After quadrupling sales last year, a Philadelphia hair care startup is projecting to again grow by that figure in 2023 as it pivots from its retail-focused business model to one that’s rooted in e-commerce.
Headquartered in Philadelphia and with a retail space in the King of Prussia Mall, Zenn Hair Care offers a collection of organic products that are geared toward those with natural Black hair.
Aurora Teasley launched the line in June 2020 shortly after the Covid-19 pandemic was declared. Already interested in organic beauty products, she found the market lacking in luxury hair goods for Black customers, a gap she wanted to fill.
Having just graduated that May from Shippensburg University, where she studied human communication, the pandemic altered her plans. Initially Teasley planned to go into human resources but when the job market rapidly shrunk, she decided to give entrepreneurship a shot.
That concept was new to her, but her interest in hair wasn’t. While in high school and college, she had done some styling. Friends had previously suggested she make products, but Teasley didn’t pursue it until that summer.
Her first product was a hair growth pomade, which, as its name suggests, is intended to help with hair growth. Teasley, who has self-funded the business, made just 35 units to start and when she listed them online, they sold out within five hours, she said. The next day, she restocked and the product sold out again. At that point, Teasley suspected she was onto something and decided to pursue Zenn Hair Care.
Later that same year, she began formulating new products and today offers her hair growth pomade, plus two oils, a conditioner, shampoo and scalp cleanser. Each product is handmade in her Philadelphia production space using natural ingredients like aloe vera juice, shea butter and oils from almonds, avocados, tea tree, lemons and carrots. Products range from $25 to $55. The pomade remains a best seller. She also offers a selection of accessories.
More than creating an organic brand geared toward Black women, Teasley wanted to elevate the products through a clean aesthetic. Other products for those with natural hair, she said, were in bright, bold packaging that didn’t suit her taste. “I felt like Black women deserve packaging that's nice and minimal and sophisticated because that's what a lot of people actually want, even though that's not something that's really available at a lot of stores,” she said. Her goal was to change that and Teasley designed the initial labels and packaging herself.
Many of the products came about by listening to customer demand. Teasley had no background in product creation and taught herself the formulation process from YouTube and subsequent experiments.
The business started with e-commerce and remained that way for much of its first year. In 2021, Teasley started doing pop-ups before opening her first retail space at the Willow Grove Mall. She had a cart space there for three months from June to August of 2021 and then pursued a similar space at the King of Prussia Mall, which she took up last January.
“It was a bigger market for me to get into and it just seemed like a better fit for me,” Teasley, 25, said of the move.
Being at the King of Prussia Mall also introduced the brand to a slate of consumers she might not have gotten in front of otherwise. The mall, which spans nearly 3 million square feet, attracts over 20 million visitors annually, according to the latest report from King of Prussia District.
Since opening there, Teasley said she’s been able to quadruple revenue and is projecting doing so again in 2023. While it’s been a boon for business – about 90% of sales are retail today – Teasley wants to return to her e-commerce roots to grow Zenn Hair Care. Her lease at King of Prussia Mall is set to end in October, at which point she is considering phasing out that retail operation.
She’s hoping that with an established customer base – thanks to her mall presence, she has customers from as far as Alaska – Teasley can scale operations online. To facilitate part of her growth online, Teasley has launched on digital marketplace Etsy and is exploring marketing and advertising that will position her to capture market share.
To scale online, Teasley wants to raise about $50,000 for working capital and eliminating debt. While she has started to explore equity backing, her goal is to do so through grants and crowdfunding.
“I just have to raise the funding so that I can be able to market myself on these platforms to generate that traffic that I need,” she said.
Currently sales are exclusively in the U.S., but Teasley has started to see demand from spots like the Middle East. As such, she is exploring ways to expand internationally in future. Teasley is also eyeing new product offerings later this year like a flaxseed gel and a leave-in conditioner, both of which would be geared toward the women she launched the business for in the first place.
Zenn Hair Care’s primary demographic is African American women aged 25 to 45, “filling that need that I wanted [to fill] in the first place, the thing that I thought was missing,” Teasley said.
