Product virality translates to sales. That was proven yet again by 12-year-old texture hair-care brand The Doux, founded by licensed cosmetologist Maya Smith. On TikTok, there are over 17.8 million posts related to the brand’s hero product, Mousse Def. According to the band, it’s sold over 2 million bottles of the product, to date.
Smith said support from the textured hair community has been the brand’s biggest growth driver. The Doux is currently one of the top five fastest-growing Black-owned hair-care brands, according to the company.
Smith declined to share The Doux’s revenue but said that, since launching in mass retail in 2017, it has become an eight-figure brand, which she owed to its accessibility and efficacy. Its products range in price from $9.99-$24.99. Since 2017, the independently owned brand has seen 20% annual sales growth.
The Doux first launched in’s first retail partner was Target, and the following year, it entered Walmart and Sally Beauty. In 2020, it launched on Amazon. “We are chain-wide at Sally, and some of our SKUs are chain-wide at Target or Walmart. We dig deeper instead of wider,” Smith said.
Smith said mass retailers are The Doux’s largest sales channel, accounting for 60%-70% of sales. However, the brand is exploring a prestige retail partner and is focused on strengthening its e-commerce business this year.
“We want [our sales] to balance out. So we’ve been growing our e-commerce sales by offering hair tools, [exclusive merchandise] and swag that you can only get in that channel,” Smith said. “A lot of businesses in our category start in OTC, which is beauty supply and mass retail, and then as they grow, they find that the consumer wants a more personalized experience.”
Offering exclusive products on Amazon and the brand’s e-commerce site is a current priority. To do so, Smith is building out an e-commerce department that will manage the brand’s product assortment, intellectual property and other e-commerce responsibilities. Currently, The Doux is a team of six.
Textured hair care is an increasingly competitive and growing category. According to AI hair personalization brand Carra, the textured hair market is worth an estimated $10 billion and is growing at a compound annual rate of 5%. Around 65% of the U.S. population identifies as having curly, coily or wavy hair. This year, both Beyoncé and Rihanna launched textured hair-care lines. Meanwhile, Tracee Ellis Ross-backed textured hair-care brand Pattern Beauty turned 5 years old, and buzzy clean, textured hair brands Briogeo and Mielle celebrated their 10th anniversaries.
Much like the competitors in its category, The Doux has capitalized on its community, but Smith said what sets her brand apart is her experience as a cosmetologist, which has afforded her the ability to identify glaring gaps in the market.
“The industry is changing, and our consumer is getting younger. She’s looking for healthy hair care, but also a different set of solutions, like thermal styling and bond treatments,” Smith said.
To satisfy the demand, at the top of the year, The Doux released Press Play, a seven-product line of thermal styling products for textured hair. All items are priced at $16.99 and available at Target and The Doux’s website.
Moving forward, Smith will be investing in the stylist community, which she sees as another major growth opportunity for The Doux. Last year at Cosmoprof, The Doux rolled out an option to make wholesale purchasing more affordable to professional consumers. Building on that momentum, Smith plans to get back to her roots as a stylist by offering Instagram Lives and prerecorded videos featuring hair tutorials. The Doux will also partner with popular stylists in the professional community on campaigns and social content.
“Stylists brought me here. They helped popularize [our Mousse Def foam]. Eighty percent of the exposure we got came from stylists — they showed up in Target in the first year, buying six or seven Mousse Defs at a time. I reconnect with the people who have cheered me on [from the beginning],” she said.
