Although I initially started spending time on the Internet in the early 1990s, I found a lot of information I wanted to view was limited in nature.

As a result of a bunch of random circumstances I started the first consumer hair and beauty focused website back in the mid-1990s when there were no other websites focused on those topics.

The only thing that existed when we started were some BBS related forums for men who admired women with long hair in Europe.

Flying Blind

There was no guidelines on the best way to go about starting a consumer hair and beauty website at that point.

Additionally, everything had to be programmed in HTML and it took a lot of time and effort.

In the very beginning when my partner and I had launched the previous hair site which eventually transitioned into Hairboutique.com, there was a lot of resistance from both professional and consumer hair related companies to partner with us.

The Web back in the early to the mid-1990s were viewed with great suspicion.

Finding Viable Revenue Sources

We initially struggled to find a revenue source. Web advertising was in its infancy and was very limited. We had to pay the bills to run the site and there were no easy answers at the beginning.

If you wanted to sell products on your website to help fund it, you had to build your own store and shopping cart from scratch.

Then of course you had to find companies willing to let you sell their hair and beauty products on the web.

Eventually we were able to convince some consumer hair product companies to work with us.

Conair was one of the first consumer hair manufacturers willing to sell to us. They were a great company to work with.

The recognized the potential future of the Internet and helped us in any way they could including providing product images, reviews and detailed product specifications.

Professional Hair Care Companies Were Extremely Resistant

Professional hair care companies were unwilling to work with us at all. In fact, back in the mid to late 1990s some of the largest professional hair companies were extremely hostile.

Eventually a French hair care company, Phyto, agreed to work with us and we were off and running.

Phyto was great to us. They had an award-winning consumer and professional hair care line which was difficult to find except in New York or LA.

Offering Phyto through out web site brought us a lot of awareness from other consumers.

Until other consumer hair companies started flooding onto the Internet and providing competition, we had a great relationship with them.

Attack Of The Trolls

From the very first day we launched the original website we had a talk forum - HairTalk - which allowed consumers to post their hair concerns, experiences, questions and answers.

One of the first big challenges was dealing with random trolls who would disrupt the boards with massive flame wars.

It was hard to believe topics about hair could generate major issues, but at one point we had to temporarily take the boards offline for a week to clean up the problems.

Constant Challenges

When I look back at all our struggles in the mid-1990s, I am amazed we even survived through all the constant challenges we encountered.

I have watched over the past 20 years and the Internet has transitioned from no one buying any hair or beauty products on the Web to Amazon getting into the market in a massive way.

Once Amazon went from selling books to selling hair and beauty products in the mid-2000s the entire online market shifted dramatically.

Amazon even began selling professional hair products in partnership with the very companies which had given us such a hard time back in the beginning of our first consumer hair and beauty website.

The Internet - Early 1990s To 2018?

Even though the Internet in the early to mid-1990s was like the Wild West as Randall Fink wisely shared, it has always been chaotic in my opinion.

There are many great people here on Quora such as Stan Hanks, or Tony Li and Phillip Remaker to follow who helped to actually shape the development and emergence of the Web in the early 1990s.

I follow all and they offer amazing information about all things Internet related from the past as well as the present.