Toyin Odulate Merges Her African Heritage And L’Oréal Learnings To Launch Haircare Brand Olori

Toyin Odulate has lived in a lot of places. Born in Washington, DC., she moved back to Lagos, Nigeria, where her parents were from and her extended family lived, when she was six years old. She returned to the States to attend Temple University, then attended business school in France.

Post-MBA program, her long-standing dream to launch a beauty brand drove her to join L’Oréal while most of her b-school cohort flocked to investment banks and consulting firms. Her role at L’Oréal brought her back to Africa, this time to Ghana. Though she continued to globe-trot during her tenure at L’Oréal, one facet of business operations at the global beauty giant was constant: The strategic decision makers were almost exclusively older white French men—even the decision makers of the conglomerate’s ethnic haircare brands like Dark & Lovely and Mizani.

“People don’t realize how on the business side, beauty is so dominated by men,” Odulate says. “It was one of my most hilarious experiences trying to convince a room full of white men that hair type varies from one person to the next, even within this group that [they] see as a monolith. I would conduct all these studies to prove my point, and was always sort of hitting a brick wall where [they wanted] to create one product for 10 different hair types. It just didn’t sit well with me…but it was a great experience.”

Odulate channeled that valid frustration she felt over a decade ago into launching African haircare brand Olori in the U.S. The brand debuted stateside earlier this year on its own direct-to-consumer website and launched on Amazon in May. The inaugural Olori collection, priced from $19 to $26, consists of a shampoo, leave-in conditioner, masque, deep conditioning treatment and pomade. Odulate shares she’s also in talks with a number of independent retailers and e-tailers nationwide to launch later this year. 

Though she’s lived all over the world, Odulate is clear on Olori’s position as an authentic African brand made with locally-sourced ingredients, rather than an “African-inspired” brand. Odulate learned first hand the power of traditional African ingredients in haircare when a visit to salon in Nigeria for a routine color appointment left her hair “feeling like hay, literally,” she recounts. When she arrived home very upset, her mother offered to mix up a homemade deep conditioning treatment she had been making since Odulate was a child.

“It reversed the texture of my hair within a couple of days,” Odulate says. “I had her make me some more, and I shared it with about 20 of my friends, and everybody just kept asking me for more. I was like, ‘I need to jar this stuff. I can’t afford to keep giving it out for free.’ That’s how I started.” Mom’s concoction became Olori’s Deep Conditioning & Restorative Treatment—the brand’s most popular product. Olori’s Leave-in Detangler is a close second.

The Deep Conditioning & Restorative Treatment’s formula is a churned blend of argan oil, African butters and key ingredient palm kernel seed oil. While formulating with the original African ingredients that Odulate’s mother used is integral to Olori’s brand proposition, it also meant the founder had her work cut out for her as she sought to launch the brand in the US in 2019.

She details, “I had to learn very quickly how a contract manufacturer works versus a manufacturer who’s willing to do custom formulas for you. A lot of the contract guys want to push what they already have in store. That’s just not going to work. I did shop around for a manufacturer for a bit. That contributed to why it took so long. Finally, I found this company in LA, they’d worked for some other textured brands, and it clicked.” To create the products, Odulate would ship palm kernel seed oil from Nigeria to Los Angeles. She also had to make the trip from Lagos to LA many times herself, a nearly 20 hour trip. Add in COVID and the birth of Odulate’s daughter and it took until the last day of 2023 for the first batch of Olori samples to ship out to Odulate. A 2024 U.S. launch was in her sights.

Odulate shares that she’s spent between $150,000 to $200,000 so far to build Olori, which includes funds from a friends and family raise as well as her personal savings. Though the founder intentionally launched with a tight five-product haircare edit, there are about seven more Olori products already conceptualized, with expansions into new categories planned for the near future. The ambitious plans are all part of Olori’s mission to take African beauty global, one jar at a time. “African beauty can be just as mainstream as we’ve seen with K Beauty or J beauty,” Odulate declares.