Hello, hello, it's Brooke Divard and you're listening to the naked beauty podcast today you're going to be hearing from two very different brand founders with very different stories, but they're each thinking about how to make the world better the environment better through a more thoughtful approach to beauty product.

Now see our money may I am so impressed with her she is based in St. Louis. We had a great conversation and she had it she braids like that is what drove her to create re bundle which is banana fiber based braiding hair and she got the idea she pulled together funding spent a year and a half in development and then made the re bundle braids available their biodegradable their plant based and they have fewer than 10 ingredients and you'll hear in our conversation what drove her to do the

business as well as some of the ingredients that could be lurking in synthetic hair that I just personally wasn't even aware of and we talk about all of the pollution and waste that comes with plastics in synthetic hair. I also speak to Alice and say she and her sisters generational farm right so she had some built in privilege some inherent privilege in that her family had owned this farm.

But her sisters there is a spark when they watch their father who is exporting fruits to other countries to create a product around the byproduct around the waste that was created from the kernels and seeds from the plums.

And this was really interesting to me because I love and used the lay prune a products for like two years before I ever even knew the back story you know it was something that I organically loved and then I learned that it was sustainable which I think is also very important.

I think that we need to get to a place where products that are sustainable and better for the environment we're not making compromises are not seen as less than it's not seen as like a downgrade or an alternative.

These can be just as luxurious as any other beauty product and I will say that the re bundle hair extensions are slightly more expensive than what you're going to find from a synthetic hair extension the late prune a cold press plum oil is a bit more expensive than you're going to find from another oil but.

You also have to understand listening to these founders that there's a reason why the prices are more expensive and if we can buy more thoughtfully and more consciously and support these businesses.

The planet will be better off so I hope you enjoy these two conversations and I will be back next week with more conversations around sustainability and beauty tips and tricks thank you so much for listening make sure you're following along at naked beauty planet on Instagram and.

Thank you for all of the love around the show please rate and review if you have the opportunity thanks so much.

Hi Sierra i'm so excited to have you on naked beauty welcome to the show paper thanks for having me I have been so interested in re bundle basically since I heard about it a lot of people also were sending the DMs like have you heard about this hair extension company that's making like plant based hair extensions.

I was like i'm just immediately intrigued i feel like i get a lot of inbound for like innovation but i have truly seen nothing like this are you the first and only for the first us made plant based hair extensions brand really pioneering my point of view pioneering what I see as the future of hair extensions and setting the tone for what I think is necessary in this space for black women incredible well you raise 1.4 million dollars for your plant based hair extensions which is an incredible feat congratulations.

So I'm sure is how did you position your pitch to investors in a way that would kind of make them understand the value of re bundle yeah it's a question and we've actually raised to date 2.1 million okay yeah so it's a gone more capital because I need to do more things but I actually didn't plan to raise in a very beginning I bootstrapped through the initial softwant this is right and off of the concept like you said super attention grabbing eye catching and like intriguing and so I was inspired to like.

Develop this concept put some brand power behind it storytelling get the product out there and find out like is there a market for a different type of hair extensions if I didn't really have any proof that people would be interested in something like this I know I wanted it but I needed validation and so we had a lot of moments in those early days it was actually extremely overwhelming and we would sell out in like 15 minutes or less we didn't have a ton of inventory but again I didn't have a lot of data that would that told me that you know what I'm going to do.

This would be successful upon launch so we didn't have a lot of anything once we saw from traction and how much people were just gravitating toward the idea of a concept desire for something different then I went out and raised and so I had a little bit of leverage because I could demonstrate that I could get a product to market without venture capital and I could get enough people to be interested in the brand and the concept without any real marketing power either.

My argument was that this is what I proven that I could do with a little bit of money here are the things that I want to do with more money here are the ways that I think I can really tackle this space and be a leader in the space and a category defining brand in this space and I think we're making a lot of strides towards that.

Absolutely. So did you have personal experiences with hair extensions that kind of led you to developing this product.

Yes and when I think about the brand story it really starts in maybe high school or middle school for me I used to run track.

I don't think I've actually told this story before but I used to run track in high school.

Do you hate running now?

Yeah.

Oh I never run unless I have to.

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