and has had great success on social media, garnering over 20K Instagram followers, 44K Facebook followers, and 218K YouTube views. But they both saw that they were in similar spaces and knew that together they could achieve their goals faster.