Lorraine discusses safety concerns in mainstream haircare, from benzene recalls to a study linking hair straighteners to uterine cancer. She sees opportunity in the growing indie and natural haircare sector, particularly Black and Brown-founded brands serving coily and Afro hair, and challenges listeners to try small indie products.
Journal of the National Cancer Institute (study published towards the end of 2022)
14 years
Chapters
Natural, indie, clean, green, whatever you want to call it. Skincare has caught on big time in the beauty industry. We all know about it, we all talk about it, this podcast is all about it and many people exclusively buy it. But the same can't yet be said for hair care, where many shoppers still rely on mainstream brands. And those brands have generally had a very comfortable monopoly on our hair care buying habits for the last decades. I challenge you to look in your shower and see if your shampoos and conditioners also come from one of those big names. But recently mainstream hair care has hit the front pages with recalls and safety concerns, and I'm seeing parallels with the ways that parabens kickstarted the indie beauty movement in the early 2010s. Just listen to episode 63 of this podcast if you want the full story from someone who lived through that period with a front row seat. So it's quite possible that we're going to start seeing shoppers reject mainstream hair care. What will it take for them to move away from the big brands? What role does mainstream beauty have to play in our future hair care? Well, last week here on the podcast I interviewed Yana Blankenship, founder of Captain Blankenship, the well known and much loved natural indie haircare brand. And Yana very kindly posted me her entire hair care range. How lovely is that? And as I opened the box and admired her amazing products and packaging and book, I should add as well, I couldn't help but think that I still rarely get sent natural hair care, even though I regularly receive gift boxes of natural skincare from our fabulous and very kind and generous Formula Botanica graduates. But I suspect we're on the cusp of all of that changing. So the question I want to ask on the podcast this week is will shoppers start to reject mainstream hair care and instead embrace natural indie hair care like they've already embraced natural, indie, green and clean skincare? Hi, it's Lorraine Darmire, chartered environmentalist, biologist and CEO of award winning online organic cosmetic formulation school Formula Botanica. I host the Green Beauty Conversations podcast and these are my green Beauty opinions in which I share my takeaways from the podcast interview we released last week and set you a challenge to make the green beauty sector a better place. If you want to be the first to hear all of my latest episodes, and I know you do, make sure you subscribe to this podcast. In the last two years, dry shampoos have been recalled from brands such as Dove, Bedhead, Tresemme, Pantene, Aussie Herbal Essences and others due to detected levels of benzene, which is classified as a carcinogen. There have been lots of articles about it in the press and you only need to search for the term hair care recall in Google News to see what I'm on about. Then that was followed by a study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute towards the end of 2022 which associated hair straightening product use with uterine cancer. Now I should add straight away that a cause and effect relationship was not established in this study and more research is warranted. This is what's also concluded in the study, but nonetheless this study is worrying. Research didn't find a similar association with other types of hair care products, just with straightening products. And of course it's important to remember that women of color are the biggest consumers of straightening products, so would be disproportionately affected if researchers do indeed find a definitive link. In other words, mainstream hair care has recently been taking a little bit of a bashing in the press, and some of it's been created by themselves. Now, Jana Blankenship, my guest last week who runs Captain Blankenship, has been running her indie hair care brand for 14 years, so has seen a massive shift in consciousness around natural hair care. A decade ago, natural hair care wasn't necessarily the done thing, and even now the number of natural and indie hair care brands entering the market is still small compared to the number of natural and indie skincare brands. But it is growing. Because not only are we changing our thoughts around hair care in part based to these media reports, but the pandemic also led to shoppers bringing the salon into their homes. People in lockdown started investing in expensive hair masks and oils and professional grade shampoos and conditioners because they couldn't visit their hairdressers so they had to do it themselves. As a result, some well known skincare brands have started introducing hair care into their lines. Drunk Elephant, the Ordinary Neutrogena. They've all added hair care to their ranges over the last couple of years and everyone at the moment seems to be talking about scalp care, which also seems to have arisen from this increased attention to at home hair care. So the demand in hair care is increasing and with that the supply is diversifying, which is really exciting to see. Now. We've been teaching organic hair care formulation at Formula Botanica for almost six years now, and in that time I have literally been shouting from the rooftops during every enrollment period that the hair care market is ripe for the taking. But very few formulators in our community have yet gone down that route. Now I suspect we will start to see all of this change with these shifts that I'm expecting around natural hair care. We're certainly seeing increasing numbers of new students join our hair care formulation online course when they enroll with Formula Botanica. And we mustn't overlook the significant increase in hair care brands started by black and brown entrepreneurs to provide much needed formulations for natural, coily, Afro kinky hair, which has been historically overlooked by virtually every mainstream hair care brand. I'm reading an increasing number of stories about these hair care entrepreneurs who are supplying a market that is literally crying out for better tailored formulations and they're creating incredible businesses in the process. I hope to invite some of these entrepreneurs on the podcast this year, so I suspect that all of these elements may come together to start seeing shoppers move gently away from those mainstream hair care brands. Wouldn't surprise me at all if those mainstream brands start to lose market share to indie hair care. After all, when your formulations make headlines for their potential safety risks, it's very likely that the natural entrepreneurs of the hair care world might suddenly find themselves with a booming business. So my challenge to you for this week is to find an indie hair care brand and try it even if you don't feel quite ready. Maybe just consider a serum for the tips of your hair or a scalp oil or something that isn't a shampoo or conditioner. But if you are ready to make the leap for something bigger, consider and try an indie hair care brand and see how you get on. I will certainly be enjoying my Captain Blankenship products and seeking out other smaller brands as well in the process. Thank you for listening to my green beauty opinions. Remember to visit the Formula botanica website@formulabotanica.com to try our free online formulation course. And if you haven't subscribed yet to the Green Beauty Conversations podcast, please make sure you do so now in your favorite podcast app. Leave me a five star review if you enjoy the conversations I host and I'll be back soon with my next episode.
