
Carol's Daughter on Life After L'Oréal
The beauty line she founded in 1993 offered body butters, fragrances and hair products, made from her Brooklyn kitchen long before Sol de Janeiro kicked off the body care craze or Mielle went viral for its hair oils. The brand also aimed at servicing the widely overlooked Black consumer. Nearly two decades later, when beauty giant L'Oréal acquired the business, it marked another watershed moment — proof that textured hair care had evolved into a market large enough to be supported by beauty's biggest conglomerate.
This year, Price is charting a new path. In March, L'Oréal announced the sale of Carol's Daughter to entrepreneur Joe Wong for an undisclosed sum. Wong will work closely with Price, who holds an equity stake in the line and will serve as president. The brand now faces the challenge of reclaiming relevance in a market that's grown more saturated, with entrants from celebrities like Beyoncé and Tracee Ellis Ross, and fast-thinking indie brands like Sienna Naturals and Adwoa Beauty. It is also doing so with fewer resources.
This does not faze Price, who hopes that being 'a bit more nimble' will position the brand as a leader in the textured hair care space once again.
'I didn't even really have [going independent] on my bingo card. But [L'Oréal] was very amenable to coming up with a different working situation if it meant that the brand would, in the end, be better off,' said Price.
The move could signal a shift for the textured hair segment, which is projected to generate $1.9 billion in consumer spending this year, according to Mintel. Most brands in the space remain independent, and L'Oréal's divestment amid rising anti-diversity sentiments could signal trouble ahead, especially as Black founders remain under-funded and over-mentored. Experts closely watching the segment view the sale as the beginning of a new lifecycle for textured hair brands — one in which returning to independent ownership may offer greater agility and cultural relevance than traditional corporate backing has allowed.
'We shouldn't be thinking about this moment as L'Oréal selling, but from the perspective of Lisa buying,' said Courtney Rominiyi, multicultural consumer insights analyst at Mintel.
As Carol's Daughter enters its next chapter, the brand is positioning itself to respond to consumers' evolving demands through high-impact product launches and expansion into new categories.
Price understands that large conglomerates have protocols that need to be followed to ensure brands are operating efficiently, but 'it makes it a bit more challenging for a smaller company within that machine to be what it has traditionally been for its consumer,' she said. 'I have never really been a fan of the corporate structure of things.' A New Era
Carol's Daughter has historically benefitted from community support.
Early backers included flashy fans of the brand like musician Jay-Z and actors Will and Jada Pinkett Smith. The brand counted Target, Sephora and Ulta Beauty as stockists, and at its peak operated seven standalone stores. In the early 2010s, however, the brand began to struggle — sales were declining and Carol's Daughter Stores LLC, the holding company that operated its stores, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, shuttering its retail locations in the process.
Reprieve for the company came in 2014 when L'Oréal acquired it — a move that signalled to investors and conglomerates that Black-founded beauty brands possessed both cultural relevance and commercial potential. Price, in a widely circulated Facebook video said the deal would 'take what I built and solidify its place in history and beauty.' The news was met with fervent backlash from the brand's shoppers who accused Price of selling out. Under L'Oréal's umbrella, the brand struggled to generate the same buzz with its launches and lost out to social media-savvy upstarts.
Today, the brand faces stiff competition on shelves, from conglomerate-owned labels like Mielle Organics, private-equity-backed lines like Ceremonia and celebrity brands like Tracee Ellis Ross' Pattern Beauty or Beyoncé's Cécred. Legacy players including Tresemmé and Garnier have also recently expanded into the category, and benefit from vast existing distribution.
The brand aims to leverage its authority in this segment to connect with a new generation of consumers, particularly Gen-Z. Rather than mimic what's already on the market, Carol's Daughter is focused on product innovation that addresses untapped white space and hopes to position itself ahead of trends rather than play catch-up, said Price.
For Price, parting with L'Oréal was bittersweet. The partnership expanded the brand's global reach and gave Price insight into international logistics and the science behind producing efficacious products — 'another level of business,' she described, having once relied on producing products based on her home remedies.
But it was ultimately the bureaucracy of working within a large corporation — slower product launch timelines, a reduced ability to quickly respond to consumer needs and a strict focus on margins and profitability — that didn't align with her approach to brand-building.
