How A PCOS Diagnosis Led Cherice Williams To Build Multimillion-Dollar Haircare Brand Blaq Luxury

When Blaq Luxury founder Cherice Williams immigrated to the United States from Jamaica in 2016, she dreamt of completing an accounting degree and getting a job in the financial sector. Two years later, she discovered she had polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a diagnosis that sent her on an entirely different track.

Williams’ PCOS affected her hair quality—she experienced breakage, thinning and shedding—but, working as a waitress and housekeeper at the time, she couldn’t afford medicine prescribed to address hair loss. So, she decided to concoct her own solution. She says, “It was my personal cure for myself.”

Williams is one of a growing number of brand founders addressing challenges that arise with PCOS. The condition is associated with high levels of the hormone androgen and symptoms can include atypical hair growth and acne. PCOS is considered incurable and doctors often recommend birth control for managing symptoms, although not everyone wants to rely on birth control as a remedy.

Blaq Luxury launched in 2019 with a single product, bestseller Mega Gro Repair And Strengthen Hair Serum. The brand has sold over 400,000 bottles to date. The serum was popular with a natural hair support group Williams was a part of and the members requested shampoos and conditioners as well. She says, “The moment they start asking you for those recommendations, that’s the a cue that you need to come up with these products.”

Today, Blaq Luxury’s assortment contains nine haircare products. Among its products are Sage & Lychee Repair, Strengthen Edge Glaze, Sage & Lychee Repair and Strengthen Hair Masque. Each product retails for under $10. Blaq Luxury also has $19.99 Healthy Hair vitamin gummies in its product mix, and accessories like a scalp massager and detangling brush round out the collection. Blaq Luxury’s consumers are primarily African American women between the ages of 18 and 40 years old.

On Friday, Blaq Luxury is releasing a Papaya Paradise collection made specifically for people with type 4 hair. The collection features Curl Milk, Curling Custard, Moisture Rich Conditioner and Butter Creme Twister formulated with ingredients such as papaya seed oil and murumuru butter, which are nods to Williams’ island roots.

“There aren’t many options for haircare products designed specifically for coily and kinky hair types, especially within the mass retailer space like Target and Walmart,” she says. “And after seeing this gap, I felt inspired to create this collection as my goal was to offer a selection of healthy and affordable products that cater to our community.”

Blaq Luxury reports it’s generated $10 million in sales and registered 80% year-over-year growth. Williams has leveraged marketing centered on user-generated content to spread the word about the brand. Nano-influencers perform better for Blaq Luxury than influencers with larger followings.

“When you appear with the bigger influencers, the return is not really great because [the audience] can already tell that this is a paid advertisement,” says Williams. “They want to see people that look like themselves talk about the product and give their honest review and testimonial.”

Beauty supply stores are Blaq Luxury’s biggest distribution channel. The brand is in over 4,000 stores domestically and internationally. Williams believes partnering with smaller stores is a beneficial stepping stone for Blaq Luxury’s ambitions to be in larger retailers. She says, “It’s always good to start low, so if you should head into those spaces, you already know what to expect.”

Blaq Luxury will be premiering on Target and Walmart’s websites in the coming weeks, but Williams is glad the brand kicked off in smaller distribution, where it could figure out problems without them being catastrophic. When it initially entered distribution, its shampoos and conditioners both had the same barcode by mistake. Over 3,000 units were returned, and Williams had to manually fix the issue. She reflects, “If it was a Walmart, we’re looking at over 40,000 units, so I’m glad that we decided to start small and then work our way up.”

Blaq Luxury is available on Amazon, too.“There’s a market there where you don’t really have to try to source the customers, they will find you on Amazon. So, that was a great platform for us to really step into,” says Williams. “We’ve have been on it for almost a year, and the brand has been performing really well.”

To help support its growth, Williams plans to add employees to Blaq Luxury’s 14-person team. She says, “We want to create more job opportunities, ensure accessibility for members of our community and to be a motivation as well for the next brown girl like myself to show that she can do it, too.”