Black Hair Care Companies Looking Overseas for Expansion

Black women are big business when it comes to hair care. According to the Mintel report, African Americans spent a whopping $684 million dollars on hair products in 2013, a number that doesn’t include the billions dropped on weaves, tools, appliances, and at beauty supply stores. It’s a lucrative market, one that until recently was controlled by multinational conglomerates who acquired many of the formerly Black owned hair care companies such as SoftSheen-Carson laboratories. The trend of Black women embracing textured hair changed that game. Sensing the shift, independent African American manufacturers were quick to create and market products designed to nourish textured tresses.

Now that the natural hair movement is a full-blown revolution, mainstream companies have turned their attention to the changing preferences of Black women. Facing increased competition, many innovative indie brands have set their sights on the international market because the textured trend has also officially gone global. At Natural Hair Academy, France’s premier event for curly girls, iconic Black hair entrepreneurs such as Jane Carter of Jane Carter Solution, Lisa Price, who pioneered the textured hair market with her company Carol’s Daughter, and Mixed Chicks founders Wendi Levy and Kim Etheridge were on hand to interact with the thousand women in attendance, sell products and to scope out the natural hair scene. They sense that competition from the big guys is imminent, and they’re determined to leverage their platforms for continued growth.

“The larger corporations are already knocking on the door. They’re just taking their time (to figure out) the way that they want to move in the category,” says Etheridge. She and partner Wendi already experience the kind of pressure a well-heeled giant company can place on a small business when Sally’s Beauty created and began marketing a cheap copy of their popular leave-in conditioner under the uncomfortably similar moniker “Mixed Silk”.  The ladies sued the goliath, and won. “You can’t be afraid of them coming at you because they have resources,” Etheridge continues. “You just have to work extra hard, and that’s what they do.”

Today’s independent manufacturers are working harder and smarter to expand their audiences. Lisa Price, grande dame of the natural hair game recently launched a Target exclusive line in all of the bullseye branded chain’s nearly 2000 stores in the U.S. That undertaking didn’t stop Price from coming to France to explore the international textured hair audience. She takes competition from the big guys in stride. “I don’t look at it like them trying to take share away from me or other independent brands, they are doing business just like I am,” says Price. “They just happen to be bigger.” She also sees the size of huge competitors as a disadvantage for them. “There’s a process that they have to function within that smaller companies don’t. We have the ability to be more nimble. The larger companies are trying to figure it out. They just move at a different pace.”

Being flexible and fast helped textured hair titan Jane Carter recognize the importance of the international natural hair market years ago. “Everybody’s looking for the same thing.  The demographic of women deciding that they’re going to like the hair that they have, have created their own camaraderie. I walked into a room [in Paris] and I could’ve been in Brooklyn, New York.” Chimole Williams, cofounder of the France’s premier textured hair event Natural Hair Academy and global hair product distributor, agrees. “International naturals have seen so many American vloggers and bloggers do demos with many of the current brands on the market. That’s created a demand.” For now, the social media buzz factor of boutique African American brands and their proliferation on natural hair websites ensures that they have plenty of room for growth overseas. Those smart enough to capitalize on the global connection have discovered a whole new world of Afro loving consumers.

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