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There Is A Huge Gap In the Hair Care Market. Afrocenchix Is Filling It.

This article is more than 5 years old.

Walk down the aisles of your local supermarket or drugstore, and you’ll find a huge selection of hair care products, supposedly catering to all types of hair.

Treatments for dyed hair? Definitely. Hair masks for dry hair? Of course. Something to create volume? There’ll be dozens of solutions.

But one glaring omission from the hair care shelves is a range of shampoos, conditioners, hair oils and more that are specifically designed to suit natural afro hair.

For women of color who want to find products to suit their natural curls, there are very few options on the high street. That’s despite the market research business Mintel valuing the black hair care market in the U.S. alone at $2.5 billion.

Afrocenchix meets the demand for a natural afro hair care product

“The afro hair market is hugely under-served. It is pretty much ignored,” said Rachael Corson, co-founding director of Afrocenchix.

So together with Joycelyn Mate, she founded an all-natural, vegan and fair trade hair care company which is tailored to the needs of afro hair.

Photo: Afrocenchix

When both women met at university, they had recently decided to avoid the harsh chemicals involved in relaxing their hair. They’re not alone in that respect: Mintel’s research also found that black women are the most likely to wear their hair natural.But just like any other hair type, afro hair has specific needs that can be addressed with customized hair care. And neither woman could find a product range which was designed for black hair but used natural ingredients and would be kind to sensitive skin.

So they made it themselves.

Changing the beauty industry for the better

“The ideal of beauty is straight, blond hair. That is beautiful, but so is curly brown and black hair, and we do not see that beauty ideal,” said Corson.

Black women are overlooked in the cosmetics and hair care industry. There are brands which cater well to women of color, such as Fenty Beauty, Black Up, Form Beauty and a handful of others, but the volume of brands targeted at white women far outnumber them.

Some retailers are slowly waking up to the huge demand from black women to cater to their hair and skin types. Unfortunately, Corson said there are still shops that refuse to acknowledge that black women are part of their customer base.

While the beauty industry pushes straight hair as the ideal, the language used for any woman with curls is still quite negative: often women are encouraged to “tame” their curls.

Corson explained that with Afrocenchix, they want to change that idea of beauty. “We are not telling women to ‘manage’ or straighten their black hair,” she explained. “We are telling people to embrace who they are.”

Choosing to go all natural

Photo: Afrocenchix

Afrocenchix's products are not only suitable for natural afro hair, but they’re made of natural ingredients too. Though consumers have recently become more interested in products’ organic and natural credentials, Afrocenchix were ahead of the curve.

From the very beginning using natural ingredients was central to the Afrocenchix brand, Corson said, describing herself as “a bit of an eco warrior.”  

“I was fed up with companies greenwashing things. It was always important that we did things differently and in ways that protected people and the planet,” she explained.

And so all their products are ethically-sourced, environmentally-friendly, organic where possible, free from common allergens, and never tested on animals.

Afrocenchix’s path to success

Corson and Mate’s 10 years of hard work running Afrocenchix is producing incredible results.

The British duo are now selling hair care products to consumers in 23 countries and they introduced their range into Whole Foods about a year and a half ago.

Most recently, they took WeWork’s Creator Awards by storm: they won $350,000 of investment at a regional competition in London and were sent to a bootcamp in New York.

They were then flown to Los Angeles for the global finals, where they successfully pitched in front of 6,000 people. We Work’s co-founder and CEO, Adam Neumann gave an introduction, and Afrocenchix impressed the panel of judges which included megastars Ashton Kutcher, Sean “Diddy” Combs, Kirsten Green and Gary Vaynerchuk, winning a further $180,000 in funding.

Photo: Michael Kovac/Getty Images for WeWork

“I was shocked,” said Corson of the experience. “It was all quite surreal.”

With a sudden influx of investment, the two female founders plan to hire more women in STEM, scale up their manufacturing process, expand their product range and put more emphasis on research and development.

As Afrocenchix continues to go from strength to strength, we will hopefully see the imbalance of hair care products designed for black women be corrected. And sometime in the future, we can look forward to the shelves of high street cosmetics stores catering to every woman’s hair care needs.