Oil or no oil? Weekly or biweekly shampooing? Do I have 4C hair or not? With the textured hair care space full of conflicting information, cutting through the noise is becoming more difficult than the routine itself. And, as a result, makes taking care of textured hair a chore, rather than a ritual.
“People have a tough time finding information that they feel they can trust around textured hair,” SLIQ co-founder Mamy Mbaye tells ESSENCE. But, as the beauty space often leaves us with more questions than answers, SLIQ makes it simple. ”[We’re] a new kind of hair care ecosystem.”
Founded in 2021 by Zainab Sanusi, Mbaye joined the British brand as co-founder soon after, before moving to New York. Similar to Tomi Talabi’s The Black Beauty Club, SLIQ’s early days were born on Clubhouse in the wake of the pandemic as Sanusi was itching for a cure to her scalp reaction from a popular textured hair care brand.
“What we first sought out to do is find a way to address some of these issues,” Mbaye says, also growing up with eczema and flare-up induced hair breakage. After surveying over 200 people, they launched their first product, the Deep It Conditioning Treatment, in February of this year, as a solution to Black women’s most pressing hair concerns: “We kept hearing again and again [about] dry, brittle, and dehydrated hair with a lot of breakage.”
With deeper skin tones more prone to dry skin, including on the scalp, taking care of the hair growing out of it means finding products that actually work. Formulated with strengthening solutions, pea proteins, and most importantly, A-beauty ingredients. Rooted in West African oils and butters, like Kokum butter and Baobab seed oil, the treatment is derived from the founders’s Nigerian and Senegalese roots (reconnecting America’s West African diaspora back to theirs.)
Using their conditioner to fill gaps instead of over-saturating the hair care market, Mbaye says SLIQ will only make products we actually need better from. “If the next best thing is already good enough, then that’s not gonna be the first product we make,” she says, designing Deep It to cut down on other conditioning steps in your ritual. However, the beauty brand is much more than just that.
Taking the questions out of Black haircare, SLIQ does the thinking for you. From building a directory of hairstylists to telling you all the right information about caring for your hair, having access to resources is just as important as finding the right product. “Fostering communities that are rooted in education, but also rooted in support for one another is primordial,” Mbaye says.
While the line is exclusive to the UK at the moment, Mbaye says a second product is in the pipeline and expanding to the US is what’s up next. “Once we’ve had a bit more time in the product space, an expansion into experiences is part of our ecosystem,” she says, excited about giving SLIQ a more in-person presence. “There’s so much space for us to play.”
