The ethnic hair care aisle just won’t do!
Alabama resident, Kaylah A. Joseph, has always tried to care for her natural hair, but struggled to find the right products with healthy ingredients to include in her hair care regimen. So, she made a haircare brand for herself and other “curly girlies” looking for something to help their kinks and coils thrive.
“I decided to create my own personal line of wash day products to initially just help myself grow back my hair,” Joseph said in an interview with Huntsville Magazine. “When my hair started thriving, literally blossoming like never before, I realized I was on to something and out of it, LAID Hair Care was born.”
LAID Hair Care is Joseph’s brand that provides a shampoo, conditioner, heat protectant and shine serum and an anti-itch scalp soothing and growth oil with clinically proven ingredients to improve hair growth.
“Our hair needs vitamins and essential oils and most of our ingredients are found directly in nature and mixed in small batches to ensure product consistency. LAID Hair Care products are known to help achieve longer, thicker, fuller, and healthier hair by balancing the scalp by creating an optimal environment for hair growth,” Joseph said.
And now, all women can access Joseph’s revolutionary hair care products as Joseph joined forces with Walmart, making her the youngest CEO and founder to be in partnership with the retail giant. Having her products available on the shelves of their local Walmart stores was a move that Joseph made intentionally. “We are the only salon-quality, multivitamin formula on Walmart shelves. Some people say we belong in higher-end stores but the goal of LAID Hair Care is to be accessible to all,” the 28-year-old founder shared.
LAID is available in both Walmart and CVS stores, a distribution that came to Joseph through a perfect pitch and divine intervention.
“I’d gotten rejected from every beauty accelerator program that I’d ever applied to, but I knew God had given me a vision of LAID Hair Care products being on shelves so I knew I couldn’t let the rejection stop me,” she said.
And the blessings keep raining down for Joseph, and for all who need salon-quality healthy haircare. Joseph shared a video on her Instagram account of her team setting up the first LAID Beauty Bar in an undisclosed Walmart location. It’ll be the first Black woman-owned beauty supply store ever available in Walmart and will provide customers with “clean beauty, human-centered tech, proven science and exceptional customer service to customers that look, work and create like me,” Joseph shared in a post on the LAID Instagram page.
This is a full circle achievement for Joseph, whose mother worked as a cashier at a Walmart store to put her through private school during her childhood. It’s also a move that she hopes will help Black women have a positive, and unique shopping experience that centers their culture and their care. Black owners have been traditionally shut out of the hair care industry. LAID is changing the tide.
“We deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. We deserve to not be followed around stores and criminalized for our mere existence in the stores that benefit primarily from us. We deserve to have great customer service. We deserve to be able to invest in businesses that invest in us. We deserve nice things,” she wrote on Instagram.
Joseph hopes that with her history-making hair care products and her upcoming beauty supply store, she’ll be able to honor the resilience of Black women throughout American history.
“As a Black Woman who has lived in a Red State for 20+ years, I know how polarizing the term ‘Black-owned’ can be for some to see and hear,” she wrote in an announcement on her LinkedIn page. “It’s a celebration of resilience, of fortitude & a way to honor our ancestors who simply wanted a chance and opportunity to exist in self-sufficiency. This isn’t just Black History or Woman’s History. This is American History as we all pursue the American Dream.”
Cover photo: Huntsville Woman Set To Open First Black Woman-Owned Beauty Supply Store In Walmart / Photo credit: Huntsville Magazine