<em>Source: <a rel="noreferrer noopener" href="https://thehustle62422.acemlnb.com/lt.php?s=464883b9eb98efcb30e66001092f3634&i=113A274A2A2271" target="_blank"><em>Anvaka.github.io/sayit</em></a></em>
The signal: The natural hair movement is well, a movement. Since the term started taking off in 2010, people have continued to search for queries like "natural hair," but also for commerce-based queries like "hair products for natural hair."
Over time, the Subreddit r/naturalhair has grown to an impressive 30k followers, growing exponentially since inception (with a particularly strong uptick in 2019).
Source: Subredditstats
Some of the most common keywords across the subreddit include "4c" "3c", "4b", and "4a". No, these are not answers to a high-school math quiz, but instead part of the Andre Walker Hair Typing System.
It’s an entire system built by Oprah’s hairstylist and used to classify hair. And there’s a world of queries that are searched for thousands of times every single month, which relate to the system:
The opportunity:
Investing in under-represented founders and industries: Investors have typically missed out on industries that they didn’t understand or resonate directly with. That’s why investments like StitchFix were steals for the investors that got it, even if they weren’t a consumer of the product.
Megan Bytes called out VCs for their potential to miss out on the "natural hair movement" on Twitter, to which a few VCs, including Alexis Ohanian (husband to Serena Williams) of Initialized Capital and Tyler Tringas of Earnest Capital, responded. But that still leaves many VCs who will miss the boat in investing in entrepreneurs from diverse backgrounds (who understand niches that they may not) and betting on trends that may not fit within the box they expect. And there’s money there. For example...
- Women drive 70-80% of consumer purchasing power
- Nielson estimates that African-Americans spend $1.2T annually. The "black hair care industry" alone is estimated to be $2.5B.
Create more tailored solutions for specific groups: Many industries are still run by incumbents that don’t necessarily understand their customers. These are areas ripe for disruption. Similar to Andre Walker’s haircare line tailored to women who were not finding solutions in a market oriented around the masses, the founders of Proven Skincare were frustrated with the skincare industry’s lack of innovation, so they built their own database and personalized skincare formula for users. They launched on Product Hunt last week and shot to #2, appealing to the people that haven’t been represented in the classic skincare market.
[Want more? See our deep dive on "The Beauty Tech Boom"]
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