How this lifestyle brand achieved three sold-out launches with Flodesk

TL;DR: Meet Antionette—the Founder and Creative Director behind HAUME. Learn how she uses Flodesk to save time, build community, and achieve sold-out sales with ease. 

HAUME is a female-owned lifestyle brand purposefully created to inspire black women to cultivate home sanctuaries and pursue more fulfilling lives. Founder and Creative Director, Antoinette Arrington, believes that the feeling of home should serve as a personal retreat from the world that stimulates calm and relaxation. 

Learn about HAUME’s journey to sell-out success and how Antoinette uses Flodesk to save time growing her business.

Before starting HAUME in 2020, Antoinette worked as an interior stylist. She often felt that many of the spaces she was styling weren’t quite right. It was challenging for her to find products that could evoke a sense of sanctuary while staying true to her client’s aesthetic.

This frustration, coupled with a troublesome search for a friend’s gift, inspired HAUME’s first product: a luxurious, custom-scented candle reminiscent of the men Antoinette knew. She poured a small batch of plant-based candles and developed HAUME.

HAUME’s distinct brand aesthetic features soft color palettes, soothing textures, and custom brand photography portraying black women authentically. “I never really saw black men and women represented in a way I could relate to in the design industry,” says Antoinette. 

She draws inspiration from childhood memories around her family’s dinner table, placing a heavy emphasis on storytelling through HAUME. Stories are seamlessly woven into her range of thoughtfully made home goods, design workshops, and gathering experiences. Email marketing has been integral to bringing HAUME’s story to life. 

Antoinette struggled to find an email marketing platform that balanced ease of use with beautiful design. She needed a tool that was simple and stylish.

Before Flodesk, she tried using her website builder’s email tool but found its templates too stark for the content she wanted to create. Other platforms required too much time and tech-savviness. Antoinette says, “When you’re a small business owner, doing it all with ease is important.”

“My friend, a photographer, had told me about Flodesk,” says Antoinette. “Being able to reconfigure templates to match my brand—whether I was telling a story or selling—was really helpful.”

Now, Antoinette loves using Flodesk to grow her business. She says, “Flodesk gives me the ability to send heartfelt emails to my community that look as good as they feel.”

Flodesk Email was crucial in promoting HAUME’s first product launch—the HOMME candle. Within 48 hours of launching, all 50 candles sold out. Shocked by such rapid success, Antoinette readied 100 more candles to sell and sent emails to promote the next launch. When sales opened again, the candles sold out within 24 hours.

After two successful product launches, Antoinette leaned into the power of storytelling through Flodesk. She wove together stories—such as how to treat your home, the impact of scent and memory, and what HAUME means—and nurtured her email list in preparation for her largest launch to date. Here’s an email Antoinette sent to nurture and warm her list for sales.

On Black Friday, she opened sales for 250 candles, including a limited edition offer. By the end of the day, all limited edition candles sold out. The remaining stock was gone within just three days.

Amid a period of burnout and grief, Antoinette was grateful to have Flodesk’s branded email templates in place when she needed to take a step back from the business. She finds comfort in knowing that her business can continue when she’s on pause.

“A friend stepped in to start helping me with email marketing. Thanks to Flodesk, she was able to seamlessly transition my sales emails into storytelling content, which perfectly matched my brand and flowed effortlessly with the templates I had in place,” she says. “It looked the same and felt the same. The shift from selling to storytelling was seamless.”

As a busy business owner, time is precious. Flodesk Analytics empowers Antoinette to quickly see what’s performing well (and what’s not) so she can develop fresh, insight-driven email iterations. She automatically segments subscribers based on their behavior and adapts content to each segment’s needs without switching email templates. Flodesk’s automation features and intuitive drag-and-drop builder are huge timesavers for her.

“Because I don’t have to code or design to get the look I want, it literally takes me 10 minutes to duplicate high-performing emails, drop in copy and content, then schedule them to be delivered.”

For Antoinette, the greatest experience of them all has been the tight-knit community she’s been able to foster through email. Many of her subscribers view themselves as friends, often responding to her messages.

“My email community really feels at home (no pun intended). They’re much more connected to my brand and me than I’ve ever experienced on social media platforms. The emails feel like a direct conversation—it builds trust.” 

Flodesk helps HAUME achieve sold-out sales 4x faster and gives Antoinette more time to focus on other business needs. With Flodesk Email, she grew product sales by over 633% from her first launch to the third. Antoinette saves hours by using Flodesk to create and send emails—which only takes her 10 minutes.

 “In less than six months, I was able to grow my community to over 300 subscribers and increase my open rate to more than 60%.”

Wondering how you can achieve success through email marketing, too? Here are five steps to start growing your business with Flodesk and get great results, like HAUME.

See why beginners and experts love using Flodesk to grow their businesses. Start free and send emails people love to get. 

You don’t need dozens of subscribers to grow your business with email. Start by creating beautiful opt-in forms that capture subscribers’ email addresses and help you build an audience you own.

Convert website visitors into subscribers with Popup, Inline, and Full Page Forms. Or better yet, turn followers into subscribers and convert 40x better with a Flodesk Link in bio. The easiest way to own your audience—completely free. Why settle for anything less? Your audience won’t. Create yours now.

Antoinette started growing HAUME’s list from zero by telling a portion of a story on social media and encouraging her audience to ‘subscribe’ to access the full story. She also regularly imports emails from her Shopify store into Flodesk to pull new customers into the customer journey.   

With Flodesk’s library full of stunning, customizable templates to choose from, there’s no stopping what you can create. Add your brand colors, fonts, logos, and imagery. Use templates as-is or make them yours. 

Antoinette says, “You can tell as much or as little story as you want, but being consistent visually and aesthetically is important.” 

One way to build trust with your audience is to show up consistently. Maintain a cohesive brand experience while sending emails regularly. By making a routine of sending emails on a set schedule, you can laser-focus on who you’re speaking to, how you want them to feel, and the value you can provide them with. 

Email gives you the unique opportunity to speak directly to your audience in the comfort of their personal inbox. It’s much more intimate than social media where you’re speaking to the masses. Engage with your audience candidly and forge deeper relationships, which will help propel your business forward. 

For more inspiration, explore HAUME’s website or find her on Instagram and Pinterest: @haumexofficial