Julian Addo, founder of Adwoa Beauty, combines his passion for hair and business to … [+]
Adwoa Beauty has secured $4 million in seed funding from Pendulum Holdings, the company announced Thursday. Adwoa, a non-toxic haircare company founded by Julian Addo in 2017, is moving beyond hair styling to further shift the conversation around natural curly hair, making marketing more inclusive and, according to Addo, “the black modern age.” We are on a mission to encapsulate “encapsulation”. Adwoa quickly developed a following before Sephora began carrying 11 of his products in stores in the United States and Canada. Now, the company is looking to prepare for further growth at Sephora.
“We have so many exciting innovations going on,” and the funding will allow adwoa to get to market faster and “preempt some of the supply chain Covid-19 issues.” She said yes. Until now, Addo has funded the company himself.
Adwoa’s business journey is the success story of one woman who immigrated to the United States from West Africa and represents Adwoa’s passion, ambition and dedication. took her life. Years after discovering her talent in the field, and building her skills as a business and entrepreneur, she learned about the unspoken biases and people she felt had plagued black women for generations. We are working to change our approach to textured hair while aiming to challenge the racial divide.
“We are thrilled to see the adwoa team strengthen the brand’s digital and in-store presence with the growth capital provided by Pendulum,” said Ron Mackey, managing director of Pendulum Holdings, in a statement. says.
Mackey points to the rising trend of clean, inclusive and sustainable beauty and the rise of the prestige hair care category in which adwoa belongs, stating, “The category will grow 32% to $2.6 billion in 2021, according to NPD. and will double in size in the next two years,” he said.
Addo chose the name ‘adwoa’ in honor of her heritage and her father from Ghana. Adwoa means “women born on Monday” and in Ghanaian culture, children are named after the day of the week they were born. More broadly, Addo sees the term as connecting people of African descent “in a non-stereotypical way”, Ghanaians from West Africa, the Caribbean, trans-Atlantic slavery, and the Diaspora.
Culture and Addo’s early life shaped her business journey. As a teenager, she styled friends’ hair after school, rented a chair at a salon, and studied cosmetology at a vocational school in New York. She couldn’t get the “traditional jobs” her friends were doing, but she wanted to. When her family moved to the Midwest, Ms. Addo opened her first salon in Minnesota, but she still knew she “wanted to do more.”
Addo took a job at Citigroup and followed her entrepreneurial spirit by putting her salon business aside for a while to juggle both and find success. Addo’s Hair It took a few more years before her journey came full circle. After reconnecting with her childhood friends, absorbing her tutorials on black women’s hair on social media, and attending related events, Addo was drawn to the idea of embracing natural hair instead of opting for a relaxer. I was. After the event she returned to her home.
In the years that followed, Addo created a platform to showcase products and foster conversations about natural hair care through educational events, and started freelancing for Sally Beauty, a beauty company to “understand the industry top-down.” digested the publication. Her goal was to change the approach to textured hair care: Addo found the marketing and packaging to be “outdated” and “fussy.” “When people advertise to multicultural communities, especially black communities, it almost looks like a caricature to me,” she said. I told her there must be one. She aimed to create a brand that “is loved by everyone.”
In 2016, Addo had ingredients in mind as they carefully selected oils with a focus on scalp health.Today Adwoa’s key ingredients, including baobab oil, are sourced from Africa. She contacted cosmetic chemists and laboratories, but didn’t have much money to work with, about $25,000. Graphics Hired her designer and photographer to spearhead the marketing side.
But the harder part of the journey was creating the brand. She settled on “making me feel like”.
Adwoa launched its services online in 2017 before completing a deal with Sephora in 2019. By 2022, when Addo felt she had enough knowledge to scale it, she and her Ron Mackey took the next step in a fundraising conversation. Addo expects further growth and brand recognition with Pendulum.
