Kitsch’s CEO started out selling handmade hair ties. Now she runs a viral haircare brand known for plastic-free shampoo bars

Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Jill Biden is on the cover of Vogue, Marine Le Pen's party wins big in the first round of French elections, and Ellie Austin, Fortune’s deputy editorial director for Most Powerful Women, catches up with the CEO of viral haircare brand Kitsch. Have a great Monday!

- You 'do you. Cassandra Thurswell was 25 when she started hand-making hair ties in her Los Angeles apartment and selling them door to door. Raised in Wisconsin by a hairdresser single mom, Thurswell’s initial goal was to make “cute things” that the Midwestern women who she grew up around would enjoy and be able to afford.

“I was thinking about the young woman or girl and what she reached for every single day,” she recalls. “What’s something that I could do that no one else had put attention on? To me, that product was a basic hair elastic.”

Fourteen years later, what began for Thurswell as a passion for colorful accessories, has evolved into Kitsch, a hugely popular beauty brand with a hefty social media presence. She is founder and CEO, while her husband, Jeremy, serves as COO. With nearly 1 million Instagram followers, the company has become a go-to for online skincare and beauty obsessives thanks to the simple, pastel-colored aesthetic of its 250 products, as well as its low price points. Its shampoo, for example, retails at around $10. The global haircare market was estimated to be worth $99.5 billion in 2023, and making waves in such a competitive sector is no mean feat. Thurswell ascribes some of her success to her decision to bootstrap Kitsch. (She declines to reveal the company’s current revenue or valuation, but says she only had $30,000 in savings when she launched it in 2010).

“I couldn’t do any big marketing plays or influencer events,” she says. Instead, she focused on product quality and sustainability. Two of the brand's most popular products are its solid bars of shampoo and conditioner, which are sold in packaging made from recycled paper. “We’re not the first ones to make solid shampoo and conditioner, but I’d like to think we’re the first ones to make true haircare in solid form with the right PH and super high quality salon ingredients,” Thurswell says.

The elimination of plastic bottles not only protects the planet; it also helps the company keep its costs low. “When you produce a bottle of shampoo, you’re paying for the bottle and the shipping of the bottle—most likely from overseas. That is so expensive and the amount of carbon dioxide involved in that whole lifecycle is so high,” she says.

Data shows that Kitsch is a “mutigenerational brand,” according to Thurswell. “We’re pretty evenly based from Gen Z all the way through to Gen X.” The Kitsch customer, she says, is “wildly impressive and charmingly flawed,” and the brand aims to help women celebrate their individuality. “Right now, in beauty, there’s a big trend in saying, ‘look this way or brush your eyebrows that way.’ We’re not telling you to be or do something different. Kitsch is a supportive brand. You do you.”

Ellie Austin
@Ellie_Austin_

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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com