Unilever bets on hair products for black women – 06/26/2023 – Market

Marcella Roberts and Brooke Council were sitting in a beauty salon one recent afternoon, talking about how much they were loving their hair. The two women, both black, were talking about a new cream they are using to model and moisturize their curly hairstyles.

“This product works wonders,” said Robert, who works outdoors daily, taking parking meter readings, which is why his curls get dry in no time. “The effect lasts for a few days.”

“Even my co-worker commented on how soft my hair is,” said Coucil.

The cream does not leave flakes on women’s scalps, they said, as other products sometimes do. And while it has a slightly overpowering tropical scent when applied, the scent “bleeds down and becomes pleasant” over the course of the day, Council said.

The initial strong smell didn’t stop Roberts from covering her entire scalp with the cream. “You don’t have to use a lot to have a good effect,” she said. “I wanted to try it out. I thought, ‘After all, this is a product testing center.’

The test center she alluded to was the salon itself, run by Unilever, one of the world’s largest consumer products conglomerates and owners of brands such as Dove, Vaseline and SheaMoisture. The product the women were reviewing was one of the company’s latest, and as they voiced their reactions, Unilever scientists listened and took notes on their phones.

The salon — and the feedback received from people who test products there — is one way Unilever is trying to tap into the long-undervalued but increasingly important market for black hair products. Black consumers are a group that beauty product companies have underinvested in for generations, if not simply ignored. However, with people of color making up a growing portion of the American population, it is now a business imperative for companies to understand the needs of the millions of consumers who have non-straight hair.

If Unilever gets it right, it could capture a bigger share of the $1.8 billion that black consumers in the US spend annually on hair care products. Black women tend to use twice as many hair care and styling products as white women. Despite this demand, black consumers are three times more likely than other racial groups to say they are dissatisfied with existing options for skin and hair care, according to a McKinsey report released last year.

“I’m excited about the work done so far, but also what remains to be done,” commented Peter Schrooyen, responsible for Unilever’s research and development operations for a dozen beauty brands in North America. “We have a lot of know-how about people from India or Africa with darker skin, but relatively little information about African Americans, black people, brown people and Hispanics in North America.”

Each week Unilever brings 50 men and women to its salon, called the Policultural Center of Excellence. More than half of the participants are people of color.

People are not told the name of the product being tested or the purpose the company envisages for it. Instead, executives want to detect how testers react to the product, because that might reveal a use for it that hadn’t been considered before.

“This is to fill in the gaps in biological understanding or what we may have thought we understood from one or two studies,” said Tiffany Yizar, director of Unilever North America’s Multicultural Beauty Technical Center.

Across the street from the salon, Unilever has a research and development lab where it tests ingredients and formulas created for curly hair. It’s in the salon that the company seeks to discover what encourages people to buy more of its shampoos, conditioners and lotions from retailers like Target, CVS and Sally Beauty. (Occasionally Unilever recruits customers at these stores to participate in the tests.) After getting feedback from people in the salon, products are sometimes sent back to the lab to undergo alterations.

Unilever faces increasing competition from companies that are starting out in e-commerce and have built a following on social media. Both she and the also giant Procter & Gamble have been acquiring some of these emerging brands. But pumping money into its own research and development business allows Unilever to understand the science behind textured hair, said Jennifer Van Wyk, a former research fellow at TRI Princeton, which conducts research in cosmetic science that receives financial support from Unilever and other companies.

Unilever has operated its consumer testing center for five years. But in the wake of the racial justice protests, in 2020, the company realized it could do more. In 2021, executives promised to double resources for research and creation of products for melanin-rich skin and textured hair by this year.

Over the years, several Unilever companies have come under fire for the way they have portrayed women of color in their marketing. An ad for Dove soap in 2017 showed a black woman removing her skin-colored shirt to reveal a white woman in a white shirt. The ad hinted at a racist concept that black people are dirty. After outrageous reactions on social media, Dove apologized and said it was deeply sorry for “the offense it has caused”.

For black and brown consumers, the purchase decision is not just about buying products scientifically adapted to their skin and hair type. It’s also about feeling that a big company like Unilever is trying to earn their trust, asking for their feedback and representing them fully.

Understanding these consumers is one of Yizar’s main responsibilities at the company. She advises Unilever on which products can and should enter the market by 2026. Yizar, 37, is a chemical engineer who studied at Brown University because, she says, it immersed her in a liberal arts environment while she was studying the hard science of chemical and biochemical engineering.

Yizar is Afrolatina and wears her hair braided in dreadlocks. She said: “Beauty is a really long aisle. I grew up in an era where only a small part of that aisle was for me. So I think we owe it to our consumers to offer a diversity of options.”

Winning over a customer with textured hair doesn’t mean the same product will work for the next customer who has naturally curly hair.

“Frankly, the biggest challenge is having a very broad reach,” said Courtney Rominiyi, an analyst at Mintel who researches the hair care industry. “I think one of the biggest problems brands are having is trying to appeal to all black consumers.”

Translated by Clara Allain