'When you're smaller and independent, you have the opportunity to fail fast,' said Price. 'You try something out. If it doesn't work, you can change course.'
She's found a fitting partner in Joe Wong, a finance industry veteran who now owns a portfolio of former L'Oréal brands, including grooming label Baxter of California and complexion collection Dermablend. Like Price, Wong is committed to ensuring the 'health of the business and its relationship with consumers and not so much the doubling and tripling numbers,' Price added.
She's also taking the brand back to its roots by reintroducing body care and fragrance — categories that were core to the brand's early identity.
'It's in our DNA,' said Price. Bringing categories back is easier when operations are scaled down, she added: 'We just have to do it in a smart way and gauge if there is genuine consumer interest.' The Bigger Picture
The sale of Carol's Daughter could signal a new chapter for Black beauty brands — one not solely defined by a successful exit to a major conglomerate.
The brand has a unique opportunity to both chart a new post-acquisition path and potentially win back consumers it may have lost after the L'Oréal deal, said analyst Rominiyi. She noted that consumers often feel let down when brands are sold, especially if product formulations or community-driven marketing shift, creating the perception that the brand has 'sold out.'
This was top of mind for Bread founder Maeva Heim when her company sought acquisition. Earlier this month, Bread announced it had been acquired by Cost of Doing Business, a holding company founded by Olamide Olowe and Sochi Mbadugha, founders of the skincare brand Topicals. Heim told Essence that selling to a Black-owned and operated company was critical for preserving her brand's legacy and maintaining consumer trust.
These moves may be especially strategic for Black-owned brands in today's political climate, where initiatives aimed at supporting underrepresented founders face mounting backlash.
'Historically, we don't have a lot of history with founding brands, getting funding for brands, having our brands be acquired by large conglomerates,' said Price. 'As more Black and brown people become business owners, we're going to see different things happen.'
Sign up to The Business of Beauty newsletter, your must-read source for the day's most important beauty and wellness news and analysis.

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Chicago Tribune
18 minutes ago
- Chicago Tribune
From tech podcasts to policy: President Donald Trump's new AI plan leans heavily on Silicon Valley industry ideas
An artificial intelligence agenda that started coalescing on the podcasts of Silicon Valley billionaires is now being forged into U.S. policy as President Donald Trump leans on the ideas of the tech figures who backed his election campaign. Trump on Wednesday is planning to reveal an 'AI Action Plan' he ordered after returning to the White House in January. He gave his tech advisers six months to come up with new AI policies after revoking President Joe Biden's signature AI guardrails on his first day in office. The unveiling is co-hosted by the bipartisan Hill and Valley Forum and the All-In Podcast, a business and technology show hosted by four tech investors and entrepreneurs who include Trump's AI czar, David Sacks. The plan and related executive orders are expected to include some familiar tech lobby pitches. That includes accelerating the sale of AI technology abroad and making it easier to construct the energy-hungry data center buildings that are needed to form and run AI products, according to a person briefed on Wednesday's event who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. It might also include some of the AI culture war preoccupations of the circle of venture capitalists who endorsed Trump last year. Countering the liberal bias they see in AI chatbots such as ChatGPT or Google's Gemini has long been a rallying point for the tech industry's loudest Trump backers. Sacks, a former PayPal executive and now Trump's top AI adviser, has been criticizing 'woke AI' for more than a year, fueled by Google's February 2024 rollout of an AI image generator that, when asked to show an American Founding Father, created pictures of Black, Asian and Native American men. 