With the proliferation of hair oils, leave-in conditioners, hair masks and co-washes on the market, it can seem as if the textured haircare category—like most beauty categories—is too crowded for newness to make a noise. But curly haired consumers are far from done snapping up the latest goodies for their coils.
According to Dimpy Jindal, associate partner at global management consultancy McKinsey & Co., the textured haircare segment reached $2.5 billion to $3 billion in sales in 2022 and has accelerated at an annual rate of 6% to 7% for the last six years. Proctor & Gamble’s acquisition of Mielle Organics in January reflects the segment’s bounce. Going forward, sales in the textured haircare are expected to pick up even more, with McKinsey projecting they’ll rise annually at a rate of 10% to 11%.
Ahead, we highlight five brands that could contribute to future growth, including a brand developed by a gen Z founder for gen Z customers and another designed to prevent damage from straightening.
Curl of Art: When Artiera Hickman set out to create Curl of Art in 2020, her main priority was for it to achieve clean, effective and minimal products. That priority was based on the challenges she encountered trying to find products that worked for her hair after her big chop in 2017. A big chop removes chemically treated hair to facilitate a transition to natural hair.
“I would spend hours on YouTube looking at tutorials and product reviews to find a product that would jump-start my new growth process,” recalls Hickman. “I talked to every natural girl I knew about her routine and product recommendations.”
Every product she tried fell flat, and she was overwhelmed by the countless options on the market. Curl of Art pares down the product choices to help confused consumers. Launched in August 2022, it has two products, the $22 co-wash Drenched and the $26 leave-in treatment Deep Blue Curl Perfector Leave-In Treatment.
Hickman says, “We intentionally curated two products to start that would be easy and carefree for the conscious consumer on the go.”
She poured $60,000 into bringing Curl of Art to life. The brand’s target consumers are looking for simple haircare systems that don’t weigh down their hair or schedule. It aims to get in front of those consumers through social media, and digital and IRL activations. Prior to starting Curl of Art, Hickman ran event company The Art Group LA. She’s now at Curl of Art full-time.
Eventually, the goal is to place Curl of Art in retailers such as Sephora and Credo. Other goals are introducing refillable pouches for its aluminum bottles and, further off, opening a quick-service wash-and-go studio.
Climax: Climax is focusing on a textured hair segment it thinks is seriously underserved: Women wishing to stave off the damage that comes from straightening their natural hair with heat.
“Although there are many different natural haircare products on the market that address the aftermath of heat damage such as damage repair conditioners and masks, there are not many options for preventative products that avert damage caused by heat altogether,” says founder Tavia Green. “We fill the void in the market.”
Before launching Climax, Green founded Nubian Bar Beauty, an online beauty shop that specialized in handmade human hair wigs. She reports she scaled the business to over $500,000 in revenues before closing it to pivot to Climax.
Priced from $18.99 to $21.99, Climax’s assortment contains the shampoo Clean Me, conditioner Smooth Me, heat protectant Silk Me, gloss serum Gloss Me and styling spray Style Me styling. Early on, its two bestsellers are Silk Me and Gloss Me.
The brand leans heavily on organic marketing. “We gift our products to hair stylists and hair influencers and ask for a video review or shout out in return if they like the products,” explains Green. The strategy has helped Climax gain 38,000 followers on Instagram and over 5,000 newsletter subscribers.
Green is working to secure funding for Climax via accelerators, pitch competitions and grants. She recently completed Target’s Forward Founders program and anticipates Climax will enter the retailer in the next 24 to 36 months.
“We hope to see more natural kinky textured hair women embrace the versatility that their natural hair offers,” says Green. “I believe that a lot of women with natural hair still tend to hold back with switching up their hair out of fear of damage and we hope that our brand will help those women to explore new possibilities when it comes to their hair.”
Ocoa: The brand DN Organics was a precursor to Ocoa. Sisters Cory and Nicol Varona brought it to market in 2021 with $20,000 from their savings and promptly realized they needed to go back to the drawing board to reconfigure the branding. “We didn’t invest in it and kept it very DIY,” says Nicol Varona.
The makeover cost six times the Varonas’ initial investment in DN Organics. It involved new products, a design and packaging overhaul, and fresh social media marketing approach. “We invested more of our personal savings, took out a business loan and reinvested earnings made since 2021,” reveals Varona.
Their mission remains the same: To encourage Latinas to love their curls and themselves. “We want our community to know anything is possible with passion, love and determination,” says Varona. “Our brand goes beyond haircare, we want to stop hair assimilation so future generations embrace who they are born to be.”
