We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Kene Onuorah a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Kene, thanks for joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

The data says 2/3 of all American men will deal with significant hair loss by the age of 35. That’s nearly 50 Million men. Many of them will deal with anxiety, lack of confidence, embarrassment even depression along their hair loss journey. And it can happen to anyone, including me, Kene Onuorah CEO/Founder of Comme Homme – a tech-enabled personal care injecting confidence into the hair loss journey.

I initially noticed my hair was thinning in 2013. I can remember the exact time and place I was when I noticed it. I was immediately self-conscious, dealing with anxiety and loss of confidence. I did my best to fight my hair loss from 2013-2017. During that time, I looked into several hair restoration solutions including the two FDA-approved hair restoration drugs Minoxidil and Finasteride. The same drugs sold by new age brands Hims, Keeps, & Roman. But they were either ineffective or associated with pretty bad side effects (ie: erectile dysfunction, reduced s*x drive, etc).

After struggling for 4 years I finally decided to shave my head, or “Come Home” as my friends would call it. To my surprise, my new look was met with rave reviews from family, friends, and strangers alike. The feedback was great but understanding what products were best for my scalp was rather difficult. The entire men’s hair loss market has historically been focused on combatting hair loss rather than embracing it. Therefore, brands dedicated to helping men make a graceful bald transition and products for men’s scalp care were relatively nonexistent. To me, that represented a massive void in the marketplace. One that I set out to solve with Comme Homme.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers?

Sure! As I mentioned my name is Kene Onuorah. I am a Nigerian American born in Raleigh, NC to two Nigerian parents. I’m also the brother of two sisters, who I love dearly. I graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with my undergraduate degree in 2012 and furthered my education at the University of Michigan’s MBA program in 2019. But my journey as an entrepreneur dates as far back as middle school (2000-2004). It was there that I initially realized I had a gift as an influencer. This was prior to social media, so influencer marketing was much more of a hyper-local phenomenon. From middle school through high school and then college I was blessed with the natural ability to set trends, create “cool”, and inspire action among peers.

My ability to do so led to my first business venture, an apparel and events brand, that I co-founded as a senior in college. The brand was an offshoot of a subculture that my friends and I had built throughout college. This first taste of entrepreneurship was thrilling. So much so that I used my signing bonus for my first job to fund the business. I worked on this business with a team of six others for 4 years while also working as a management consultant. The juxtaposition of my work as a consultant and my work as the CEO of the brand made it very clear that I had a legitimate passion for entrepreneurship. This passion would lead me to leave my corporate job in 2016 to focus 100% on entrepreneurship building both a clothing brand and a new fitness venture in my hometown.

Comme Homme was later built on the back of my personal problem dealing with hair loss. As I mentioned previously, nearly 50M men in America will deal with significant hair loss by the age of 35. As a result, many of these men will deal with emotional trauma (anxiety, embarrassment, even depression) stemming from hair loss – this is problem #1. Many men will eventually shave their heads bald as they succumb to hair loss but currently, the market does not provide products specifically designed to meet the scalp care needs nor solve the specific grooming pain points that bald men deal with – this is problem #2. This niche presents a sizeable market to serve with products that meet their specific needs/pain points as well as using community and technology to improve their experience across the entire hair loss spectrum. This is important because historically society has told millions of men and women alike that losing your hair or being bald is something to be ashamed of. But in today’s society where self-expression is at its highest form, I believe BALD IS BOLD and that it is time to upend the stigma.

At Comme Homme we like to say we inject confidence into the hair loss journey using community-driven content, augmented reality technology, and premium scalp care products that actually solve real functional pain points for our customers. I think several parts of our business are unique from our competitors but specifically, I think our community is our special sauce. Our content strategy is rooted in putting our customers at the forefront and sharing their stories. Our Bald 2 Bold podcast series gives our customers the opportunity to have authentic conversations with our brand about manhood, mental health, and self-care all through the lens of hair loss. Often after recording their episode our guests refer to the experience as “therapeutic” because of the content and vulnerability of each episode. Each guest often introduces us to other bald men in their network which has served as a referral engine allowing us to expand our reach and share more stories to help empower our customer base. Each conversation is special and it opens up the opportunity for our brand to expand into the mental wellness space as we create a space for these vulnerable and sensitive conversations around insecurities, confidence, etc.