'The AI's incapable of giving you accurate answers because it's been so programmed with diversity and inclusion,' Sacks said at the time. Google quickly fixed its tool, but the 'Black George Washington' moment remained a parable for the problem of AI's perceived political bias, taken up by X owner Elon Musk, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, Vice President JD Vance and Republican lawmakers. The administration's latest push against 'woke AI' comes a week after the Pentagon announced new $200 million contracts with four leading AI companies, including Google, to address 'critical national security challenges.' Also receiving one of the contracts was Musk's xAI, which has been pitched as an alternative to 'woke AI' companies. The company has faced its own challenges: Earlier this month, xAI had to scramble to remove posts made by its Grok chatbot that made antisemitic comments and praised Adolf Hitler. Trump has paired AI's need for huge amounts of electricity with his own push to tap into U.S. energy sources, including gas, coal and nuclear. 'Everything we aspire to and hope for means the demand and supply of energy in America has to go up,' said Michael Kratsios, the director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy, in a video posted Tuesday. Many tech giants are already well on their way toward building new data centers in the U.S. and around the world. OpenAI announced this week that it has switched on the first phase of a massive data center complex in Abilene, Texas, part of an Oracle-backed project known as Stargate that Trump promoted earlier this year. Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and xAI also have major projects underway. The tech industry has pushed for easier permitting rules to get their computing facilities connected to power, but the AI building boom has also contributed to spiking demand for fossil fuel production that will contribute to global warming. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday called on the world's major tech firms to power data centers completely with renewables by 2030. 'A typical AI data center eats up as much electricity as 100,000 homes,' Guterres said. 'By 2030, data centers could consume as much electricity as all of Japan does today.' It's long been White House policy under Republican and Democratic administrations to curtail certain technology exports to China and other adversaries on national security grounds. But much of the tech industry argued that Biden went too far at the end of his term in trying to restrict the exports of specialized AI computer chips to more than 100 other countries, including close allies. Part of the Biden administration's motivation was to stop China from acquiring coveted AI chips in third-party locations such as Southeast Asia or the Middle East, but critics said the measures would end up encouraging more countries to turn to China's fast-growing AI industry instead of the U.S. as their technology supplier. It remains to be seen how the Trump administration aims to accelerate the export of U.S.-made AI technologies while countering China's AI ambitions. California chipmakers Nvidia and AMD both announced last week that they won approval from the Trump administration to sell to China some of their advanced computer chips used to develop artificial intelligence. AMD CEO Lisa Su is among the guests planning to attend Trump's event Wednesday. There are sharp debates on how to regulate AI, even among the influential venture capitalists who have been debating it on their favorite medium: the podcast. While some Trump backers, particularly Andreessen, have advocated an 'accelerationist' approach that aims to speed up AI advancement with minimal regulation, Sacks has described himself as taking a middle road of techno-realism. 'Technology is going to happen. Trying to stop it is like ordering the tides to stop. If we don't do it, somebody else will,' Sacks said on the All-In podcast. On Tuesday, 95 groups including labor unions, parent groups, environmental justice organizations and privacy advocates signed a resolution opposing Trump's embrace of industry-driven AI policy and calling for a 'People's AI Action Plan' that would 'deliver first and foremost for the American people.' Amba Kak, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, which helped lead the effort, said the coalition expects Trump's plan to come 'straight from Big Tech's mouth.' 'Every time we say, 'What about our jobs, our air, water, our children?' they're going to say, 'But what about China?'' she said in a call with reporters Tuesday. She said Americans should reject the White House's argument that the industry is overregulated and fight to preserve 'baseline protections for the public' as AI technology advances.

USA Today
3 hours ago
- USA Today
Elon Musk is building a supercomputer in Memphis. Not everyone is loving it.
