Fifteen years since its launch, Not Your Mother’s is converting a new generation of consumers with social relevance, an influx of product releases, convenience and a value proposition fitting an economic moment characterized by pervasive financial strain.
According to investment bank Piper Sandler’s fall 2025 survey of 10,000 Americans aged 13 to 19 years old, 11% named the affordable mass-market brand as their top pick in haircare, besting Amika’s 8% and L’Oréal’s 7%. Their preference for Not Your Mother’s is showing up in its sales performance, and the brand’s business is up 40% this year. By comparison, market research firm Circana estimates sales in the mass haircare category rose 4% in the first half of the year. Not Your Mother’s is available in 40,485 stores nationwide, including Ulta Beauty, Target, Walmart, H-E-B, CVS, Walgreens, Meijer and Kroger, and retail drives almost all of its revenues.
Newness is an essential weapon in the battle for attention, and DeMert Brands-owned Not Your Mother’s introduces 25 to 30 products a year to help it capture teens’ mind and wallet share. While trends play an important role in the brand’s product development, it isn’t too fast to jump on them and builds on the successes it’s had with collections such as Curl Talk, Clean Freak and Beach Babe. Curl Talk is responsible for about 40% of sales, with Defining Cream, Activating Mousse and Sculpting Gel the collection’s bestsellers.
In July, Not Your Mother’s reeled out Curl Talk Strengthening Hair Oil, All Eyes On Me Instant De-Frizz Spray, Beach Babe Dry Shampoo Powder, Clean Freak Dark Hair Dry Shampoo Powder, Beach Babe Texturizing Foam and Curl Talk Fragrance-Free Mousse. Across its selection, the brand has 86 items in nine collections, with products mainly priced from $7.99 to $10.99, the exception being bond-building Tough Love products that are $11.99. Each collection has a distinct scent. Curl Talk’s, for example, is a fruity floral with citrus and jasmine notes. Wellness is on Not Your Mother’s product roadmap for the near future.
“We’re not a flash-in-the-pan kind of brand,” says CMO Charlene Patten, who joined Not Your Mother’s in February after roles at Fiskars Group and The J.M. Smucker Co. “We watch for repeated signals. When we see a trend echoing across categories like skincare or K-Beauty, that’s when we know it’s real.”
To reach young consumers, Not Your Mother’s has broken through the noise on TikTok. According to Patten, it’s the fastest-growing haircare brand on the platform, and it commands the No. 2 spot in share of voice involving content about hair routines. Combined with its social media marketing, Not Your Mother’s targets gen Z shoppers with pop-up events at colleges and sororities.
The brand worked with creator management agency The Sociable Society on a TikTok campaign promoting All Eyes on Me 3-in-1 Styling Cream running for four months starting last year. The campaign tapped 127 micro-influencers, generated 1.2 million views on TikTok and led to nearly 14,000 product clicks, according to The Sociable Society. In 2022, Not Your Mother’s struck a partnership with Greta Wilson for Curl Talk, and the lifestyle and hair content creator regularly posts about it. She has 1.4 million followers and 158,400 likes on TikTok.
“Our tone of voice is super fresh. She calls us her hype girl, and it’s not forced. She sees it’s real because she’s the first to call BS on a brand,” says Patten. “We like to say Not Your Mother’s is a state of mind as much as it is a brand.”
“We’re not a flash-in-the-pan kind of brand.”
Patten emphasizes that most of the brand’s growth originates from organic advocacy. “Our strategy is simple: we want to create the conversations that create connections. We’re where she is, and we follow her shopper journey from online discovery to in-store purchase,” she says. “We are disproportionately organic. When you get game-changing results, you share it. That’s just human nature.”
Patten isn’t worried about teen spending softening. In Piper Sandler’s fall survey, teens’ self-reported spend declined 6%, with their core beauty wallet down 2%. About 62% of teens surveyed said their outlook on the economy was worse than before. “Whether she has a dime or a dollar, she wants to express herself,” says Patten. “We’re accessible so she can afford to buy us over and over again.”
Generational concentration isn’t a big concern, either. Not Your Mother’s points out millennials who grew up with the brand are sticking with it. They represent over a third of the brand’s customers and are now recommending it to their children. Gen Z accounts for 22% of Not Your Mother’s’ customers, and gen X consumers makes up the remainder.
Spotting a gap in the market for haircare directed at young consumers, married couple Rocky and Bethany Pagliarulo launched Not Your Mother’s with six items at 400 Walmart stores in 2010. In 2011, its signature product Clean Freak Dry Shampoo hit the market. The Pagliarulos took over DeMert Brands in 2000. A specialist in the professional beauty channel, it had been known for Nail Enamel Dryer, a quick-drying finishing spray beloved by professional manicurists.
In 2019, private equity firm Main Post Partners invested in Not Your Mother’s. Haircare brands Professionäl and Hi Pro Pac are among DeMert Brands’ other brands. Nelson Miranda, who spent 20 years at Procter & Gamble and over seven at Revlon, where his last position was SVP of sales and marketing for the prestige division in North America, became CEO of Not Your Mother’s in 2020.
Haircare dealmaking has been secondary to skincare dealmaking in the beauty industry, but observers believe the category is primed for M&A action. This year, haircare M&A got a jolt when premium styling brand Color Wow sold to L’Oréal in a $1 billion transaction finalized in September. In July, the publication Axios reported prestige haircare brand Amika hired investment bank Raymond James to explore options.
Maintaining relevance and agility are key challenges for Not Your Mother’s moving forward. The brand is looking to events and wellness and fragrance trends for opportunities. “We’ve had our best year of innovation in 2025, and 2026 is looking even bigger,” says Patten. “I’m excited about our community and getting more intentional about engaging her through events.”
