How an Accident at Age 18 Led to a Business With $35M Sales

Entrepreneur

01-07-2025

Victoria Lynch found her passion early in life, then used it to become a successful entrepreneur.
Victoria Lynch, founder of global hair extension brand Remi Cachet, had a passion for styling hair from a young age. As a 14-year-old in the UK, she braided synthetic hair and styled family and friends; her home salon had a six-month waiting list at one point. She continued to hone her craft over the years, doing hair part-time alongside a morning factory job, until an accident at 18 changed the trajectory of her life.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Remi Cachet. Victoria Lynch.
"I had a road traffic accident with a bus," Lynch tells Entrepreneur, "and that left me with some injuries that affected my lower spine. I ended up with degenerative discs in my lower spine. I only had two weeks off work, and then I went back to work at the factory."
Lynch's injuries made it difficult to be on her feet all day at the factory and the salon. She began to consider what the next phase of her career might look like. People often asked Lynch to teach them how to do hair, but she knew that if she was going to make her mark on the industry, she needed qualifications at the professional level. So she attended college for those qualifications, then dove into entrepreneurship.
"That brand was specifically for that consumer market."
Lynch used money from her savings account to start her first hair extension brand, Additional Lengths, in 2003.
" Extensions weren't popular in the same capacity we see them today," Lynch says, "and I created that brand with that end-user in mind because I was still working and doing hair. I was still supplying products directly to my clients. So that's how I set up the business — that brand was specifically for that consumer market."
In an era before social media helped facilitate business growth on a larger scale, Lynch focused on word-of-mouth marketing within her community.
"I was very much speaking to my local community at the start," Lynch explains, "and I was working on boundaries that they dictate and put in place based on their disposable income. What is my local community looking to pay? How can I sign up salons in my area for them to cater to their needs? Additional Lengths was built on a low cost, but trying to achieve high quality."
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Lynch grew Additional Lengths for the next 10 years. But the brand wasn't just popular with consumers; trade professionals started to purchase the products too, resulting in a "very mixed message" between the two customer groups, Lynch says. Lynch wanted to create a line of high-end extension products that would cater to the professional market specifically, and felt that building an entirely new brand identity was the way forward.
"It was a brand by a professional, directly for a professional."
So, in 2013, Lynch launched her next hair extension brand: Remi Cachet.
"Being a hair professional and understanding the audience, especially from the industry side as well as the end user, that was just the right direction for me," Lynch says. "And it paid off because Remi Cachet became the number one trade professional brand in the UK. It was a brand by a professional, directly for a professional."
Lynch made Additional Lengths the sole authorized distributor of her new brand to utilize the logistics and knowledge that were already in place, she notes. Then it was a matter of using that existing infrastructure to develop Remi Cachet's distinct brand identity and tone.
" I never positioned that I owned that brand," Lynch says. "I wanted the trade space to think, Oh my God, what is this brand?"
Remi Cachet did resonate with industry professionals, and as she'd done with her first business, Lynch harnessed the power of word-of-mouth marketing to grow the brand.
Image Credit: Courtesy of Remi Cachet
"I've built a trade audience that now relies on our service and product to operate."
Now, Remi Cachet continues to see success in the UK, and in January 2025, the brand launched in the U.S. on the red carpet, partnering with hairstylists to get its product on celebrities including Ellie Goulding, Margaret Qualley, Mikey Madison, Kim Kardashian and more. The brand boasts $35 million in sales, per the company.
"If social media [went] offline tomorrow, the foundations that I've built and established my business on would be firmly in place no matter what happened," Lynch says. "I've built a trade audience that now relies on our service and product to operate and retain their own business growth and goals."
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What's more, after more than 20 years as an entrepreneur in the haircare industry, Lynch only recently hired her first sales team.
"Not many businesses can say they've achieved the revenue numbers and size that we have without having a sales team, but I've done it," Lynch says. "And I dare say that is probably down to how I maneuvered the business, the decisions I made in the business: Let the product do the talking. Let the product build the relationships and trust in what you're doing."
"I want it to be the brand that's on everybody's lips for the right reasons."
Like many businesses, Remi Cachet ran into complications with U.S. expansion due to recent tariffs, causing the brand to "put a little pin" in some of its plans. However, the brand still intends to prioritize global expansion on the whole. In the short term, that means focusing outside of the U.S. on markets where it can go after "low-hanging fruit and quick wins."
Lynch looks forward to Remi Cachet's growth on a global scale, confident that even as white-label brands proliferate like never before, her company's commitment to understanding its product and customer will continue to set it apart.
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"Everyone wants a slice of that pie, but that pie is getting smaller and smaller," Lynch says. "Being established and knowing the market and being able to serve people [gives us an advantage] whether we are there [on the ground] in the U.S. or not. Long term, I want to position Remi Cachet [for] global domination. I want it to be the brand that's on everybody's lips for the right reasons."
This article is part of our ongoing Women Entrepreneur® series highlighting the stories, challenges and triumphs of running a business as a woman.