For most black women, finding the right hair products or perfect shade of foundation is a needle-in-a-haystack mission. But thanks to a new crop of companies, the solution could easily appear on your doorstep.
A 2009 study by Packaged Facts concluded that African-American women spend a staggering $7.5 billion a year on beauty -- largely due to trail-and-error shopping, as they attempt to find the right products for their specific skin tones and hair textures.
Now, a new wave of subscription beauty companies are perfectly positioning themselves to offer the supply for the glaring demand within the black community.
Meki Adefris, an Ethiopian American, is the woman behind My Shade of Brown, a new beauty subscription startup filling a major hole in the growing beauty-by-mail boom. Sick of her seemingly endless search for beauty products that worked for women of color, Adefris decided to mimic the model of Birchbox, the uber-popular beauty subscription company that sends subscribers a box of trial-sized samples from both established and up-and-coming beauty brands.
My Shade of Brown customers will open a box of products specific to women of color (African Americans, Asians, Southeastern Asians, Latinas and beyond).
"My needs and frustrations are very similar to other women of color and we feel they are being ignored by the industry," Adefris told Women's Wear Daily.
Supermodel Iman recently shared a similar sentiment regarding the lack of product diversity at a speech last month to beauty industry professionals and insiders.
Now more and more companies are popping up to fill the void. My Brown Box and CurlBox are two other subscription beauty companies looking out for women of color.
Owner of Better Organic Choice and Huffington Post blogger, Karim Orange asked several women of color to share their needs and thoughts regarding the emergence of social commerce, and its impact in the black beauty market. Check out the slideshow below to hear what they had to say.
