Kaleidoscope Enters 10th Year With A Retail Footprint Of 30K Doors
Celebrating a decade in business, Kaleidoscope has become a staple of mass-market haircare selections.
The textured hair brand is available in 30,000 retail doors, including at Target, CVS, Walmart, Walgreens, Sally Beauty, Rite Aid, Nordstrom Rack and Wegmans. Retail constitutes 70% of its multimillion-dollar business, which has been averaging 60% yearly sales growth.
Kaleidoscope broke into retail seven years ago, starting with Target and Sally Beauty. Founder Jesseca “Judy” Harris-Dupart had every intention of being selective with retail partnerships, but the counter-pressure was that she was driven to get her brand in front of as many shoppers as she could. She says, “At one point I was like, no, I don’t want to be in grocery…but then I had to realize everybody does not have a Walmart in their area. Some people have a CVS, some people have a Target.”
CVS is Kaleidoscope’s largest retail account, and its the largest multicultural brand at the retailer. Walmart is its second largest account. Harris-Dupart acknowledges securing retail deals takes luck and being in the right place at the right time is a big advantage. She advises brand founders to attend trade shows that retail buyers tend to frequent. Harris-Dupart says, “Sometimes, if you’re loud enough, they will reach out to you.”
Kaleidoscope makes a fair bit of noise on social media. The brand has 1 million followers on Instagram, and Harris-Dupart has another 3 million on her personal Instagram account. Humor was integral to Kaleidoscope and Harris-Dupart amassing an audience, and reinterpretations of music videos and television show were a big draw at the outset of the brand. In a hilarious twist on “Cops” called “The Edge Police,” Harris-Dupart and her team slicked people’s disastrous edges down.
She says, “People got to see the before and the after and the efficacy of the product through something that they were watching for a storyline or for entertainment.”
Harris-Dupart’s role in “Brat Loves Judy,” the We TV reality show that premiered in 2021 and chronicles her life with wife Da Brat, has elevated her profile on social media and off. Still, humor is at the core of the Kaleidoscope’s social media content, but its strategy has evolved to ramp up the haircare education quotient. Harris-Dupart says. “The average person loves being entertained, but sometimes people just want to know what I call the boring stuff, the black and white.”
Camille Wright, marketing consultant for Kaleidoscope who formerly worked with Camille Rose and AmPro Industries, identifies Kaleidoscope’s “edutainment” as helping it stand out in a crowded haircare market. She says, “Instead of just talking about curls, coils, waves, she’s [Harris-Dupart] really having fun with it, grabbing the consumer’s attention, and they’re intrigued to try the product, and then it ends up being a really good product.”
Wright emphasizes Kaleidoscope’s differentiation is becoming even more important as retailers desegregate haircare aisles and put multicultural haircare brands alongside brands like Pantene and Aussie. She says, “It’s very challenging for everybody right now to try and come up with a way to continue to be unique, continue to serve their niche population, but be able to stand against these multibillion-dollar conglomerates.”
For a brand to stay on shelves, Harris-Dupart stresses it requires spot-on logistics to keep inventory in stock on shelves and attention to data. “When retailers feel supported by the brand, product will fly off the shelves for years to come,” she says. Wright says, “Understand how to read the numbers and really educate yourself on those facts, lean into them, because they’ll tell you exactly how to do business.”
Wright continues that brands have to zero in on an edited group products that are strong performers to retain retail placement. “Retailers don’t have that same amount of space that they had a few years ago, so gone are the days where the brands can introduce five-, six-piece collections,” she says. “They really need to choose a hero or maybe three pieces and run with it. That way you can have really targeted messaging and it doesn’t get lost amidst all the things that you’re promising a consumer.”
Kaleidoscope expands or reduces its product offering informed by consumers it listens to on social media. Miracle Drops, a product in the brand’s initial four-product range (Sleek Edges, Diamond Shine and Versatile Spritz were the remaining three), is the bestseller, and Kaleidoscope has sold over 4.3 million bottles to date. Variations of the product like Extra Strength Miracle Drops and Miracle Drops Leave-In are runner-ups.
So So Slick Braid and Grip Gel from the Da Brat collection are quickly catching up. The six-item collection was unveiled last year and promptly sold out in six seconds. Harris-Dupart reports that sales of all Da Brat products are up over 300% this year.
For the next year, Harris-Dupart plans on releasing products within Kaleidoscope’s existing collections rather release new collections or branch into new categories. The brand reintroduced its kids line earlier this year with revised formulas and packaging, and it also sold out. “I do have very strong offerings currently, but we can add to them to make them a little bit stronger,” she says. “So, right now it’s more so looking at the things we have and seeing if there’s a deficit.” In the tough contemporary environment for brands, Wright recommends brands figure out ways to leverage their hero products such as extending their sizes.
Looking further ahead, Harris-Dupart is interested in bolstering Kaleidoscope with structural discipline and widening its customer base. It expects to implement a set of standard operating procedures (SOPs) to streamline operations. Today, Kaleidoscope’s customers are primarily African American women between the ages of 25 and 50. Harris-Dupart says, “I want to take this thing as far as I can and be able to continue to serve people and make them feel beautiful.”
Pushing Kaleidoscope as far as it can go in retail means drilling down into gaps in its retail network. The brand has dollar stores on its roadmap and aspires to double down on direct-to-consumer distribution. Harris-Dupart says, “We haven’t really succeeded in new customer acquisition outside of our consumers telling a friend, so I do want to expand into optimizing our website, optimizing ads, tapping into a consumer that may not have seen us before.”
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