Gabrielle Union can now comfortably add ‘owner of a black hair care brand’ under her resume. Flawless by Gabrielle Union has relaunched after being brought back to life with her hair stylist, Larry Sims. As a certified woman boss, Union’s take on the beauty community will be extraordinary.
According to ESSENCE, Union was set to launch the hair line back in 2017, but at the time she suffered massive hair loss due to several rounds of IVF in an attempt to have a child.
“It just put me in a terrible position,” she said in a statement. “Our investors at the time did not want to wait for my hair to grow back so I could use my own hair as I talked about these products and so I was forced into wigs and hair clips and I just felt like a fraud. I felt very inauthentic and I was also humiliated and depressed because my head was bald. And the first [version] was priced way too high. We were sold in stores that are not widely accessible to our audience. Quite frankly, we were marketing way too wide.”
In the meantime, Union went back to the drawing board to perfect her product.
“We started with restructuring the business between Larry and myself. We are a majority Black-owned company,” she said. “Black-owned and Black marketed. We needed to do this completely differently. A lot of our hair products that are targeted for African American hair textures contain silicone. We wanted to take those out. We wanted to really lean into the new technology, new innovation and incorporate hair growth and hair strength, because those are the things that I was dealing with. And I know so many of us have dealt with hair loss, balding, breakage, damage.”
Union and her partner hairstylists, Larry Sims, made it a priority to have this black owned hair care business use natural ingredients for products. The new and improved Flawless by Gabrielle Union will feature 11 products, including shampoo, conditioner, a detangling leave-in conditioner, a scalp soothing tonic, a hydrating curl refreshing spray, restoring exotic oil treatment and more.
“You have to lead with integrity for yourself and for our culture. That may sometimes mean that you have to sacrifice the potential of causing a little ruckus in the workplace,” Sims concluded. “I’ve been doing this for a very long time and I’ve had partnerships prior to this. But the fact that one of my closest friends actually offered me ownership, a piece of the company just so our voices can be in the forefront and our company can be led with our obligation to the community, it’s only on a dream. And it’s just been amazing to see it finally come to life.”
These affordable products will be available at amazon.com.
