 Hi, beautiful. Today, you're about to learn a lot. And I hope you're ready to just absorb some fabulous hair care information. I'm gonna educate. And I took the opportunity today to educate you about a specific brand. I'm sure if you weren't previously familiar with this brand, you are now familiar with this brand. After all of the news articles, information pouring out, and lawsuits being filed against this brand. The brand is called DevaCurl. And DevaCurl has been in some murky water lately. But I'm not here to bash DevaCurl. I'm actually here to shed some light on the situation at hand. And if you have no idea what I'm talking about, we'll get ready to plug your thumb drive in and start downloading some files, all right? I'm about to unleash the beast of education today. I will give you all of the knowledge I have about this situation and give you my opinion on what's happening and what is going down. Now, I've been doing way too much research on this topic for the last three weeks or so. I have been watching everybody's videos. I joined the Facebook group, which is for people with issues regarding the brand DevaCurl. I've been reading Instagram comments. I have done my research, all right? And I have found plenty of interesting things that I'm gonna go over today with you. However, before I begin doing that, I just wanna say, do not leave DevaCurl any hate on any of their social networks. My video will not be bashing DevaCurl. If that's what you came for, then go away. My video is to just lay down some information for you and you can do what you please with it. But please, if you find out anything in this video that you don't like, do not go and bash DevaCurl. So we're gonna go over what's going on, how hair care production works behind the scenes. We're gonna go over possible reasons why people's hair is being affected the way it is by DevaCurl products. And we're gonna go over options on what you can do moving forward. And if you're new here, who am I? Who are you? How are you gonna be a different source than everybody else? I'm glad you asked. I'm Brad Mondo. I am a hairdresser who has too much experience in this industry. I was literally born into it. My father owned a salon my entire life. I was there from age one until 16, moved to New York City, worked at a lot of different salons in the city, created my own business, then created my own hair care company called X Mondo where I've been manufacturing products for the last almost two years. I've been working on product development for my own brand. So I have accumulated a lot of knowledge about this industry and about how hair care development works. If that ain't enough for you, I don't know what is. And let's get it started. Let's do it. Starting with topic one, which is going to be what the fuck is happening? Or also known as what is going on basically there are a select few diva curl influencers who have recently come out about diva curl telling everybody what they think of the brand, how their hair has been either breaking off, they're going bald in some areas, their hair is becoming damaged from these products, their hair is becoming drier, unmanageable. A lot of these videos have been servicing within the past three weeks to a month. They're catching a lot of traction. So people are obviously like what the hell is happening? So since those videos have been popping up, the views have been coming in, there are just so happens to be more and more people claiming that the same thing is happening to their hair. Now the Facebook group, I think jumped from like 3000 members a month ago to now 53,000 members. So that is quite a big jump in people claiming that they're experiencing the same kind of symptoms as other people are. They're using the same products as them. Now I'm not saying anybody's right or wrong. That's not what I'm getting at here. I'm just pointing out the facts for you. If I'm being honest with you, these videos are confusing to me at least. A lot of it is people saying, you know, my hair is falling off, my hair is this, my hair is that and like getting really upset about it, which I totally understand. It's kind of not clear what's actually going on or what products they're using. Not a lot of people mention the products they're using or have been using for a long time because I think a lot of these girls have been using a lot of different products. Now that makes my job a lot more difficult because that's a lot of products that DevaCurl has, a lot of different ways they could have f***ed up. Where do I go from here? Now amongst all those videos I watched, there has been a small common denominator between all of these videos, blog posts and Facebook posts that I've been seeing. And that is this. This is NoPoo. It is zero-lather conditioning cleanser. I went and bought this just so I could experience it myself and see what's going on, maybe read the label a little bit. I did some research on the ingredient list. I just wanted to have it just so I could really experience it and see what DevaCurl's all about because actually before now I have never owned a DevaCurl product or used DevaCurl. So we have NoPoo. We'll leave it right here. This seems to be one of the products people are complaining about the most. So this product will come into play later on in this video. Let's put this back over here and let's keep going. Now most people are expressing their frustration for hair loss, wave pattern loss, frizz, dryness and a lot of these people are saying that it happened within a very long timeframe. They were using it back six years ago or back five years ago or three years and now they're just starting to experience bad hair or hair that is just not what it used to be which will come into play later also in this video. Now that we went over it, what's going on? Let's move on to my next topic we have here. Formulation and manufacturing. I know the general public does not know much about