Q1 Featured Founder | CurlMix

The 2nd New Majority founder currently fundraising from YOU this quarter.

Hello New Majority Investors! 🌞 This week’s Featured Founder is CurlMix, a pioneer in curly hair care! 

CurlMix

First, some context:

• 👩‍🦱Did you know? 58% of Americans have wavy, curly, or coily hair! (Source: Afrolovely.com)

• 🧖‍♀🚿Finding the right hair products is crucial to looking and feeling your best every day, but most beauty brands don’t cater to clients with curly hair, especially coily hair.

• 🫧CurlMix has a 4 step Wash + Go routine designed to expedite the hair washing and styling process while hydrating your hair and scalp and improving curl definition.

This company is made for you if:

• 🧐You or someone you love has curly hair, but haven’t found a routine that works.

• 💥You are a beauty enthusiast who’s always looking for the next disruptive brand!

• 📢You love to invest in Black owned businesses and brands that tap into underserved markets with significant potential. The natural hair care industry is worth $8.3b worldwide and is projected to reach $12b by 2030 (Source: Statista). The curly hair industry is worth $9.7b worldwide and is projected to grow to $15.6b by 2031 (Source: Allied Market Research).

Tell me more

CurlMix’s 4-step hair care system simplifies hair wash day for curly and coily haired people, making it as easy as Wash + Go. With nourishing ingredients like jojoba, hempseed, and castor oil, as well as quinoa gel and flaxseed gel, CurlMix helps you achieve your best hair, naturally. CurlMix is transforming the hair care experience for an overlooked customer base in the beauty industry that’s projected to double in worth within the next 5 years.

Convinced? Invest today in Curlmix.

The details

• Industry: Beauty, Retail, Wellness

  

• Impact: Good Health and Wellbeing (SDG 3), Reduced Inequalities (SDG 10)

• Team Diversity: Female Founder, Minority Founders, Immigrant Founders

• HQ: Vienna, VA (just outside Washington, DC 🏛)

• Company size: 2-10

• Year founded: 2015

• Key investors: CurlMix has caught the attention of notable investors including Arlan Hamilton, Cleveland Avenue, and Brain Trust Founder Studio.

  • In the New Majority investing space, Arlan Hamilton is a superstar! Arlan is the Founder and Managing Partner at Backstage Capital, which has invested in over 170 startups with women, POC, or LGBTQ+ founders. Arlan invested $25,000 in CurlMix’s current round, and has contributed $200,000 previously.

  • Cleveland Avenue is a Chicago-based VC firm founded by Don Thompson (the first Black President and CEO of McDonald’s). Cleveland Ave recently invested in $1.5m in CurlMix's parent company, Listener Brands.

  • BrainTrust Founder Studio amplifies Black beauty and wellness brands, building a community for founders through mentorship and networking, grant programs, and educational programming. BrainTrust has invested $1m in Listener Brands.

• Investment type: Priced Round*

  • *A Priced Round is based on a pre-money valuation. This is an equity-based round where the company releases an amount of shares at a price per share determined by that pre-money valuation.

  • Pre-Money Valuation*: $38.4m

    • *A pre-money valuation represents the valuation of a company before investments have been made.

  • Investor Perks: Receive a CurlMix investor t-shirt with your $500 investment

• Goal: $5m (minimum goal already raised)

• Deadline: March 15, 2024

• Amount Invested: $916,512.00

• Number of Investors: 1011

• Min investment: $250

• Early traction:

  • 📈🤯Since their initial $4.5m raise on Wefunder in 2021, CurlMix has nearly tripled their customer base from 100k to 260k.

  • 🌐🚀While 95% of CurlMix’s lifetime sales have been online, CurlMix launched in 460 Ulta stores in 2023, giving them even greater visibility.

  • 🗣CurlMix has been hot in the press! Founders Kimberly and Timothy were featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 list in 2020, have appeared on Shark Tank, and been included in Oprah’s Favorite Things.

Founding team

• Kimberly Lewis and Timothy Lewis: CurlMix is the brainchild of wife and husband team  Kimberly (CEO) and Timothy (COO). In 2020, Kimberly and Timothy created a second dedicated brand, 4C ONLY, in response to demand from customers with 4C textured hair. CurlMix and 4C ONLY’s parent brand, Listener Brands, reflects the Lewis’ mission to create brands focused on curly hair and tailored to underserved consumer markets. 

Due diligence

Pros:

• 👥CurlMix has built a loyal and engaged community: 

  • 🔂Nearly 9 out of 10 first time customers become repeat customers (Source: CurlMix)

  • 🔢Offering 4 different levels of product hold (Light, Medium, Heavy, and Ultra) for their signature Wash + Go system, CurlMix truly serves all types of curly hair.

  • 📆CurlMix customers can join their 21 day curl masterclass, promoting brand loyalty and strengthening customer retention. 

  • 🌱✨CurlMix only uses natural ingredients and offers fragrance free options for many products.

• 📦CurlMix owns a 30,000 square foot production facility, enabling them to produce and package their products and meet demand for projected growth up to $100m in revenue.

• 🫰💵CurlMix did a whopping $10m in revenue in 2022, prior to their retailer launch at Ulta in 2023!

• 🙌CurlMix is the culmination of Kimberly and Timothy Lewis’ journey in the curly and natural hair care industries. Prior to founding CurlMix, they built and operated The Natural Hair Academy, a social network for natural hair. CurlMix’s sister company, 4C Only, sells complementary products for textured hair. 

  

Potential risks:

• ⚠️🤼The beauty and hair care markets are competitive and saturated, which might make it difficult for CurlMix to capture a larger audience. 

• 🚧While CurlMix owns their production facility, they rely on third parties to supply the natural ingredients used in CurlMix’s products. A disruption with suppliers could impact CurlMix’s ability to fill orders.

• 🌧⏬This is a difficult environment for start-ups combined with a competitive market that may cause headwinds while CurlMix looks to scale. Last year, their reported revenues were $6m, down from 2022’s $10m. While they have $1m in cash on hand, CurlMix has high monthly operating costs and several outstanding debts, one of which is noted as not current on Wefunder.

Competitors

• CurlMix has a variety of competitors in the hair care space using similar ingredients and at a comparable price point. 

  • Briogeo: Black-founded natural hair care brand stocked at Sephora and Ulta, including dedicated products and routines for curly hair, hydration, and scalp care.

  • PATTERN by Tracee Ellis Ross: Black-founded celebrity brand dedicated to curly, coily, and tight hair textures, emphasizing natural ingredients and stocked at Sephora and Ulta.

  • Adwoa Beauty: Black-founded brand specializing in hydration and scalp care for curly, coily, and kinky hair, stocked at Sephora. 

Why Curlmix: CurlMix has found their niche and identified a gap in the market for accessible, quality, differentiated products for curly and coily hair. Particularly through curl education, CurlMix has built a loyal following that trusts CurlMix to see and meet their hair care needs! CurlMix has demonstrated a track record for smart investment of capital following their previous crowdfunding round, more than doubling their customer base and securing a key retailer partnership with Ulta. The deadline for this round has been extended to March 15th to give the CurlMix community a chance to get in on the ground floor.🌟👏

Convinced? Invest today in Curlmix.