I’m most proud of the impact and the brand awareness we have built so far. It is incredibly rewarding to build something that you know resonates with not only the target customer but also ancillary customers and supporters as well. Because face it, everyone knows somebody that has dealt with hair loss which allows our brand to speak to people who may not even be our customers but they know someone who is.

Can you open up about how you funded your business?

Funding, Funding, Funding (*takes deep breath*).

Funding is one of the most vital and challenging parts of building a business. Businesses need fuel and capital and sweat equity are two of the most important types of fuel. Sometimes you have one and not the other and in the best scenario, you have both. But as a small business or start-up oftentimes you are in a space when you are operating with one or the other. I was able to access the first $100K+ for my business by taking advantage of competitions, grant opportunities, and startup accelerator programs. So in short, I was both resourceful and relentless but most importantly I was willing to get out of my comfort zone.

I was able to win $15K from participating in Shark Tank-like pitch competitions. These can be nerve-wracking especially if you’ve never had to pitch a business live. But practice makes perfect. It didn’t start off great but today I can confidently say that I feel like one of my biggest strengths is pitching the business. Also as I mentioned being resourceful, I’ve applied to countless grants, programs, etc. My hit rate is probably less than 5% but the chances of success in entrepreneurship are even lower than that. So you might as well shoot your shot. Having the perseverance to continue in the face of “NO” is one of the most important traits of being an entrepreneur in my opinion. Entrepreneurship is a marathon, it’s not going to be easy and it’s a long road but I believe it’s worth it.

I also obtained another $70K by taking a leap of faith by turning down job opportunities to pursue my business after graduating with my MBA from the University of Michigan in 2021. While many of my classmates were taking awesome six-figure salary jobs in tech, banking, consulting, etc I chose to move to Tulsa, Oklahoma, and participate in an amazing minority-focused start-up accelerator called ACT Tulsa. I spent nearly 6 months in Tulsa and it changed my life in many ways. Not only for the capital it provided my business but also for the network of founders, investors, and entrepreneur advocates it connected me to. Many people both family and classmates alike were surprised when I said I was moving to Oklahoma after graduating from a top 10 business school but I think it further proved my resolve and dedication to my pursuing my business and chasing my dreams.

Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.

Our products are manufactured domestically at a firm that has over a quarter century of experience in the beauty and personal care industry. They have proven to be a great partner and were willing to work with a start-up, which is a major risk on their part. In order to find the manufacturing partner we did online research and also tapped into our network. We ended up with a spreadsheet of 30 or so manufacturers and then narrowed it down to 6-8 for outreach. As a start-up there were a few things that were important to us: payment terms, payment flexibility, experience, minimum order quantity, and communication. We used these criteria to ultimately select the manufacturer we would use.

Now actually getting to finished goods was a long road. We had to create long-form documents that detailed exactly what we wanted each product to accomplish and what ingredients we wanted to use and didn’t want to use. All of this took months of research. Once submitting these documents, we went into the iteration process, going through almost 10 versions (and testing them with potential customers at each iteration) before coming to the final product. There was also mandatory testing our products had to pass, which cost more money. We dealt with a few other issues getting our products across the finish line but I’ve learned to be purely solution-oriented and that helped us finish the race. Although this relationship started during the pandemic, we also had the opportunity to visit the manufacturer which was an extremely cool experience and helped strengthen our relationship with the manufacturing team.

Last but not least, there was product packaging we had to confront. Here we truly got lucky! We ended up working with the Professor of Packaging Design at The University of Michigan’s School of Design (who just happened to be a bald man haha). We met with him and his wife weekly for 4 months. They were amazing to work with and helped us create the most beautiful packaging for our products. And get this, they did it for FREE! I can’t thank them enough for how gracious they were with their time and effort. I certainly owe them a ton for being such early supporters.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.commehomme.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/commehommeco/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/commehommeco/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/commehommeco
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCERzOwYg9fwvu2FOnK9-Oeg
• Other: Augmented Reality Experience on Snapchat: https://lens.snapchat.com/1559bb0f6e9740ab8fe3cd1566e84503 TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@commehommeco?lang=en