formulation and manufacturing of hair care products. I didn't know much either before I began in this industry. It's complicated and if you do not spend every waking moment doing it, you probably will never know that much about this topic but luckily I'm here for you. I'm gonna shed a little light on behind the scenes on how all of this stuff comes together, how a NoPoo is produced. And I wanted to go through this because a lot of people have made assumptions about a bad batch. People have been saying that maybe something went wrong when they were mixing the batch of product. You know, it was defective or expired. There's a lot of different things being said. When a massive hair care line like DivaCurl goes to produce their products, they are going to be able to get really great manufacturers because they are already an established brand. Manufacturers will bid for them. They'll be like, we can do this better than that place. We can manufacture faster than their place. Oftentimes when you're producing so much product, every manufacturer wants your business because you're gonna make them more money. It makes a lot of sense. So DivaCurl has a very strong bid on whatever manufacturing center they want. Typically when you're going to a better manufacturer, you are gonna get better ingredients. You're gonna get better chemists. Everything's gonna be better. And that isn't to say that small brands can't have great manufacturers. I'm just saying that when you are a huge hair care company like DivaCurl, you can literally get whoever you want. Now, DivaCurl could have their own factories. DivaCurl could have their own chemists. But when you have a chemist, that person has gone to school for that. That person has studied on how to make beauty products. That person has a lot of experience in making beauty products. Typically you don't just say, hey chemist, I don't know who you are, I don't know your background or anything. Can you produce a DivaCurl product for us? And we're gonna order hundreds of thousands of units of it. No, you would want assurance that when you spend that half a million dollars or a million dollars to buy those units of product, you're gonna get a great product, right? So now that you know that there's chemists involved, of course, I think a lot of people know that. You can also think, if DivaCurl doesn't have a private chemist for their hair care line only, it's probably 50-50, they might have one, they might not. I mean, they are a very big company. They probably do. But if they didn't, which is also possible, that means you could probably go in your bathroom, look at all your hair care products you have, and possibly a couple or more of your products that aren't DivaCurl could have been produced by the same chemist and the same manufacturer as DivaCurl. So to say DivaCurl in a whole is bad or all their products are ruining your hair seems a little out there. I don't know how else to put it. You can make that decision for yourself with that information I just provided for you. So once the chemist provides you with your first sample, you decide what you like, what you don't like, you go back and forth however many times you need to before deciding on a final product. And then once that final product is decided on, it then goes through a testing phase where they test stability of the product, make sure it doesn't separate, make sure that it can survive in heat or in cold. It goes through all kinds of tests. Also, when your products are sold in stores, say CVS, Walgreens, Sephora or Alta or any place that sells hair care products has their own regulations and rules on what products are deemed sellable in their stores. You have to go down that list and make sure your products are abiding by those rules and regulations of each store. And the reason why I'm going over all of this with you is because a lot of people had made speculations on the process and they're being contaminants in the product. So I want to clarify how all of this works. So at the end of the day, when a chemist is making a product for your brand, such as NoPoo, they are taking ingredients that are known to be great for hair, that are known to be great cleansing products for whatever hair type you're making the product for. If you're making a NoPoo, the chemist will take a base from a different product that is similar to that and then add in all the other ingredients that DivaCurl would like in that product. Now I'm not saying DivaCurl did this, I'm saying that this is usually how it works. So it's kind of a mix between several ingredients that are known to work well over a long period of time over a lot of research and then a few new ones that are combined in with lesser research, but typically there's still a lot of research done on those newer ingredients in that product. Nobody creates a hair care line to ruin people's hair. And I know this so far sounds like I'm very much on DivaCurl's side of things, but I'm really not on anybody's side. Based off my research, DivaCurl makes around $100 million a year or more, which means they must have millions of customers, which means they have had several millions of customers throughout the last 24 years of business, which also means they must be selling hundreds of thousands of units of no poo, unless it's one of their much less popular products, which it doesn't seem to be, it actually seems to be one of their most popular products. Chances are they're selling a lot of units of this. So just to put things into perspective, when you're making 100,000 units of a product, you're probably using one lab or you're using two, if you like, or more. You never know, every hair care line is different, but you can do it in one lab at a time. So if they were to make 100,000 units of no poo, they would need every single ingredient you see on the back of the bottle here in extremely large quantities. They're massive bags of ingredients. It's like