Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Daphne Eastmond. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Daphne, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today What’s the backstory behind how you came up with the idea for your business?

I’ve spent my natural hair journey feeling excluded from mainstream beauty brands for not addressing the needs of my 3b/c curls. As a young adult, I desperately searched for the “it” brand that featured someone with hair like mine that I could buy into and proudly display on my bathroom counter – but it didn’t exist.
I think I used this frustration and deception to fuel my passion for building my hair care brand and offering something better to the community in which I am a part of.

At Frizz + Co., we are here to fill that gap. We focus on developing clean, powerhouse hair care products specifically catered to curly and textured hair because “made for all hair types” just isn’t good enough.

We spent two years collaborating with chemists to fully understand and answer the distinct challenges and needs of textured hair, including dryness, varying curl patterns, and porosity. In 2022, we launched our hero product: the Repairing Hair Mask.

More than just a product, we are building a community rooted in education, diversity and inclusion. Curly and textured hair often comes with trauma, frustration and deception. Hosting a safe space for our community of like-minded individuals to share their experiences was important in addition to launching products.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I am a CPA, turned beauty founder.
I never imagined launching a venture, it just wasn’t anything I aspired to. I followed the “traditional” path of getting degrees and always choosing options that open as many doors as possible, which is what led me to my first job in audit. However, after a few years of fieldwork, there was a shift I can’t really explain.
It felt like I was no longer aligned with what I actually wanted.

I started working on my business in 2020 with no prior experience in beauty. Working from home during COVID gave me the flexibility to lay out the foundation of what I envisioned for my hair care brand. I cold-called and emailed specialists to see if my idea was even executable (i.e.chemists, labs)—turns out it was.
I spent two years working with a chemist to formulate our hero product. Our focus was clean, powerhouse ingredients (our product features plant-based protein and a biodegradable conditioning base), a formula made for curls and texture and to elevate your wash day experience (we partnered with a specialist in the marketing of the scent for a custom perfume with hints of tonka bean and tobacco).

My goal with launching Frizz + Co. is to elevate the standard of curl care.

I spent my entire hair journey feeling excluded from mainstream brands because I was not seen as a priority demographic, there was a lack of transparency from some brands on the market, and there was an increasing amount of studies linking the rise of cancer cases in black women and the hair products they were using.
There was an opportunity to do better and I wanted to do better.

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

There are so many confronting lessons that I’ve had to work on (and still am) while building my business.

The most important one, in my opinion, is that my self-worth is not tied to my business.
When you build something from scratch, there is so much of you that is poured into it that it becomes very difficult to not take things personally.

Okay – so how did you figure out the manufacturing part? Did you have prior experience?

Everything leading up to the manufacturing process was quite challenging.

This was my first time creating a product from scratch. Finding the right resources and partners took a lot of research and testing. I’m so grateful that the chemist I worked with helped guide me when it came to ordering the ingredients and finding the right lab.

The most challenging part of the manufacturing process is minimal order quantities. Product-based businesses are very capital-intensive and the MOQ of a manufacturer can make or break you. Finding suppliers that allowed small batch ordering was difficult with most of them being inflexible when it comes to their MOQ.
Sustainability was also important when developing this product, and adding a sustainability consideration made it almost impossible. I was reaching for 100% recycled jars however, they required a custom order (vs. stock), and they could not guarantee consistency in the materials used which could, in turn, alter the formulation of the product, being natural-based.

The current product is perfectly imperfect. I built this product to the best of my ability at the time and I’m so incredibly proud of what we achieved in launching our first product.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://frizzhair.co/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/frizz.co/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/frizzhair.co
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/frizzhair-co/
• Twitter: N/A
• Youtube: N/A
• Yelp: N/A
• Soundcloud: N/A
• Other: Our Sunday curls community on slack: https://join.slack.com/t/sunday-curls/shared_invite/zt-2inxg6rcj-VNgTTUExiwct5p5XzHQYrw

Image Credits

Rachael Reid;
Chris Trepte;
Omar Adel.