The hair-care sector has seen countless launches in recent years, with celebrity-backed brands like Beyoncé’s Cécred and Blake Lively’s Blake Brown joining the market and the likes of Shark Beauty and Dyson battling to be the internet’s favorite hair dryer. But by comparison, the wig industry has remained relatively stagnant.
For entrepreneur Aasiyah Abdulsalam, that white space spelled opportunity. On Wednesday, Abdulsalam launched the debut collection for her wig startup The Renatural, which uses robotics to manufacture human-hair wigs in as little as 45 minutes.
“I don’t think anyone is truly living in the wig experience and being like, ‘How can I make my day to day better?’ And that’s where we come in,” she said. “I want it to feel like a beauty brand, like a wig beauty brand. … There’s a lot of anxiety around [wigs], and I just want our company to feel like a breath of fresh air in the industry.”
The company launches with three styles that will be available DTC, with prices ranging from $950-$1,950 per wig. Each wig uses 100% human hair, which is attached to a proprietary polymer hybrid material instead of the traditional lace front that has been the standard in wigs. According to Abdulsalam, the polymer material is three times thinner than a typical lace front and will offer a more realistic look and hairline. She sees the brand’s audience as anyone from casual wig wearers to drag queens.
“You have to bleach the lace, you have to pluck the lace, you have to tint the lace. Lace comes in very reserved skin tones, so you have to adapt it to your skin tone,” she said. “When you do all of that and then pluck the hairline to make it look more realistic, it still doesn’t have that hyper-realistic effect.”
In contrast to lace-front wigs that require hundreds of hours of stitching, Abdulsalam said The Renatural’s manufacturing process, done in Brooklyn, speeds up a process that has historically used cheap manual labor.
“[The wig industry] has relied on wherever it can find cheaper labor to do that monotonous, repetitive and, in my opinion, quite highly skilled work,” said Abdulsalam. “The monopolies and oligopolies in this industry have access to lots and lots of cheap labor, who have been doing this for years on end, and that’s the way they’ve grown. And they kind of beat out any other innovation.”
According to 2024 data from Market Research Intellect, the global human hair wigs and extensions market is anticipated to reach $9.3 billion by 2031, at a compound annual growth rate of 6.2%. McKinsey’s 2025 report on the beauty industry, meanwhile, predicts the sector as a whole will grow at a rate of 5% from 2025 to 2030. But, other than a few breakthroughs like 3D-printed hair and wig-adjacent accessories, the wig industry has seen few major launches.
“It’s currently one of the fastest growing categories of beauty, but it’s really overlooked,” said Abdulsalam. “Wigs really do expand to every facet [of beauty]. I say that it’s the epitome of beauty. You have instant results, and then you have endless options.”
Born in London and raised in rural Ireland, Abdulsalam grew up with little access to textured hair-care products. She began using wigs when she developed hair loss due to scalp psoriasis at the age of 12.
The Renatural is not Abdulsalam’s first time launching a brand. She started The Renatural in part with funds she acquired through the sale of her clothing company Alerojasmine in 2019. In 2020, she launched The Wig Fix, a patented wig grip designed to promote hair growth. For The Renatural, she raised $2 million in funding in 2024 and closed an additional seed round of $4.2 million in August. In advance of The Renatural’s launch, the website has accrued 40,000 sign-ups to its waitlist. The Renatural’s Instagram account has more than 60,000 followers ahead of the debut wig collection launch, with posts encouraging followers to sign up to the waitlist for updates on the brand.
The Renatural is backed by other industry veterans, as well. In addition to funding from Watchfire Ventures, Mark Cuban and Ingeborg Investments, the company has received backing from Topicals co-founder Olamide Olowe, as well as Pharrell Williams and Felecia Hatcher’s Black Ambition Opportunity Fund. Abdulsalam was also part of the Glossier Grant Program’s class of 2024.
“What we look for and what we get excited about is true product innovation,” said Mira Kaufman, investment associate at Ingeborg Investments, which focuses on women-founded companies. “It’s one thing to say that you want to improve the end consumer experience through how you engage with the customer, through your marketing and brand affinity. But, to do the really, really hard thing of creating precision robotics that never existed before, to actually reinvent how a product is created, is pretty remarkable.”
While wigs don’t offer the same replenishment cycle that is core to the success of many hair-care lines, Kaufman believes there is room to create long-term loyalty with a superior customer experience.
“People who wear wigs buy a lot more than one wig throughout their lifetime, and they don’t really have a go-to brand or loyalty to a specific brand, because the experience has been so frustrating historically,” said Kaufman, referencing the lack of customer service that comes with lace-front wigs that typically need additional fitting and adjustments. “You will consistently look for potentially new styles and new ways to express yourself through your hair. It’s similar to the way you could buy one pair of glasses and one frame and replace the lenses, or you may want to get new frames altogether.”
Looking ahead to 2026, Abdulsalam said she has plans to launch an insurance program for customers and to host a brand awareness event to build The Renatural’s profile. While Abdulsalam does not have plans to expand to hair-care products like shampoo or styling creams, she sees ample room for partnerships with outside brands, given the amount of hair-care products that regular wig wearers may accumulate.
“We have a customer who has, on average, four to six heads of hair to care for,” said Abdulsalam, referring to their wig collections. “We won’t be entering the wet category, but I see a lot of brand partnership activations coming soon.”
As it stands, The Renatural’s current machinery can produce 500 wigs per month. Abdulsalam said she plans to invest in more machinery to increase its production capacity as the brand grows. And, even if just a small percentage of those 40,000 waitlist members purchase a wig, she hopes to convert those early adopters into the brand’s first ambassadors.
“I just want to focus on — even if it’s 200, 300 people — them having an incredible experience, because word of mouth is everything in this industry,” she said. “Those 200 people all have 10 friends each that they will tell. So as long as everyone is having an incredible experience, that is our core goal.”
