A women's beauty startup has snagged $1 million in seed funding, with the bulk of the capital injected by local funds and organizations.
Naturaz, which makes vegan hair products for women with curly hair, pulled in the investment from the Philadelphia Community Impact Fund and the Bucks County Industrial Development Authority, along with other impact and angel investors. The startup raised half of the $1 million infusion in July alone.
The Oaks-based beauty and health startup had its beginnings while founder Mumbi Dunjwa was working at GlaxoSmithKline in research and development. Witnessing a drug discovery pipeline in action everyday, Dunjwa began to conduct her own research in her free time to address a challenge she'd had since she was a child growing up in Kenya: caring for curly hair in a healthy way.
Dunjwa, who graduated from Worcester State University in Massachusetts and received a master's from Carnegie Mellon, began working on the Naturaz hair care line full-time in 2017 before it launched in 2018. A brand refresh in 2022 and the new seed funding has positioned Dunjwa to scale the company.
Naturaz's products, which she says "sit at the intersection of health and beauty," are available in about 30 stores along the I-95 corridor between New York and Washington, D.C.
Dunjwa is in talks with big box retailers who are showing interest and has recently brought on a major distributor that she thinks can help get Naturaz products in 500 to 1,000 stores over the next six months. She's had discussions with the likes of Walmart, CVS Health and Target about carrying the products.
The company's sustainable products include a gel, a cream, a moisturizer, a spray and a conditioning shampoo, all tailored specifically toward women with curly hair and made with natural and sustainable ingredients. Sold individually, the products range in price from $12.49 to $13.99, and a bundle of all five products can be purchased for $59.99. The products are also available through a subscription model which takes 15% off of the normal price.
The Montgomery County startup has caught the eye of local investors before. Naturaz previously hauled in $225,000 from five individual investors in 2021 during a Philadelphia Alliance for Capital and Technologies pitch competition. After that, Dunjwa's company received $25,000 from a joint venture between the University City Science Center and Drexel University called the Raynier Seed Fund. It's also received a grant from Judith von Seldeneck's JVS Philadelphia Fund for Women as well as capital from Ben Franklin Technology Partners.
"Philadelphia definitely has come through, almost surprisingly for me because folks even within the Philadelphia funding community were encouraging us to look outside of Philly," Dunjwa said.
She said having institutional investors like Bucks County Industrial Development Authority or Ben Franklin Technology Partners in her corner helped form a network that ultimately led to angel investors buying in and bringing the funding past seven figures.
Dunjwa is hoping those networking skills will also help grow Naturaz's retail presence, and quickly. It is currently in the midst of a sales push to stretch its footprint to beauty supply stores across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast. With the funding, Dunjwa will look to add to her marketing and sales teams for a "boots to the ground" effort to expand where women can find Naturaz products.
"We are hoping that, based on that activity, we will see just kind of this organic growth as we take on more distributors to actually serve the whole of the U.S.," Dunjwa said. "This is a huge, huge opportunity for the company that we are activating with the funds that we have coming in."
The seed round has not officially closed and Dunjwa says she hopes to raise an additional $500,000 in the next two months.
