December 23, 2020

Meet the Inspiring Founders of Young King Hair Care

In our entrepreneurship journey, we have had the opportunity to meet with many other awesome founders. We want to use our platform to shine a light on the great work that these founders are doing. We first met the founders and power couple of Young King Hair Care Stefan & Cora through the Target accelerator program. Young King is a hair care line for multicultural boys (a category often neglected) that's really for anyone with textured hair and kinky curls. Here's the full interview on Stefan & Cora's journey!

When, how, and why did you start Young Kings?

We started Young King Hair Care because we were inspired by our son Kade who was born with a head full of hair. As a new mom, I was searching for hair products to help me style his hair, but I quickly realized after doing some research and talking to other boy parents that we are all in the same position – we couldn’t find tailored hair products for our black and brown boys. So to fill a void in the natural hair care market, my husband and I launched Young King Hair Care at the end of 2019. Each of our products was created with boys in mind – from the ingredients to the scent and overall packaging design – with the goal of redefining male grooming and self-care for the next generation. Our mission is to inspire parents and encourage boys with textured hair to celebrate and love their crowns.

We’re by no means hair experts, but just from working in personal care, we learned that black hair morphology is pretty unique. What is the one thing you want people to know about multi-cultural boys hair care?

It’s funny you ask this because a question we’ve received on multiple occasions is “Well, what’s the difference between boy and girl textured hair?” And the answer is quite simple – there is NO difference between boys textured hair vs. girls textured hair. Kinky curly hair strands are unique to African-Americans regardless of gender, which is why our plant-based and vegan hair styling products work for both boys and girls. However, our mission to support and celebrate the natural hair journey of young boys because we firmly believe that representation matters – boys deserve to have products that cater to them just as much as girls and women do.

Walk us through it, what is the proper routine for them.

Our current products offerings include three hair styling products: a leave-in conditioner, an essential oils blend, and a curling cream, all of which help to moisturize, strengthen, and enhance natural curls. For any moms that want to start educating their sons on what it means to take care of their hair, we recommend you utilize our Royal Treatment, which includes all three products, to establish a simple, easy-to-follow daily hair care regimen. This regimen adheres to the L.O.C. method or the Liquid Oil Cream Method, which is a proven technique of layering products to moisturize textured hair. As the first step of our daily moisturizing hairstyling routine, you apply a generous amount of our leave-in conditioner working through the hair from the scalp and throughout the hair too, followed by the oil to provide nourishment and shine. The final step is applying the curling cream to really help define those curls, and that’s it! A simple three-step regime to help support healthy hair growth!

We’re not moms…yet...How the hell do you get a young boy to sit still and take care of their hair? (Pro tips?)

It’s definitely an art, ha! But it’s all about making hair care maintenance a part of your young son’s daily routine. Similar to how as a parent you help them wash their face and brush their teeth each morning, the same goes for showing them what it means to take care of and style their hair. Once you establish these daily habits, then it comes just a normal part of their day, which is the case for our son. He’s so used to getting his hair done every day that he proactively hands me his Young King Hair Care products and wants to help put them on himself. He even ends up saying, “My curls are poppin’!” Also, it really doesn’t take a lot of time to apply the products. Application of the leave-in conditioner, the oil and curling cream shouldn’t take a mom longer than 10 minutes, so she can quickly get through that before her little one becomes too squirmy.

Let’s talk about you and Stefan for a hot sec. How do you guys do it?! #marriagegoals

Jesus and wine, lol. But seriously – the crazy thing is, we actually work really well together! Stefan is definitely the big picture, strategic visionary whereas I am the more tactical, detail-oriented planner, so we truly balance each other out. Also, because we recognize each other’s strengthens and challenge areas, we’re able to thoughtfully determine who is responsible for which aspects of the business. Plus, we’ve both learned to become super flexible and can jump in as needed if one of us is feeling overwhelmed or super busy, to take over tasks that just need to get done. Between still balancing our full-time jobs, working to grow Young King Hair Care and being parents to our son, we’ve learned how to wear multiple hats and just be honest with one another on how we’re feeling, which is key to any successful partnership, albeit business partnerships, marriage or otherwise.

What is Young King’s best product? What are the star ingredients?

Our best seller is our Royal Treatment set, which includes all three of our current products. All three products were crafted with natural ingredients and are plant-based and vegan, with no sulfates, parabens, mineral oil. Our manufacturing partner sources our plant-based and vegan ingredients from across the globe, including shea butter, coconut oil, and almond oil. One of our star ingredients that we utilize in both our curling cream and leave-in conditioner is grapeseed oil, which is a natural oil to help nourish the scalp and helps promotes hair growth. Plus, it’s super lightweight, so it moisturizes and conditions without weighing the hair down. Grapeseed oil is not commonly utilized in kids' hair products, so I was excited that our formulations included this incredible ingredient!

I know it’s meant for kids but can it be for everyone? - Families that hair together, stay together right? :)

Absolutely! Although our products were made with boys in mind, anyone with curly kinky hair can use them. I use them on my hair and my husband even uses the oil on his beard – given his baldness, that’s the only way he can use the products. 😊

Where can we find your products?

You can currently find our products online at youngkinghaircare.com, but we are working on coming to a store near you, so stay tuned!

What’s next for you guys?

Right now we are focused on developing two new products to be released this fall (yay!), preparing to scale our business for a national retail launch at the top of the year (yay again!), and expanding our team to help support our growth (yay, yay, and yay!). We’re so excited and grateful for the opportunity to be able to support even more boys across the country and globe in the coming months!

Anything else you want to share with us?

We truly believe Young King Hair Care can be used as a platform to showcase more of what the world needs – shining a positive light on our boys. We simply want to share our story and hope that people will support what we’re trying to do in supporting male grooming and self-care for young back and brown boys. Having platforms like yours that can showcase stories such as ours is essential for helping small, black-owned businesses get in front of parents, families and general consumers from across the globe, so thank you for featuring us. We’re incredibly grateful to have your support! #youngkinghaircare

That's it for now! Check out Young King Hair Care online and on instagram.