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I would first like to start by talking about your journey as a beautician and why you decided to create your own brand.
I became a licensed esthetician in 2010, that was over ten years ago. When I saw customers, I basically couldn’t find the products I needed because I had multiple customers with different needs. I was in LA, Hollywood at the time, and I felt like I was starting to see a segment of women (and men too, but mostly women) coming out of those teenage years, approaching their twenties and thirties, where they couldn’t use the same skincare. They couldn’t use Neutrogena anymore, they couldn’t use Clean & Clear anymore, but they still struggled with hormonal imbalances and acne. They also wanted to make their way into [using] a bit of anti-aging [products]. They were like, “I don’t want to use benzoyl peroxide, but I want to jump into retinol.
So when I decided to create Klur as a brand a few years ago [doing] treatments. I realized that there really wasn’t anything fancy enough that looked like an adult skincare brand. It had to meet the clinical needs of what you could get from a beautician or dermatologist with high performance ingredients and contain the soothing botanicals of a natural skincare product. In 2013, I really realized that after seeing clients for a few years, there were no black beauticians with a skincare line in the market at all – not one. I just took a step back and said, “With all the knowledge I have, the education I have, and my real-life experience with people, I think I can do this. I think I should at least try to put a line, even though it’s only sold in my spa, I can just sell it to my customers.
That’s how it started; in fact, he just started focusing primarily on selling to my clients. Eventually, I was called by Urban Outfitters in 2014, and it landed us on the shelves. Very quickly, we got out of it very well. It was my first foray into retail. I had no idea there had ever been a black professional skincare range on the market. I never knew there wasn’t a black beautician who ever had a product on the shelf, on a big retail shelf. I had no idea – I was just going. At that point I decided to close my spa and stop juggling all those things and just focus on building a brand. Two years later, after a really good run and having been to 200 stores, I voluntarily retired from Urban Outfitters to take care of my own health because I felt like I was compromising it by running a skincare studio of the face and trying to build the line. So I took two years to rename and relaunch the line.
According to you, what is the basic philosophy of Klur and what is the mission of your brand?
As founder, I believe my personal mission is the same as that of the brand, to inspire, educate and guide people to make healthy decisions. Not just skincare decisions, but healthy decisions, living holistically and showing them that using skincare as a catalyst to inspire and cultivate a healthy lifestyle using holistic tools .
It’s so great to see so many women of color creating their own brands now, especially those that champion holistic practices and ingredients! Would you say treating melanin-rich skin is different from treating lighter skin?
People of color have different skin tones, which is fantastic because, clinically speaking, there is a difference in melanocyte activity. Some people have very robust melanocytes, which means they are much darker, and some people have melanocytes that aren’t as active. This is one of the reasons we get hyperpigmentation is because the melanocytes rush to that area and then they darken. They act as a sort of healing mechanism for the skin, and it ends up healing darker in an area. When we look at dark skin versus lighter skin tones, I think one of the main things is (besides all the science stuff) there’s a certain thickness to the skin. I think people don’t realize that with darker skin you have to treat it quite gently.
Having that experience of working with darker skinned women and being a black woman of course I realized that for the most part skincare brands catered to lighter skin or white skin before to address darker skin tones. We flipped the scale and made sure to put dark skin at the forefront of science, and realized that light skin can take a gentle approach too. There isn’t a single person with skin that can use a tough skincare routine. You don’t have to be sensitized or sensitive to have a gentle routine. It’s actually really, really important that we all practice this sweet consistency. I think with dark skin, people have somehow believed that you can take this aggressive approach, and you really can’t, because the skin becomes hyperpigmented. When you understand this, however, it is truly beneficial for all skin types.
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