How To Start A Hair Care Line

As an entrepreneur, it’s exciting to think about your next venture!

Whether you are looking to expand into other categories, or you are building your maker business from scratch, stick with us as we chat about how to get started building your dream hair care product line.

A hair care line is a fabulous way to formulate your own products, engage a certain target audience, and boost your brand awareness.

The best way to get started is to perfect the craft of making the best products suited for your brand. You will achieve that through extensive research and proper testing.

Typically, it is best to try all the products out yourself first, and then move on to have your family and friends help with additional testing and feedback.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of building your own hair care line, it is important to familiarize yourself with some key vocabulary that will be used in the formulation process. 

learn basic hair care vocabulary

• Emulsifiers: ingredients that hold things together to create the perfect blend. It actually allows oil and water to mix! WOW!

• Actives: biologically active compounds that give your formula a purpose and direction. 

• Humectants: known for moisturizing, as they help retain moisture.

• Emollients: provide protection, lubrication, and prevent water loss.

• Preservatives: prevent bacterias from growing and increase the shelf life and safety of your product. Water is a huge contaminant that attracts bacteria, therefore, a preservative must be used to combat that undesirable effect.

select your products

Generally, when starting a hair product line, you will want to start with the basic haircare products before advancing to other specialty ones.

Although, this is your personal line for your brand! Soul search and decide what products you want to offer first, including shampoo, conditioner, hair mask, styling products, etc.

To dive deeper into hair care formulation, check out this video, skin & hair care: formulating 101.

To get the inside scoop on how to formulate, build your hair care business and tips from our maker experts, we also recommend getting our Beauty Batch Book which is designed to get you moving and grooving on achieving your hair care dreams!

When you're reading to start sourcing ingredients for your products start here to get your hair care line headed in the right direction! 

start formulating

We created 3 easy-peasy hair care products, with super simple formulas to get your wheels spinning! Be sure to check out our blog on how to make your first 3 hair care products! 

To help speed along the learning process, you may want to utilize the hair care base discovery kit or the hair care actives discovery kit.

These discovery kits are the perfect way to experiment with the different types of bases and actives that you can use during formulation. Get ready to mix it up in the hair care lab, maker!

Once you've finished formulating, test your products with close friends and family who you can rely on to give you constructive feedback. Choose people with different hair types, curly hair and straight, and those with color treated and natural hair. This will give you broad feedback that will help you finalize your formulations.

select packaging

So now that you’ve mastered your unique product offerings, it’s time to choose your customized packaging that ultimately represents your brand! Packaging and branding go hand in hand.

There are so many different eco-friendly choices for packaging up your luxe products (yay)! It’s important to think about the experience you want your customers to have when receiving, viewing, and using your products.

Do you want your product to come in a big bottle or a small jar? Do you want the packaging to be see-through or opaque? Will it come in a spray bottle or a pump? Those are some examples of questions you might ask yourself when deciding on packaging for your hair care products. 

design labels

Once you have narrowed down your packaging, you can begin to design your labels. This step is super important because labels are what helps your brand be unique and recognizable!

Give your hair care products the identity they deserve. There are several ways you can about creating your labels for your line. If you have the budget, you could look into hiring a graphic designer to create your logo and label, although most entrepreneurs do it themselves using online resources like Canva or Vistaprint.

Through our incredible partnership with Vistaprint, we have an exclusive offer for our makers to design your own labels using their innovative platform. This is one way you can save yourself some moola and enjoy the creative aspect of developing your own style and brand, without necessarily being a design expert. 

After designing your labels, it’s always a good idea to ask a few trusted advisors, mentors, friends or family their thoughts on what you created so that you can get a good feel for the reaction other customers may have. 

Developing your brand and logo is a process of soul searching, being creative, and aligning with your target market.

Take your time to figure out what branding is right for your business, but most importantly stay true to yourself and have fun soaking up the creative process! If you are still itching to learn more on the importance of branding, read our blog about branding.

bring it to market

Alrighty, makers! You are now ready to bring it to market! It’s go time!

In today’s digital world, it goes without saying that you must market yourself on all social media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Reddit, Snapchat, and any other sites that your target audience associates with!

When customers leave comments, make sure you quickly respond, as this builds trust with the potential customer. This is where you need to go ALL IN and develop engaging content, showcase your testimonials, post relatable reels/videos to make your brand stand out and come alive!

If you want to create the absolute best content on the internet, we have an amazing partnership with soona as part of our business service initiative for our makers!

Remember: You want your photos to align with your branding too. Don’t get discouraged if your products don’t fly off the shelves in the first week!

Building trust with a new brand and product takes time. Think about how long it takes you to adopt a new product, as a consumer. And if you have an existing customer base, send an email with a promotion to get them excited to try it and give you a rockin’ testimonial! The fun has begun!

By knowing your target audience and competitors, it will allow you to analyze how to position your product, pricing, and advertising strategy to be the most competitive.

Building a product line is a long term strategy that takes patience, as you build trust and traction with customers.

As things progress, you will likely want to add additional products tailored to what your customers are looking for. You can use social media to survey your customers to find out what they want to see from your brand! 

All that being said, we are SO stoked to see your hair care brand come to life! Please tag us on social media with #makesy so we can celebrate with you!