Started With Just Over $100, Plantmade’s Hair Growth Products Are Now Generating Millions

After being laid off from her recruitment job in February 2020, Ama Amo-Agyei, who suffered from alopecia and who’s family members have experienced hair loss, had time to experiment with hair growth recipes. Informed by her Ghanian roots, she mixed ingredients from Africa with ingredients from South America and South Asia, including castor oil, pumpkin seed oil, rosemary oil, amla, henna, fenugreek and brahmi, and slathered them on in the hopes they’d produce results.

“Within a few days—I think it was about 10, 20 days—I’d already seen results,” says Amo-Agyei. “And I was like, this is insane. I’ve never seen this much repair so fast. I was used to using SheaMoisture, Cantu and all these legacy heritage brands, and they just weren’t made to fix the real issues that a lot of Black women or just anybody are dealing with. Once it worked for me, I decided to pass it over to my family, and it worked for them.”

The winning hair growth recipe became the basis for Planted, the original name of Amo-Agyei’s current brand Plantmade. Amo-Agyei spent only 100 pounds or roughly $123 to start it. However, quickly after the brand hit the market, a dissolved company sent Amo-Agyei a cease-and-desist letter demanding she stop calling her brand Planted. She pulled back and spent several months in 2021 rebranding the business as Plantmade.

Talking about the ordeal with Mailchimp’s publication Courier, Amo-Agyei says, “Ultimately, it was a saving grace. I discovered that there were quite a few brands with the same name in different areas such as supplements, a space that I’m passionate about and would like to grow into one day. So, we were given a second chance to get it right. Now we’ve completely protected ourselves in the U.S., the U.K. and the whole of Europe.”

Sales-wise, the rebranding was only a minor speed bump. At the moment, London-based Plantmade is generating 300,000 to 400,000 pounds or roughly $373,000 to $497,000 a month—and scaling up to increase that amount. In its first year, the brand crossed 1 million pounds or roughly $1.2 million.

“It just is a testament to the fact that people were starving for this. They couldn’t get these things and, seeing the transformations of others, they jumped on,” says Amo-Agyei. “Also, we have a very tight-knit Plantmade community. The customers who ride for us, they ride for us heavy, and we ride for them as well.”

Plantmade’s hero product is hair and beard oil Inches. It’s priced at $78 for a twin-pack with two 3.5-oz. bottles. Sets are extremely popular. Priced at $99, the bestselling set Origin features a 3.5-oz. size of Inches, a 3.5-oz. size of hydrating mist Drizzle and a 6.1-oz. size of hair and beard soufflé Soil. Plantmade advises customers that they will notice results in four to six weeks with consistent application. The brand offers a money-back guarantee. If customers don’t detect results in more than 90 days, it refunds them.

Amo-Agyei, formulator of Plantmade’s products, says the brand’s concentrated formulas are distinct from the diluted formulas that constitute the majority of what’s available. “Let’s say for shampoos, a lot of shampoos are like 85%, 90% water. So, that is the maximum you’re going to get from the product,” she explains. “You’re not actually utilizing a lot of the ingredients because they’re quite diluted and, similar to oils, there’d be sometimes random things that don’t need to be in there that are in there just to make it kind of mass production a little bit cheaper. So, I decided to focus on quality and also interesting different ingredients.”

“People were starving for this. They couldn’t get these things and, seeing the transformations of others, they jumped on.”

Amo-Agyei is adamant that all haircare products are for all people, and consumers should choose them based on their needs, not their race. “Race is not necessarily a reason to have certain products. It’s more on the hair itself,” says Amo-Agyei. “What kind of hair do you have? Is it course? Is it thick? Is it fine? Those are the things to look for when you are developing products.”

To guide product development, Amo-Agyei delves into research on ingredient efficacy and consumer feedback. She says, “Even though we have a very small product line, we make sure there are key ingredients that tackle many things at once.”

Plantmade’s assortment contains about 10 products. Further products are definitely in store. “I’m just ready to take this brand to the next level,” says Amo-Agyei. “Plantmade is called Plantmade for a reason. We want to make Plantmade effective wellness products. So, we want to get into other categories like skin supplements, sleep maybe and just optimizing your entire wellness through the products that we make.”

The brand’s handmade, natural and vegan products are priced at a premium. They’re priced that way to cover staff and ingredients. Of late, ingredient costs have risen 10% to 15%, according to Amo-Agyei. Plantmade has tried to offset ingredient cost increases by ordering in greater quantities.

Being at the helm of a growing brand isn’t always easy, acknowledges Amo-Agyei. While she had a background in promoting other people’s businesses, leading operations, customer service, sourcing, procurement and more has been a lot to learn and handle. Amo-Agyei says, “I was able to do it because I just loved the mission of the brand, which was just helping people transform. Now, the challenge is visibility. We’ve made our entire brand centered around the customer and made sure that their results are our first priority.”

Plantmade has had some success in the visibility arena. BBC documentary “The Beauty Boss” chronicled Amo-Agyei’s journey from unemployment to Plantmade’s first million. She says celebrities the likes of Nella Rose, Viola Davis, Tamar Braxton and Marlon Wayans have reached out to her about Plantmade and its advertising.

Plantmade isn’t seeking outside investment, but could in the near future, particularly as the direct-to-consumer brand heads to retail. “Maybe within a year or two,” says Amo-Agyei. “We sell our products and make our products ourselves. We know that we need to build more of a robust production facility to ensure that we can not only make products for ourselves, [but] also for other retailers as well.” Sephora and Selfridges are dream retailers for Plantmade.

In the next few years, Amo-Agyei forecasts the brand becoming a global powerhouse. She says, “We just really want to expand and improve our distribution, maybe centered around key areas in the U.S. and Europe. That might be production facilities or that might also be distribution warehouses that can help ship the products faster and easier for customers.”