Korean-Americans own roughly 70% of beauty supply stores in the U.S., but 100% of these stores market and carry hair and beauty products needed by Black women.
It's a similar situation among companies that own hair used to create wigs, weaves and other hair pieces that many Black women rely on to wear protective styles over their natural hair.
As a Black-women owned wig company for Black-woman with a Gen-Z marketing focus, Waeve (pronounced wave) is looking to change that.
The direct-to-consumer company, which is based in Allston, recently secured $2 million in its pre-seed funding round with investments. Two notable investors are former executives at skin care Glossier and current leaders at beauty brand incubator Chord (formerly Arfa): Henry Davis, former Glossier president and COO ,and current Chord COO; and Bryan Mahoney, former Glossier CTO and current Chord CEO.
Despite the "for Black women, by Black women" approach, unlike another recently featured Boston-based, Black women-owned wig company, Coils to Locs, Waeve is open to consumers of all racial/ethnic background. CEO and co-founder Mary Imevbore said “it was important for us to create a company and for it to be one that centered and celebrated Black women as the people who have been pioneers in the space.”
The company hosts eight full-time employees and is “on the hunt” for a head of marketing.
Imevbore sought to create the company after running into struggles with her natural hair after her going natural, by cutting off damaged hair from years of chemical straightening. While attending college, she realized traditional protective styles were either too expensive to maintain or too hard to keep up with during her active lifestyle.
This struggle made Imevbore turn to wigs, but that turned into an equally exhausting process of shopping on online sites, with no way to tell how good or bad the quality of the wigs were.
Waeve aims to make the wig shopping experience joyful. To Imevbore, wigs are another fashion accessory that people should be able to switch out per their outfit or mood on a day to day.
The company treats each wig launch similarly to a fashion company with themed collections. Its initial collection “Days of The Week” offers seven hairstyles that a consumer can ideally alternate throughout the week.
“We'll have some more styles that are in line with trends, seasons, celebrity staples and more. We’re really having fun with it because what's fun about wigs is getting dressed and thinking about what goes in my outfit today,” Imevbore said.
