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Hair is everything, from the moment we get up to have a great hair day to when we let it down to relax at the end of the night. Taking care of your natural hair is so much more satisfying when you’re supporting the best companies making black-owned hair products!
Check out our list of the 5 brands making the best black-owned hair products around. These businesses understand the unique beauty needs and challenges of caring for natural hair, so you can be sure they’re making the good stuff.
You’ll be treating your mane to something special while supporting a growing black-owned business in the process. That’s what we call a win-win!
What Are Black-Owned Hair Products?
- Haircare products made by black-owned businesses
- Include a wide range of products, from leave-ins to styling products
- Support black companies and founders with products tailored to your needs
Black-owned hair products are beauty products sold by any business that is at least partially black-owned. They may be available at big box stores, major retailers, beauty retailers, small businesses, and even local markets.
A black-owned business is a type of minority-owned business that is at least partially owned by people of African American descent. In America, the significance of a black-owned business is myriad and based on centuries of a complicated, painful history.
Socioeconomic differences have shaped the modern economy and market. Black people make up nearly 15% of the United States population, but are just a fraction of most market shares.
Many industries, including haircare, are working towards greater equity by pledging to prioritize their focus to split their resources to better reflect that 15% figure.
That’s something we can all get behind, and it’s one reason supporting burgeoning companies making black-owned hair products is so important.
The theory is that black people have historically been a key consumer base being profited off of by others, but when that money isn’t going into black-owned businesses, it’s essentially siphoned away from the community.
Supporting black-owned businesses across different industries is a valuable step towards healing a society still recovering from the fractures of the legacy of slavery.
If you’re just now discovering the importance of supporting black-owned businesses, black-owned hair products are a great place to start! These companies are founded to provide products that specifically target and suit the needs of textured natural hair.
If you’ve been looking for products that provide adequate moisture, strength, definition, and hold for natural hair, look no further than the brands making black-owned hair products.
They’re made by people who thoroughly understand and appreciate the coily and kinky textures of natural hair, so you’ll always get a quality product that works with, not against, your hair’s texture.
Black-Owned Hair Products Are Tailored to Natural Hair
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Part of what makes supporting black-owned businesses in the beauty industry especially important is that they’re designed and formulated specifically for the coily and kinky natural hair textures.
Many hair care products on the market target Caucasian hair types that fall under the straight, wavy, or curly categories. Fewer products target the needs of natural hair textures, like hair types 4A, 4B, and 4C. This is where black-owned hair products come into play!
African hair types are typically curly, coily, or kinky, need large amounts of moisture to stay hydrated, can be prone to frizziness, and often requires protective styles or practices to be easily maintained.
Curl/coil definition is important and weaker products designed for Caucasian hair textures aren’t usually enough for full-bodied natural strands.
When it comes down to it, it’s clear: Black people should have easy access to hair care products that suit their hair while also being able to support their community. And that’s precisely what you get when you buy black-owned hair products from businesses founded in the heart of the black community!
Purchasing black-owned hair products is a natural part of supporting the wider black community. Black entrepreneurs are out here creating amazing products to fulfill the needs of their demographics – groups that are often severely underserved.
The History of Black-Owned Hair Products
The first female self-made millionaire in America was a black woman. Madam C. J. Walker was an African American entrepreneur who decimated boundaries through, among a great many other things, the sale of cosmetics.
She gained experience in the industry by working as a salesperson for hair care manufacturer Annie Malone, who would someday become her greatest industry rival. Both struggled at the time to break into the cosmetics industry as a whole.
You can imagine the scene – the late 1800s were downright hostile to African American entrepreneurs. That’s why Walker’s story serves to inspire us all these years later.
Walker adopted a door-to-door model of sales, where she would take her product around neighborhoods and educate black women on how to use the products and style their hair. She and her husband began to travel to spread the business before eventually opening up a salon to continue educating on hair care.
Walker developed her own “Walker System” of mentorship with which she trained licensed sales agents to conduct her business at high commission rates, continuing to promote black entrepreneurship.
At the height of her career and in the last decade of her tragically short life, her company had trained nearly 20,000 women, an unheard-of number for the 1910s.
Beyond her success, Walker was also an activist. She worked to teach women financial literacy. She was an active financial supporter of the NAACP. She built factories and headquarters in impoverished black neighborhoods and was a fervent patron of the arts.
She commissioned a black architect to design a quarter of a million-dollar home for her. That home was designed to be a gathering place for the community to come together and work towards their dreams. The legacy of her work is carried on in the black-owned hair care businesses of today.
While Walker made a name for herself as a successful entrepreneur, she also made it clear how important it is to support other black-owned businesses in different industries. Hers is a message that deserves to be carried on!
5 Best Brands for Black-Owned Hair Products
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Even though lots of products are sold to the Black community, not all of them are made by the Black community. Black people are often left wondering what products are made by Black business owners and which ones are not. The following are all Black-owned businesses.
1. Pattern Beauty by Tracee Ellis Ross
Pattern Beauty is a company owned by actress Tracee Ellis Ross that promotes positivity for all hair types. In an industry that continuously neglects the wide spectrum of curl diversity, uplifting all styles of curls with passion and joy is invaluable.