The images of xAI's Colossus supercomputer versus Memphis' Boxtown neighborhood are stark. David versus Goliath. Power versus pride. Far from the media spotlight where Elon Musk feuds with a sitting president and talks of starting a new political party, a largely unknown controversy is playing out in Memphis as the world's richest man builds what he calls the world's biggest supercomputer. The project is happening in Boxtown, a South Memphis neighborhood that is 99% Black, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Nearly half of Boxtown's 2,865 residents have annual household incomes below $25,000 a year, yet many are homeowners. The images of xAI's Colossus supercomputer versus Boxtown are stark. David versus Goliath. Power versus pride. The indeterminate future of artificial intelligence versus the tawdry reality of majority African American neighborhoods becoming home to industrial polluters. Clumsy communications and lack of transparency have eroded the project's political support. Answers to the public's questions about environmental damage have been obscured by nondisclosure agreements with public agencies, redacted public documents and explanations coming from the Chamber of Commerce and mayor's office instead of from xAI itself. Michelle Taylor, the Shelby County Health Department director, has criticized the project's lack of transparency, saying her department was kept out of the loop in the early stages of its development. Why is a Memphis community fighting Elon Musk's supercomputer? After months of behind-the-scenes maneuvering, the Greater Memphis Chamber announced in June 2024 that xAI would build the "world's largest supercomputer" in Memphis. Chamber representatives have often acted as de facto spokespeople for the project, rather than allowing xAI officials to respond for themselves. The project, which has increased in scope since that announcement, has raised many questions about air pollution, water usage and the equity of government incentives for the project. Neighborhood residents and environmental advocates have fought back, but it isn't easy. The swiftness of the project's progress leaves few options for stopping it. Desperate opponents like the Southern Environmental Law Center and NAACP plan to sue, and the nonprofit Memphis Community Against Pollution has organized to fight the project. Opinion: AI is changing our world. At what point will it change our reality? Colossus critics cite sweetheart deals and environmental racism A leader for the opposition group is state Rep. Justin Pearson, a Democrat from Memphis, who became nationally known when the Republican supermajority in the legislature expelled him after he used a megaphone during a gun control protest on the House floor in 2023. Pearson, who was reappointed to the state office by the Shelby County Board of Commissioners, brings star power to his role with anti-supercomputer protests. He says African Americans are 75% more likely to live near toxic hazardous waste facilities and have higher cancer rates than White Americans. xAi in Memphis: Unpacking how Elon Musk's xAI supercomputer project in Memphis unfolded over the past year Already located near Boxtown are some of the region's largest emitters of hazardous chemicals: Tennessee Valley Authority's Allen Combined Cycle Plant, Valero Memphis Refinery and Nucor Steel. Yet, the nearest air monitoring station is 9 miles away in downtown Memphis. Fueling the opposition is a lack of convincing answers about issues like whether xAI should receive an air-emissions permit for 15 natural gas turbines as a backup energy source, and whether the turbines that have been operating at the site for a year are legal. Supercomputer's opponents face a colossal battle The addition of Colossus in Memphis raises two inconvenient truths: the city's failing grade in air quality (in 2021, the American Lung Association gave Shelby County an "F" grade) and charges of environmental racism in light of the history of locating polluting industries in African American areas of the city. When Memphis Mayor Paul Young hired a firm that concluded there were no dangerous levels of pollutants in Boxtown, critics dismissed it as a political stunt since the results supported the mayor's point of view. Memphis Community Against Pollution has announced that it will pay for air quality sensors for the Boxtown area. Young and others have made much of the fact that Colossus will pay $33 million in city and county taxes. But while the mayor says Musk's operation will get no tax breaks, the $12 billion project is assessed for property taxes at $2.2 billion. In addition, my research found that xAI buys electricity − enough for a city of more than 200,000 − from the local utility at the industrial rate of $64 per megawatt hour. Meanwhile, residents of Boxtown and all other residential customers in Memphis and Shelby County pay almost twice as much, at $122 per megawatt hour. In the rush to support the project, there's been little public discussion about tying the Memphis brand to Musk and becoming home to Colossus, which serves as the engine for what he has called the development of 'truth-seeking' systems. Yet, there's an air of inevitability about the completion of Colossus as it becomes a reminder about how powerful teams of lobbyists and public relations consultants get what they want, while grassroots groups can offer little resistance. Regardless of xAI's success in Memphis, it's clearly created division in a city in need of harmony. Tom Jones is the principal of Smart City Consulting, which focuses on public policy development and strategic planning. He writes a monthly column for Memphis magazine and has written the Smart City Memphis blog for 20 years.


Bloomberg
4 hours ago
- Bloomberg
UBS Loses EU Fight Over Credit Suisse's Role in ‘Sterling Lads'
UBS Group AG lost the crux of its case against European Union regulators over Credit Suisse Group AG 's involvement in a foreign-exchange price fixing cartel — but defeat was sweetened after judges slashed the fine by nearly two-thirds. The EU General Court on Wednesday threw out the Swiss bank's appeal against the February 2021 penalty, and backed the European Commission 's findings that Credit Suisse — taken over by UBS in 2023 — illegally participated in a cartel that operated on the 'Sterling Lads' chatroom.