Coil Beauty Serves Up Black Beauty Buys With Online Boutique

Black beauty is a multi-billion dollar industry — and Black women entrepreneurs are leading the pack. As a directory focused on highlighting and celebrating Black-owned brands, we are always excited to discover Black-owned platforms that are also dedicated to pushing the power of the Black beauty dollar. 

The latest is Coil Beauty, which is an online retail store featuring Black-owned hair and beauty brands like The Lip Bar, Camille Rose and Scotch Porter. The digital storefront was founded by CEO Aisha Shannon Bates and COO Kethlyn White, who wanted to help change how Black women shop for beauty. 

“The products we carry are designed for and by people of color and by people who really want to remedy some of the issues Black people may face with their hair and skin,” Aisha tells Sadiaa. 

We caught up with Aisha to find out more about the brand. Read on as the Detroit-native shares the defining moment on how they got started, what success looks like and the power of Black-owned beauty.

SADIAA: We love a good Black beauty buy. What inspired you to launch your own store?
AISHA: My best friend from college and COO of my company, Kethlyn White. I have always loved curly hair, but I had never embraced my curly hair growing up. I was a product of the press-and-curl generation; Kethlyn moved to Australia for work and when I visited her, her hair was this awesome coily puff. After talking to her about how she had changed her hair into what it had become, I just knew I could achieve the same thing in the states, but when I got home, it proved to be more difficult than expected. It was overwhelming.

On one visit to my local Ulta, I was looking for a hot oil treatment and was basically stared at because they not only did not sell it but had no clue what I was talking about. Another trip to my local beauty supply store highlighted that none of the people selling hair products to Black people knew anything about Black hair. With the frustration mounting due to those visits, I thought what if there was a place that catered to the needs of melanin-rich folks?  And, from there, Coil was born!

SADIAA: Why is it so important to you to have a beauty site focused on Black folks?
AISHA: It is important to have a site dedicated to Black people because we have never been acknowledged in the beauty space in terms of advertisements or the products stores carried. Even today with the hundreds of beauty brands popping up for Black or textured hair, many of those products never get picked up by big retailers and the ones that do are still rarely advertised by those stores. 

SADIAA: Did you have a background in beauty before this?
AISHA: I did not! I am admittedly the most low maintenance beauty person you’ll ever meet; give me a ponytail holder and clear lip gloss and I’m out the door. I would not say my image has changed much since launching Coil, but I have done a ton of research on the industry and products and have made relationships with many beauty professionals (i.e.: estheticians, hairstylists, chemists, etc.) who have assisted me with everything from ingredients to look for when choosing products to how to apply products.

SADIAA: How do you select products/brands for the site?
AISHA: When we initially launched, we looked for products that had “clean ingredients”, thoughtful packaging and products that had a buzz. Since our launch, we ask our followers/consumers what products they’d like for us to carry on our shelves and we also are sent new products from up and coming beauty brands.

SADIAA: What are some of your top sellers?
AISHA: Nail polish is one of our biggest sellers, which I always find hilarious because that was the one product my COO and I argued for weeks about even bringing on, but our customers love nail polish. Our consumers also love the Mielle product line, Camille Rose and The Lipbar. 

SADIAA: What has been the most rewarding part since launching the platform? 
AISHA: The most rewarding thing for me since launching Coil Beauty is the people I have gotten to work with who helped make the site possible. We hired an all-Black development team and graphic designers. Being that this was my first website being able to walk through it and give my vision to a group of people who understood it immediately while also recirculating the Black dollar was an awesome experience. I also love the founders of many of our products who I have developed relationships with and the fact that they see our success as their success.

SADIAA: How do you feel your business impacts the Black beauty industry? 
AISHA: I feel that Coil Beauty impacts the Black beauty industry by giving Black people a place of their own. Our products are hand-picked for different hair/skin textures and our advertising is inclusive of the many different ways black and brown people look. I think Coil Beauty gives Black people a safe space where they know they can have fun finding their favorite beauty products or find new beauty products.

SADIAA: What makes you stand out?
AISHA: Coil Beauty stands out because of our commitment to our community which we demonstrate through the products we carry, the images we use to market our company and our community outreach initiatives. We are also very hands-on; every package is delivered with a handwritten thank you note from a member of our team in a fun vibrant box. We also correspond with our customers directly via our “hey” button they can ask a question, make a request or just tell us how much they love a product when they click that button.

SADIAA: What was your biggest challenge in getting started? 
AISHA: The biggest challenge when we launched was understanding the importance of branding. We initially had a different logo but no brand identity but when we started building our website one of our designers suggested we rebrand. Neither my COO nor I understood why we needed anything past a logo but the graphic designer who was suggested to us had mercy on us and held our hand every step of the way. The end result was an amazing brand that stood for everything I wanted Coil Beauty to be from the colors to the way we talk to our customers.

SADIAA: What is one thing you wish you knew before you launched?

AISHA: The one thing I wish I’d known before launching is what starting a business entailed. I assume had I have known all the work that went into it I may not have started, but I thought all my experience in corporate America would make starting a business a cakewalk. While I have been able to utilize a lot of my corporate background and my COO has been able to do the same, there was still so much we did not know. Aside from understanding business taxes, understanding the backend of the website was probably the part that stands out the most as my Achilles heel. We had to backtrack on a lot of stuff we had done or were doing out of ignorance of how things worked.

SADIAA: What does success look like for you?
AISHA: Success for me is being able to empower my community through jobs and creating a space that is theirs [and] that they can be proud of and feel comfortable in. 

SADIAA: Anything else you would like to share?
AISHA: Coil Beauty is very special to us not only because of the things that we do within our community but also because our children get to see themselves represented in ways that we never got to see as children