After years of bootstrapping their natural hair line Nuele, founders Christine Martley-Ochola and Anne Cheatham are preparing to raise a seed round in the $3 million to $5 million range. With those funds, they’re looking to scale their Coatesville business and gain a portion of the projected multibillion-dollar industry.
They’ve already staked a claim, garnering awards from Harper’s Bazaar and Refinery29 and gained an international presence, momentum they’re looking to further capitalize on.
“To scale in the way we want to scale we will definitely have to look at those external injection of funds at this point,” said Martley-Ochola, noting they expect to launch that round later this year.
They also plan to launch new products — an eyebrow serum and nighttime scalp serum which debuted this week, plus a shampoo and conditioner which they anticipate entering the market by the end of the year.
The timing is right for such products, with the natural and organic cosmetics and personal care industry growing each year. By 2027, it’s projected to be worth $54.5 billion, according to a recent report from Statista.
“I think we are sitting in a really good spot for investors out there who are looking because not only is our product ultra clean, but we also are very mindful of our packaging. We are the full package, so to speak,” Cheatham said.
For Cheatham and Martley-Ochola, clean beauty — the practice of creating products free of toxic ingredients — is what inspired the business in the first place.
The development of Nuele — a Swahili expression that means “your hair is vibrant, your hair is gorgeous, and it is powerful,” as Cheatham described it — took years. The co-founders first thought up their initial product and registered Nuele back in 2015 when Cheatham was looking for a natural hair product that offered moisture, manageability and would allow her to style her hair in multiple ways.
At that point, they’d already known each other nearly a decade, having met at their West Chester church and become fast friends. Both shared commonalities like being originally from Africa – Martley-Ochola from Kenya and Cheatham from Zambia – and backgrounds in science. Martley-Ochola has worked in food science and technology, pharmaceutical chemistry and chemistry, which she holds a doctorate in. A former academic at Villanova University, she also was in cancer research and repeatedly saw the ill effects of certain chemicals on the human body. Cheatham’s background is in biology and she has a master’s degree in anesthesia from Villanova.
Having used products that contained “toxic chemicals,” Cheatham asked Martley-Ochola to make an alternative. That became was is today known as the company’s hair serum, which retails for $34.
“I loved it so much and we thought, 'Hey, we can do this,' so we plunged in,” Cheatham said.
While it sounds simple enough, making a product that was 100% natural and also worked took four years to formulate. The two decided that if they were going to pursue it, they wanted to enter the market with a maximum viable product.
The serum entered the market in 2019 and quickly gained popularity. It is made with just a handful of ingredients: moringa, argan, jojoba, rosemary and clary oils. They work with women farmers in Ghana and Morocco for sourcing, helping support economic growth there. They’ve also partnered on a project that’s funneling funds into planting trees and building hospitals and schools in those regions.
Last year they introduced their second product, a hydrating hair mask. Available as a powder and serum, it can be mixed with foods like mayonnaise, avocado, or milk to add moisture to hair. All products are intended for all hair types and genders and the co-founders are focused on creating an inclusive community as they build out the brand.
While the products are available direct to consumer, wholesale is the main focus for Nuele, which is sold on Amazon, Credo Beauty, Anthropologie and Goop, plus independent salons. More deals are in the works, Martley-Ochola added.
They’re so dedicated to clean beauty that the serum is Made Safe certified, meaning each ingredient and supplier was independently audited for its practices and sourcing. The products themselves are manufactured in Chester County.
The ultra clean beauty movement has gained steam abroad more so than in the U.S. and Nuele has moved into markets in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Singapore and is looking to soon add France to that list.
They recognize that mixing a product can be something of a learning curve, as is the ultra clean movement, and education has been a key part of their early years. With more people gaining familiarity with it, they believe the groundwork will pay dividends.
“It just requires a new way of thinking and to allow yourself to say, you know what, I'm going to give it a try because this is actually really good for me, good for my health, good for my hair,” Cheatham said. “The inertia you have to overcome to get there is very, very steep. But our motto is we just keep going forward.”
What was the formulation process like?
Martley-Ochola: The formulation process was iterative. We intentionally looked for suppliers who were 100% organic, have very deep relations with our suppliers to ensure this authenticity and we see the full supply chain, how production is done, and kept iterating until we got to the solution we wanted.
Why source ingredients from women farmers in Ghana and Morocco?
Martley-Ochola: Way back in maybe about 2007, 2008, way before this company came along, both Anne and I were very involved in the Sub-Saharan Africa Chamber of Commerce. Through that organization, we got a chance to meet many different people and … got involved in social business ventures where they really wanted to scale up the production. … As a core part of our business, because we operate in Fair Trade, we wanted to work with people who are doing Fair Trade practices globally. In the clean business industry, it's not necessarily just about your ingredients, it's also about your trade practice.
How has the pandemic impacted supply chain with Africa?
Martley-Ochola: It's meant purchasing much larger volume than we might at a given time because of supply chain. It's meant delays in getting ingredients. It's meant increased costs, because of freight. … When you're involved in international supply chains, those are factors that do come into play, and also by virtue of the fact that we're looking at the impact of global warming, the weather patterns are really quite interesting. Sometimes we just have long lead times, but we build in for that.
