How Dow Personal Care Is Meeting The Needs Of Indie Beauty Brands And Their Diverse Customer Bases
Dow Personal Care has a long history of supplying ingredients to the personal care industry, where it’s known for its scientific expertise combined with one of the broadest portfolios in the industry
More recently, Dow Personal Care is making its mark with indie and emerging brands by providing formulation expertise and meeting their demands for sustainable ingredients and ingredients geared toward an increasingly diverse population of consumers.
The company partners with its diverse internal employee resource groups such as the Global African Affinity Network (GAAN). Leveraging consumer insights of GAAN to better understand and address Black consumers. For example, Dow tapped GAAN to identify the unmet haircare needs of consumers of African heritage in the textured haircare market.
“In our internal conversations, GAAN reiterated these consumer needs and helped us connect this gap in the textured haircare market to broader societal issues related to textured haircare. These internal conversations inspired our strategy as we investigated the best approach to support the growth of this underserved market,” says Jessica Ding marketing manager at Dow Personal Care. “This was an important first step because we have a large employee base with diverse backgrounds and knowledge that we consult with to determine how we can best tap into the textured hair care market and best support consumers with textured hair. Next month we will launch our Textured Hair prototype kit.”
In parallel, Dow Personal Care collaborates with the textured haircare brand The Most. “Strongly aligned with Dow’s business imperative of “Inclusion & Diversity, this collaboration allows Dow to expand its knowledge and contributions to the underserved textured hair care market and provide THE MOST access to the material science expertise required to transform ideas into business opportunities in the very competitive personal care market.” says Jessica Ding. “
The textured haircare category has been a strong engine in the beauty segment. The consultancy Strategic Solutions International has estimated it doubled in size in less than five years to surpass $1 billion in mass-market sales. A study by Texture Trends found that women with curly hair are willing to spend roughly twice as much on haircare products—$82 versus 40 over three months—than their counterparts with straighter hair.
To elaborate on Dow’s capabilities, Ding sat down with Beauty Independent to provide additional information on the company’s experience with The Most and other ways it’s working with indie brands.
What is Dow Personal Care’s mission as s a specialty ingredient supplier?
Dow Personal Care is one of the leading specialty ingredient suppliers in the industry with a broad portfolio across almost all segments. We develop unique ingredients that empower international customers to create products with exceptional performance and exciting benefits that a diverse consumer base can trust and believe in.
Our mission is to create products with exceptional performance that meet the needs of our diverse world. To do that, we clearly recognize the importance of indie brands as well as the gaps for underserved demographics. As a result, Dow Personal Care has recently advanced projects, including the collaboration with Black-owned beauty brand The Most and the production of our Textured Hair Kit.
Have you noticed an increase in the need for textured haircare products and ingredients that specifically address this segment?
The textured haircare market is growing. However, there remain few targeted solutions. A large portion of the world’s population has curly, coily or wavy hair, which provides an enormous untapped market opportunity. Textured hair needs more time and effort to comb and brush, thus requiring hair products designed specifically for this hair type, but in standard stores.
There is still not a fair representation of products catering to the needs of textured hair and the few products there are tend to be expensive. Consumers with textured hair spend significantly more on haircare products than those without textured hair. And consumers with textured hair, notably Black consumers, frequently have a difficult time finding products that can facilitate the necessary hygiene and care.
How did Dow Personal Care’s collaboration with The Most come to be?
With more than 10 innovation centers around the world, Dow Personal Care has a lot of technical resources to tap into. Being part of a global company with many employee network groups, we also had the unique opportunity to tap into our internal Global African Affinity Network (GAAN). Through our in-depth conversation with GAAN members, we recognized an obvious gap in the amount of haircare options available for individuals with textured hair. Inspired by the insightful discussions with our employee resource groups, we knew the ideal next step was to enter a collaboration with The Most, a startup beauty company that specializes in textured haircare solutions.
This collaboration allows Dow Personal Care to expand its knowledge and contributions to the underserved textured haircare market and provides The Most access to the material science expertise required to transform ideas into business opportunities in the very competitive personal care market. Both companies share parallel values and goals of serving unmet consumer needs while promoting inclusivity and sustainability to address the toughest beauty challenges in society, making this collaboration a perfect fit. Our hope is that this collaboration will inspire other beauty brands to make the necessary changes to enhance the beauty industry.
How are Dow and The Most companies addressing consumer needs through this collaboration?
We have one of the largest portfolios in the industry with in-depth scientific and formulation expertise and a deep understanding of consumer needs. The Most has an unparalleled understanding of what constitutes a valuable and authentic hair experience for individuals with textured hair. This will allow us to expand our expertise in the underserved market and innovate in close collaboration with our customers to cater to all kinds of skin and hair types with technology that is increasingly bio-derived and biodegradable. By introducing textured haircare solutions for our customers and consumers, individuals with textured hair can feel empowered to embrace their hair.
What other programs or products is Dow Personal Care planning to introduce to help fill this market gap?
As we continue to pave the way in the beauty and personal care industry, we’re introducing a textured haircare kit to meet customer needs. It is not only a new formulation we are developing to address the unique needs of highly textured hair, but we have found that new test methods need to be developed to measure performance. Some of the standard tests designed for type 1 and 2 hair are not a good fit for type 3 and 4. This kit is launching soon and will be the first one for more to follow
If you want to be kept up to date on the progress and launch of this kit. Learn more about our coming webinars.
Beyond the collaboration with The Most, how is Dow Personal Care connecting with other indie beauty brands?
We have a long history of supplying ingredients to personal care, cosmetics and fragrance manufacturers as well as to many other industries. We connect with these beauty startup companies and emerging brands by providing technical expertise and innovative ingredients for their products that may have been previously unavailable to them. We are expanding our collaborations with indie-focused platforms such as Beauty Independent.
We have also made significant investments in upgrading our digital platforms such as the Virtual Experience Center. This will make it easier for indie brands to find products and regulatory information while at the same time inspiring them with our knowledge and formulations that are based on trends from around the world.
