A coffee with Jaimee

Welcome to the club! To begin, who is Jaimee?

I'm a New Zealand girl, a mum, a founder, and a self-confessed beauty obsessive. I grew up on a farm north of Auckland with my sisters, and that upbringing gave me a lot more than I realised at the time. I started my career in luxury communications in Sydney, working across brands like Hermès and Range Rover, before eventually coming home with an idea I couldn't shake. Outside of work, I'm a big advocate for fertility awareness. My partner Nick and I went through a long IVF journey, and I started a charity called Gingernut's Angels to help families who face financial barriers to fertility treatment. It's something really close to my heart.

Where did you grow up and where do you live now?

I grew up in Kumeu on New Zealand's North Island. My mum was a social worker and my dad was a butcher, and they taught me the value of hard work. I wouldn't change a thing about that upbringing. I'm now based in Auckland with my family, though I'm on a plane more than I'd like to admit.

We would love to hear how MONDAY haircare came to be, and how your journey led you to creating it?

I'd spent years in Sydney working in luxury communications, which was a brilliant education in how the best brands in the world carry themselves. But I kept noticing that haircare hadn't caught up. Skincare had this incredible wave of modern, accessible brands that were genuinely exciting to consumers. Haircare hadn't had that moment yet. The mass shelf was full of products that weren't cruelty-free, weren't sulphate-free, and weren't designed with someone who cared about aesthetics in mind. I moved back to Auckland in 2019 with the idea already forming. Nick and I spent about two years getting every detail right before we launched in March 2020. The rest is history. Very fast, slightly chaotic history.

MONDAY has such a strong brand presence. Can you please tell us more behind the name and packaging choices?

The name was intentional. Monday is universally understood. It's the fresh start, the reset. It translates across every market, every language, every culture, and that mattered to us because from day one we were building something global. The packaging came from a really simple brief: something that whispered in an aisle full of things screaming. We stripped everything back. Pale pink, minimal typography, clean lines. We wanted it to look like something you'd find at a high-end salon but sitting right there on a supermarket shelf. That tension between luxury feel and mass accessibility is really the whole brand in a nutshell.

What has been the biggest lesson in building something at such a fast pace?

Make fast decisions and commit to them. Early on I used to overthink things, and that's where you lose time and momentum. Not every call will be perfect, but a decisive one made quickly will almost always beat a perfect one made too late. The other thing, and this sounds simple but it's genuinely everything, is team. You can have the best idea in the world, but without the right people around you it won't go anywhere. If you look after the micro every single day, the macro looks after itself.

You launched MONDAY right at the start of the pandemic; how did that moment shape the brand in its early days?

We launched in March 2020, literally a week before the world shut down. At the time it felt terrifying. But in hindsight it turned into an unlikely proof of concept. Salons closed, and at-home haircare became the only haircare. Having something salon-quality sitting in the supermarket aisle suddenly felt essential rather than just nice to have. We sold six months' worth of stock in four weeks. It proved the brand's reason for being in a way we never could have engineered. It also meant we built entirely on digital and social from the start, and that foundation is still core to who we are today.

If you had to choose one MONDAY product you simply couldn't live without, what would it be?

Our Dry Shampoo. It's the product I reach for constantly. It buys you an extra day, gives your hair instant volume, and honestly just makes life easier. I travel a lot, I'm always moving, and it's never not in my bag. If I had to pick just one, that's always going to be it.

What's something people might be surprised to learn about you?

I grew up on a farm with my sisters, pretty far from anything glamorous. I think people who find me through the brands have this image of someone very pink-and-polished, and that's genuinely part of who I am, but so is the kid who wasn't afraid to get stuck in. I also went through a very public fertility journey, which I've been really open about online. It was hard, but sharing it connected me with so many people going through the same thing. That community means a lot to me.

What does your dream vacation entail?

We did a trip to Africa a few years ago that I still think about. One of those experiences that completely recalibrates you. The scale of it, the stillness, being somewhere so far removed from your everyday life. But if I'm going somewhere to truly switch off, Fiji is always the answer. Something about being there just works. Warm water, no schedule, phone face-down.

How do you relax after a long day?

Honestly, I'm still figuring that out. Having a daughter has completely changed what winding down looks like, and I think I'm still in the process of relearning it. Some nights I'm great at it. Proper skincare routine, early night, fully off. Other nights I'm still answering emails at midnight convincing myself I'm relaxing. Very much a work in progress.

Last, but definitely not least, how do you take your coffee?

A flat white, two shots, the New Zealand way.