The Glossy 50 honors the year’s biggest changemakers across fashion and beauty. More from the series →
Carolyn Aronson, the self-made billionaire behind It’s a 10 Haircare, has had a busy year growing her empire.
First up, she launched Cloud Haircare, a line of vegan, clean, Gen-Z-coded products priced under $10 at CVS and Walmart. “The price is right, but the quality is amazing,” Aronson said. A range extension, plus scratch-and-sniff stickers for in-store scent testing, will roll out next year.
Then there was an It’s a 10 Haircare range extension with Clear, a line of totally-transparent care and styling products free from dyes, silicones and more ingredients consumers have grown weary of. It took Aronson’s team three years to create the line, which is the first clear leave-in on the market, she told Glossy.
Aronson also made her first acquisition this year. “I’ve been approached by many, many different brands over the years [wanting] me to purchase them, but I never really found that diamond in the rough that I couldn’t make myself,” she said. She broke the streak with the purchase, and relaunch, of F.A.S.T Haircare, a niche line of clinically-proven products first launched in the ‘90s and backed by fortified amino scalp therapy. “They are clinically-proven to grow hair 99% faster,” she said. “We’re the first in our category to be able to make that claim.”
But this was also a big year for Aronson personally. On the eve of It’s a 10’s 20th anniversary, she’s trying to embrace the spotlight. “I have been really out there this year,” she said. “I spend a lot of time doing interviews and connecting with the industry on many different levels, including by traveling to pretty much all the major beauty shows.”
She also hosted a college campus tour, bringing brand activations and giveaways to 10 universities, and is currently writing her first book, to be released next year. She describes it as a unique format that’s part autobiography, part business advice, part life advice. Aronson was placed in foster care as a child and began working in salons as a teenager. Today, she’s a titan of the hair-care industry and a self-made billionaire.
It’s a 10 currently brings in around $500 million in gross annual sales and is distributed in more than 125 countries.
“I hope people can learn from my journey, find it interesting and maybe take some tidbits away to apply to their lives,” she said. “One thing I know is that you should never, never say ‘never.’ … In life, you may end up doing things you never expected in places you never dreamed of.”
Listen to a full interview with Carolyn Aronson on The Glossy Beauty Podcast.
