To all the brands out there who haven’t gotten the message, let me make it clear. It doesn’t matter how fancy your bottles are, how many magazine ads you buy, what celebrity you’ve hired as your spokesperson. When you’re selling products to people with wavy, curly and coily hair, what matters is what’s inside the bottle – and what’s not.
Just look at the stats from Wave IV of TextureTrends, the latest edition of TextureMedia’s consumer insights report. We surveyed 6,000 textured-hair and straight-hair consumers, and this is what they told us.
- Ingredients are the most attractive attributes for curly-coily and coily consumers - ahead of reviews, price and accessibility
- While 58% of straight-haired consumers look for specific ingredients in their haircare products, 95% of coily-haired consumers do and 75% of curly-haired consumers do.
- 90% of coily consumers and 85% of curly consumers avoid certain ingredients in their haircare products, while 64% of straight-haired consumers have certain ingredients they avoid.
- Argan oil is the ingredient sought most often by textured hair consumers, followed by shea butter.
- Sodium Lauryl Sulfate/Sodium Laureth Sulfate are the ingredients most avoided textured hair consumers, across all texture types.
Gone are the days when a product’s name and description were enough to sell it. Textured-haired consumers can talk science with the best of them. They only know what ingredients are, they know exactly what they do. They know what they do for different hair textures and porosities. They’re savvy about the nuances when it comes to alcohols, silicones and proteins – the good ones, the “bad” ones and everything in between.
So if you want to market products to this consumer, spend as much time researching what ingredients these consumers want and what they don’t want, and develop your products with that in mind. No marketing message or packaging in the world can hide what’s on your ingredient label
If you want to learn more about ingredients, we’ll be hosting a Google Hangout on the subject at 12:30 EST on Nov. 11th, with Richelleu Dennis, CEO of SheaMoisture, Mahoganycurls, Natural Hair Blogger, Erica Douglas - Sister Scientist and CEO of mSEED group. Cosmetic Chemist, Blogger and Beauty Industry Expert.
We also have added a large section on ingredients to Wave IV of TextureTrends. For information on how to purchase the report, email me.
