Page 44 - Forbes Magazine-September 30, 2018

Entrepreneurs SMALL GIANTS

Hair on Fire

Inspired by personal tragedy and her family’s homemade beauty concoctions, Nancy Twine went
from trading commodities on Wall Street to building a fast-growing luxury hair-care brand.

BY CHLOE SORVINO

21’s Riley Rose and sam-
ple services like Birch-
box and Ipsy. “From
the start,” Twine says,
“I wanted to make sure
that our margins were
good, so that not only
could we reinvest back
in the brand but so that
down the line we never
had to compromise.”
Twine, who identi-
fies as African-Amer-
ican, is attempting to
appeal to all women.
Unlike many brands,
Briogeo targets cus-
tomers by hair texture
(wavy, coily, dry, thin)
rather than by ethnic-
ity. “I remember going
to CVS back in the day,
and it was always very
segregated,” she says. In
“We make everything from charcoal and coconut-oil shampoo that addition, Briogeo formulates its naturally derived
our own original product
smells like mint cookies flows into doz-
briefs, our own ideas, our A products without sulfates (linked to skin irrita-
own market research. We ens of 8-ounce tubs at a contract lab in tion), silicones (may dry and thin hair), phthalates
never go and select from
some off-the-shelf formula,” suburban New Jersey. Surveying the tubs (potentially toxic in high concentrations), parabens
says Briogeo founder Nancy is 33-year-old Nancy Twine, who created the sham- (banned in the European Union; binds to estrogen
Twine from her office
in Manhattan’s NoMad poo, a scalp-exfoliating formula that retails for nine receptors), DEA (also a skin irritant) and artificial
neighborhood. times the cost of mass-market shampoos like Head dyes. “People were literally telling me you can’t do
& Shoulders. “This was a big one for us,” says Twine, this without silicones,” Twine says. “I had to do my
founder of the hair-care company Briogeo. own research and tell chemists what they needed
In recent years, as more and more beauty prod- to be blending in order to get it to work better.”
ucts are manufactured at independent labs, doz- Even though so-called clean beauty is one of
ens of women have launched their own brands, the fastest-growing segments of the beauty indus-
from makeup artists turned bloggers like Huda Kat- try, there are few nontoxic hair lines in general and
tan to celebrities like Kylie Jenner. But Twine says even fewer for textured hair. That gap has created a
her seven years at Goldman Sachs have given her a big opportunity. Black customers purchased almost
leg up, prepping her to price ambitiously, source in- $500 million worth of shampoo last year, accord-
gredients directly, combine orders to save money ing to the research firm Mintel, and are the fastest-
on production runs and build relationships with growing segment of the $13 billion U.S. hair-care
partners. On retail shelves for just four years, Brio- market, according to Euromonitor. Most Briogeo RAINA + WILSON FOR FORBES
geo has been profitable every year of its existence products are priced slightly below other premium
and brings in more than $10 million in annual rev- hair brands, a point of pride for Twine. The com-
enue from sales at Sephora, Nord strom, Forever petitive price helped Twine convince retailers that

52 | FORBES SEPTEMBER 30, 2018