baking a massive cake. You have to put all the ingredients into this big mixer and mix it around. These are like cauldrons, gigantic self-mixing pots of hair care products. The chances of somebody say accidentally mixing something into these products that is making your hair fall out, it's a very slim chance because in order to mix enough stuff into a 100,000 unit batch of no poo, you would need a lot of that ingredient in order to like even slightly fuck up the product. So chances are that didn't happen. I'm not sure how long no poo has been released for, but I'm pretty sure it's been a while. Within a year, 100,000 or more people have bought this product or used it on their heads. I've only really seen evidence of like 10 to 50 people that are really showing what's happening to their hair and what products they use and why they think that product is doing harm to their hair. Everybody else, all the other 52,000 members of the Facebook group kind of just seem to be watching or very quiet. Now that could be because they're embarrassed or they don't want people to know that their hair is coming out of their head, but it seems to be in the grand scheme of things, a very small number of people who are actually being impacted by what's going on with DevaCruel. Again, I'm not saying DevaCruel is right. Follow along with me here and we'll get deeper into it. People have also been concerned that maybe the packaging has toxins in it or there's something coming out of this bottle when it gets heated or cooled or the product reacts with the plastic. They're cutting corners. They're not using as nice of packaging as they used to. Now I've looked at a lot of their products. It all seems to be stock packaging or slightly customized packaging. So when you make a product you can either choose to make your own molds for plastic or you can choose to go with molds that are already existing and being used for several other hair care lines. This seems to be a very generic 12 ounce bottle and I've seen a lot of different companies use this. They do a custom cap color in the DevaCruel color and that's the only real custom thing I see but I could be wrong. This could be a custom bottle completely. You can also use different plastics to make your bottles. So some of them are more squishy. Some of them are more hard. Just depends on what vibe you're going for. So it's definitely possible that DevaCruel has their own type of plastic that they use. I don't know how easy that would be for them to source their own plastic. So I can't really speak on that. From the looks of it, it seems to be a generic bottle. It's possible that the bottle could be releasing toxins. It's also very possible that it might not be. That's up to you to decide. I would test this stuff, test the toxicity of the product and the bottle. However, I am not a toxicologist and I don't have the equipment to do that. Now this is a long one, but I swear we're getting places. Now topic three is a very interesting one. This one I was the most excited to research because I found it to be like, ooh, what? Ooh, ooh, ooh, what, ooh, ooh, what? There's another product that does the same thing as this with slightly different ingredients and it's called WEN. Now WEN might ring a little bell in your mind. WEN had their own issues with hair loss in the past. They actually had a lawsuit also about a similar topic to diva curl. So if you're not familiar with WEN, WEN is also a cleansing conditioner, effectively very similar to NOPU. And if you don't know what a cleansing conditioner is, it's basically a mixture of a bunch of natural ingredients that hydrate your hair and slightly, slightly cleanse your hair without any surfactants. So you're not gonna get that sudsy moment. I know a lot of you guys like with a cleansing conditioner. However, cleansing conditioners have been known to be great for people with damaged hair, dry hair or curly hair. That is why a lot of curly girls do use a cleansing conditioner instead of a regular shampoo. So I went ahead and compared WEN's ingredient list to NOPU's ingredient list, found a lot of similarities, a lot of things that weren't the same. Everything on the ingredient list was quite normal. The only thing that I found that was in both that could be causing some adverse reactions is menthol. Now menthol gives you that cooling feeling. I'm sure a lot of you guys have used it before for aches and pains in your body or have gotten your hair washed with shampoo formula that has menthol in it. It does cool your skin, but it also leads to a lot of irritation. I've had irritated skin my entire life. I have tried using menthol. Oh girl, it is not good for me. I break out in hives all over. My skin gets red. I'm not gonna get too deep into it, but menthol can definitely cause your skin harm. So I have been seeing people posting pictures of their eczema on their scalp and psoriasis and dry scalp and issues like that. Using menthol on your scalp repeatedly isn't gonna be good, which could definitely be contributing to some of the problems we're seeing from these girls. So what this little bit of research I did about the ingredient list revealed to me is that it's not so much the ingredient list. I don't think we should be watching out for it and more so maybe cleansing conditioners in general. I don't think they're bad, but you have to understand when you're using a cleansing conditioner all the time, you're gonna get a lot of buildup of oils and conditioning ingredients on your scalp, which is gonna actually lay over your hair follicles. And when they try to pop out through that layer of oil and conditioning ingredients and whatever's on your scalp from that conditioning cleanser, the hair is not gonna be able to poke through, which means it's gonna never grow in that spot again, which is gonna give you bald patches. Now this is all theoretical. I don't know if this is factual. This is me using information