Pattern focuses on allowing hair to take up space as its authentic self, creating products that protect and strengthen hair. Promoting resilience, strength, flexibility, and magic, Pattern Beauty is committed to its brand of black excellence.
Products available from Pattern Beauty include leave-in conditioners, hair masks, mists, shampoos, conditioners, mousses, gels, and oil blends. They also offer tools to help with curls, including a hair pick, an edge tool, and a wide-tooth comb.
2. Alikay Naturals
Alikay Naturals promotes clean ingredients and quality products. The founder and CEO, Rochelle Alikay Graham-Campbell, created the company as a way to make high-quality wholesome products.
She found that between having high skincare needs as well as being underserved as someone with African hair, she needed products that addressed her needs.
Addressing hair concerns including thinning, frizz, breakage, tangles, dryness, and slow growth, Alikay Naturals addresses root concerns of issues with natural components rather than symptomatic solutions often utilized by pharmaceutical companies.
They also sell products for locs maintenance as well as a variety of hair textures, including kinky, wavy, curly, and straight hair.
3. Miss Jessie’s
This sister brand is here to help with all flavors of curls in all sorts of flavors. With nearly two decades of brand history in the books, Miss Jessie’s has reached iconic status as a black-owned brand with the goods to back up the name.
They, like many black entrepreneurs in the beauty industry, discovered the gap between what the industry was providing and what their customers needed. So they focused on developing products that addressed the needs of their clients and filled the market niche.
The iconic name for the brand came from the sisters’ grandmother, Miss Jessie Mae Branch. She would mix up batches of creams to treat the girls’ curls on her own. Her original concoction was a Southern classic many black families know all too well- eggs and mayonnaise.
Miss Jessies’s sells moisturizers, styling creams, and deep-conditioning treatments specifically for curly hair. Among their unique offerings, they have multicultural blends available designed for biracial and multiracial people. Other options include edge control gel, jelly curls gel, curl refreshers, and a day mousse.
4. Ecoslay
“Slay your look, not the planet!” proclaims Ecoslay with each colorful stroke. A company of products handmade in a single kitchen, this black-owned company swims upstream of a competitive market but still manages to stay afloat in a cutthroat world.
Passionate about education, Ecoslay makes sure to communicate the intention behind the use of each ingredient and component in its products. Ingredients are all organic and carefully sourced, and the environment is always considered during the packaging and production process.
A unique aspect of Ecoslay products is that once opened, many of their products need to be refrigerated. This is a reflection of the natural ingredients and commitment to low or no preservatives that the brand has.
5. Melanin Haircare
Melanin Haircare was founded by two black sisters in 2015 to promote healthy scalp and hair care. Non-toxic ingredients and high-quality formulas combine to make great products that their customers love.
Melanin Haircare products do not contain silicones, parabens, mineral oil, sulfates, petroleum, or formaldehyde. This makes the brand an awesome choice for natural hair types that want to stick to the Curly Girl Method!
Their most versatile product is their Multi-Use Leave-In Conditioner, a light and airy product that doesn’t build up quickly despite its effectiveness at enhancing curls. You’ll find tons of other great products that are specifically formulated for natural hair in their lineup.
Frequently Asked Questions
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When it comes to discovering the best brands making black-owned hair products, there are a lot of questions that need answers. Check out our thoughts below.
How big is the black haircare industry?
The global black hair care industry was projected to be over 2.6 billion dollars in 2020 and is expected to keep growing. Even so, experts say that at this time, the industry is failing to accurately cover its consumer base.
This is arguably one of the failings of an industry catering to a demographic that it doesn’t represent in its ranks.
Proponents of black-owned businesses are pushing for bigger spotlights on small brands over asking larger companies to pour more resources into research and development when small businesses have already put in the time to develop these products.
What's the best black haircare product?
Mielle is the highest rated Black owned Black hair care product. Created by a mother and nurse, Mielle is designed to work for Black hair and scalps, prioritizing health and wellness while promoting beauty.
What should black people put in their hair everyday?
Nothing needs to go into your hair daily. Black hair is relatively delicate, and over-saturating it isn’t a kind of choice for your scalp or your hair.
However, conditioning frequently can help ensure that your hair growth is progressing well and prevent breakage. Ultimately, you’ll need to do research into what is best for your curl type, region, lifestyle, and other factors.
Is Cantu black owned?
Cantu hair products are very popular in the African American community for their gentleness and effectiveness on black hair. This, along with the stylization of the packaging, has led many customers to believe that Cantu is black-owned.
However, Cantu isn’t a black-owned company. It’s owned by PDC Brands, which has appointed Alex Tosolini as its CEO in 2022.
So, What Are Black-Owned Hair Products?
Black-owned hair products come in all shapes and sizes and include consumables like conditioners, shampoos, mousses, and creams as well as tools such as bonnets and picks. They all have one thing in common: They’re created by black-owned companies that know the needs and challenges of natural hair better than anyone.
Black-owned hair products have great value in the community as they funnel money back into the black community rather than letting value seep out.
In addition, Black-owned hair products are designed by black designers, for black people, with black people in mind, so they better address the demographic as a whole.
Consider purchasing black-owned hair products from the 5 best brands listed above, regardless of your background! It’s always a win to support diverse creators and diverse products.