Normally, Dawn Myers wears her hair up in a big old afro, and anyone with an afro can attest that wash days — the routine of washing and styling textured hair — are often tedious. They take a lot of detangling, product, styling, and, well, time. She started thinking about all the hair tools on the market, like blow dryers and curling irons, “things that straighten and change the chemistry of our naturally curly hair,” she told TechCrunch, adding that it takes around an hour and 20 minutes to wash and style her own hair.
None of those tools help with that, and for Myers, it highlighted a gap that has always existed in the beauty hardware space — a lack of tooling for textured hair. It’s a space that’s complex, expensive, and just overlooked. That’s where do-rags come from.
You had to cover your hair. Because our hair was seen as ugly and unkempt and unacceptable,” she said. Later came hot combs, chemical relaxers, and flat irons, all of which straighten textured hair.
It even has warming technology to gently heat the product before it’s applied. She built it with the materials science company Dow, after an early prototype caught the company’s attention during a startup accelerator program. They didn’t understand that there’s this whole process that their customers have to go through.” She would tell them how painful and arduous the process is.
We really do need bespoke technology.” Myers sold her home and liquidated her 401(k) retirement account to fund the initial development of this product. Then, in 2022, just as she was about to expand and go to market, she was diagnosed with stage three colorectal cancer. She remembers sitting in the chemo chair at Johns Hopkins, on her laptop, trying to close deals.
She applied to “Shark Tank” in 2023 and appeared on the show later that year, though the episode aired in 2024. She ended up nabbing a deal from investor Mark Cuban and serial entrepreneur Emma Grede, which helped her formally launch the product. Grede then helped it expand into Ulta’s online website earlier this year.
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