Click through to read about the world of Black-owned beauty businesses.
Click through to read about the world of Black-owned beauty businesses.
Q&A
Sunday II Sunday is a Black-owned athleisure haircare brand which has capitalized on the needs of a consumer with a specific lifestyle to find a whitespace. Christina Williams, associate brand manager spoke with CosmeticsDesign about what their model means in 2022.
Let's talk a little bit about treatment-focused hair and scalp preparations. What do you see happening in that area in 2022?
I definitely think that this continued conversation around the skinification of hairs is going to be huge in 2022. This year we saw some conversations emerging around self-care and wellness and how that extends into your hair. There's a conversation that's beginning to happen about how your scalp is also skin.
In the same way that you have those multi-step regimens for your face and perhaps your body, we’re exploring what that looks like for hair. We know that healthy hair comes from a healthy scalp, so I think there's going to be a huge focus on how we can nourish and treat the scalp going forward.
Cosmoprof North America is launching a new special area focused on Black-owned beauty companies which has been years in the making.
While the show has had a “Tones of Beauty” special area in the past, Cosmoprof Head of Marketing Liza Rapay said she started rethinking how Cosmoprof North America should showcase inclusive beauty brands in 2019.
During her first show with Cosmoprof, Rapay said she felt the area could be elevated and look more congruent with the other special areas on the floor.
“I thought it was good, but I also thought there were some opportunities,” Rapay said. “At that time in 2019, I challenged the curator to do something different for 2020.”
Hair care brand Frederick Benjamin launched into Target stores in February, filling a white space for men of color looking for clean-and-natural-focused products.
Founded in 2010, Frederick Benjamin is a hair care brand with products for textured hair. Having worked in the beauty industry, focusing on hair care, and as a consumer, founder Michael James said he noticed a large white space for natural products and simple routines for men of color.
The brand is both launching into 500 Target stores in February and launching into Men’s World in March. James said these launches will make products for an underserved but ever prevalent consumer more accessible in retail.
White space in textured hair care for men
James worked with L’Oreal and Revlon for around eight years and is himself a hair care consumer, and said he found that finding the right products for himself as a Black man could be difficult.
To fill gaps in demand for inclusive beauty ingredients, BASF has launched an accelerator to focus on indies hoping to make inclusive and diverse personal care products.
Ingredient supplier BASF launched an accelerator program with StitchCrew in March for early-stage beauty and personal care entrepreneurs which will give selected brands a $10,000 grant, coaching from industry professionals and the opportunity to showcase their products to investors.
Whitney Millegan, digital strategy leader for the Diverse Leaders Program at BASF said while the brands will be receiving a grant, the program’s focus is on exposing indies to the company’s network of personal care professionals and investors who can help launch and scale businesses.
“Our goal is really to develop a community of people who are inclusive and conscious, who represent diverse backgrounds, and who are really hungry to accelerate greater inclusion in the personal care industry,” Millegan said.
Q&A
Supply chains are long and all too often include exploration of individuals near the bottom of it.
CosmeticsDesign spoke with Chelsea Heyward, director of marketing at wholesaler Eye2Eye, about how the company is aiming to bring more ownership and equity to people of color in the cosmetics supply chain.
What is Eye2Eye? What does it do in cosmetics?
Essentially Eye2Eye is here to be a community-led, community-supported company. That encompasses a lot, but really our focus is on delivering both high-quality products as well as supporting the people who are purchasing those products, whether that's through job creation, supporting the farmers that we're sourcing from or making sure that there's representation across the industry.
What we found is that people of color make up about 40% of the population yet only 20% of ownership across businesses. In the hair industry, people of color over-index in purchasing these products compared to how much ownership there is. So throughout that whole linear thread, it's about ownership and empowerment.