Priced from $19.98 to $23.98, Ocoa’s haircare products are Curl Care Shampoo, Curl Care Conditioner, Curl Defining Style Gel and Hydrating Curl Cream. The ingredients chosen for the formulas are inspired by the Dominican Republic. They include mango butter, avocado and hibiscus flower extract.
“We use those luxe, minimal ingredients from nuestra tierra—our homeland—to create products that perform beyond synthetics,” says Varona. “Our motto is ‘claro beauty.’ For us, clean means ‘claro’ or clear in all the ways, from our formula, scent, how it feels on hands and hair, and a no list that goes beyond sulfates, parabens and silicones.”
Ocoa is the name of the co-founders’ mom’s hometown, a city located in the southern region of the Dominican Republic. Their heritage is baked into the brand’s packaging as well as the formulas. Varona explains that the product names and key ingredients are in English when the bottles are right side up and Spanish when they’re flipped over, “mirroring our immigrant journey of living in two worlds.”
Ocoa has secured a number of partnerships with curly hair salons across the country. It’s interested in the validation hairstylists impart to the brand. To compel customers to test it, they’ve seen success with giving out free samples from Ocoa’s website with a small shipping fee attached.
Txtur: Brand incubator Hatch Collective used consumer insights from analytics platform Trendalytics, which it acquired in 2021, to inform its latest creation, Txtur. The brand is also informed by a community of about 200 people that Hatch tapped to provide feedback on what they thought was missing from the market. Their feedback convinced the company that an affordable brand mixing natural ingredients with innovative technology could play a role in the textured haircare segment.
“We wanted to take a different approach and enhance the market, not compete with it,” says senior brand manager Kristy Dixon. “We wanted to make sure we created exactly what the community group was looking for.”
Txtur has developed its own bonding technology to support hair’s keratin structure. Olaplex popularized bonding technology in haircare. In its formulas, Txtur’s bonding technology is coupled with ingredients such as moringa oil, aloe vera and quinoa peptides.
Dixon says, “It seemed like a natural fit to pair the benefits of bonding technology, which is known to help repair broken hair fibers, with the delicate needs of the curly hair consumer.”
Txtur launched in March and entered 304 Target stores shortly after. It’s available on Amazon, too. The brand has four products priced from $14.99 to $15.99: Bond Repair Shampoo, Bond Repair Conditioner, Leave-In Conditioner and Overnight Bond Building Mask. It was important for the brand to keep its pricing below its competition’s pricing, which it figures is typically $30 and above.
Txtr’s complete range features its bonding technology. “That means that you can trust you will see benefits from using any of the Txtur products, not just one or two products like other brands tend to have,” says Dixon. “Even using just one of the four products, you’ll see visible results.”
Hatch Collective will turn to its community to guide future launches. Styling products are in the works. “Finding the right hair products that align with your needs can be difficult no matter what your curl pattern is, but it doesn’t have to be,” says Dixon. “Txtur plans to keep building relationships with our customers based on feedback and is committed to constantly improving.”
The Ashley Marie Collection: Entrepreneurship runs in the Gibson family. Tamika Gibson started Hair Diagram, a brand that offers adhesive products for hair pieces, in 2011. Her daughter Ashley Marie’s brand The Ashley Marie Collection piggybacks on Hair Diagram’s concept. Gibson says, “Because so many people who wear hair pieces, wigs, etc., often have challenges caring for their natural hair, we began researching products that cater to natural hair in efforts to create a product line for them in between their wigs, etc., or to use in their daily regimens.”
The Ashley Marie Collection launched in May with five products—Styling Mousse, Curl Cream, Curly Coil Styling Gel, Hair Boost Serum and Hydrating Conditioner—formulated with cold-pressed ingredients like avocado oil and sunflower oil. The brand serves women with coils, curls or kinky hair, zeroing in on those with 4C hair.
Drilling down more into its target consumers, Ashley Marie Collection is tailored to gen Z. At 17 years old, Ashley knows the demographic well. She says, “My generation is highly conscious about the ingredients in our beauty products, and we’re always seeking to educate ourselves on best practices, ingredients, etc. I think we’re even more conscious than some other demographics, and we want to see real user feedback on social media to not only give details about how products work but also hear real life experiences that we can relate to.”
The Ashley Marie Collection’s Instagram feed features videos showing its products on various hair textures. The brand has seeded products to influencers in exchange for organic social media posts and brought on Milan Media Group to handle its public relations.
The Ashley Marie Collection products are sold at Amazon and Walmart. Ashley foresees the brand launching at Ulta Beauty or Sephora in the future. She says, “I’d like to see everyone being more knowledgeable on all curl types and being more conscious of the products and ingredients they recommend for each.”
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