I got offline and my own imagination to figure out what is happening here. Now I find a quote online that said, it's like using lotion to wash your hair. So instead of removing the product when you rinse it off, it just becomes impacted in your hair follicle. Cleansing conditioners, I think that they need to be used sparingly, not all the time. You definitely need a deep cleanser once in a while or else possibly your hair will get clogged and your scalp will get a layer of film over it resulting in hair loss. Now of course I've been focusing on NOPU a lot in this video, but people have been reporting problems about the entire range of products. It may not just be NOPU. I know I focused a lot on it. I just wanted to go over the things I noticed with this specific product because I know a lot of people have been speculating that this product might be the reason for their hair problems. However, people have been talking about the entire range of products and not just NOPU. And again, this is all theoretical. Let's move on to topic four. I don't think there's a cure all for what's going on. There's not a one size fits all answer for what's happening. If there was 52,000 people in a Facebook group and there is only one product affecting everybody, I will be surprised. But what's happening to all 53,000 people in this Facebook group can most likely be boiled down into three different categories. Now category one can be, yeah, maybe diva curl, NOPU or another diva curl product is affecting your hair growth, is making your hair frizzy. Maybe it is the product for a third of you in this group or whatever. Maybe it's the cleansing conditioner. I don't know. You guys heard all the facts I gave about cleansing conditioners. Maybe that is what's going on with your hair. Now group two could be people that have been using the same product for five, 10 years, even like one to three years. Like your hair and your skin are forever changing, which means that while your hair and your skin change, your product use should change. You might need to wash your hair less often as you get older or more often. You might need to use a deeper cleansing product. Skin and hair get very used to the same products being applied to them all the time. Again, I've had very problematic skin my entire life. I noticed that when I use the same product for a long period of time, my skin gets worse. It'll get really good for a long time and then all of a sudden I'll be like, what the fuck, it stopped working. Which then I start to use other products and then it starts working again. But for that period of time in between, it stops working and I have to move on to something else. It's the same with hair. I've probably used thousands of different shampoos and conditioners in my life because I know my hair, one day, it'll be like, oh my God, I love this hydrating shampoo and conditioner. And the next day I'll be like, wait, why is my hair more dry after using the hydrating shampoo and conditioner when it used to be oily from it? What's going on here? It's because your scalp is changing. Because you're applying more oils to your scalp, your scalp then stops producing so much oil. You know, it's always like a give and take between your body and products. So I think a lot of people need to switch off of whatever they're using now. Maybe it doesn't have to do exactly with what's in the product. More so with how your body is responding to it. And then we have group three or category three, which is you're naturally aging. You're getting older. Your hair, skin, and nails all are going to change. You're not gonna have as perfect of curls as you did when you were a teenager or when you were in your early 20s. It's gonna get worse. Rarely does hair or skin or nails get better as you age. Most of the time it gets a little bit worse, okay? We get wrinkly, our hair starts to get drier. Our hair doesn't grow as long. Everything is changing. Hormones change your body. It's a natural thing that happens. So those are the three categories I think many people in this group that have been having adverse side effects these products could be placed in. Now there's definitely other reasons, but those are the three main reasons I wanted to go over today. So now that we've reached kind of the conclusion of this very long informational video, you're asking, well, Brad, what can I do? How can I know what's going on with me? I don't know, what's going on? Try learner, switch out different products, switch in different products, try a bunch of different things out, try and figure out your own body. And, you know, if you use diva curl currently and you're not experiencing any problems, I can't help but say, why not keep using them? I don't see the issue in continuing your use of diva curl products. I don't. I also think that if you do decide to continue using diva curl, keep an eye on your hair and just make sure everything is going well. You're not experiencing any hair loss that's more than usual. If you've been using the same product for a long period of time and it's a diva curl product, maybe consider switching. You don't have to switch to a different line of products. Just switch to a different product within the same line of diva curl products and see what happens. Talk to people who have been using that same product that you want to try out and please do your research because the last thing I want is to be responsible for somebody's hair falling off or breaking and don't think that everything I say is completely correct. I do my best to do extensive research and these are my opinions and my thoughts about this topic. If you don't feel safe using diva curl products, then don't. However, I would probably still use them. And lastly, another thing you can do is stop expecting an answer from diva curl. I know that's super annoying for me to say and will probably trigger a lot of people but I really feel like it needs to be said. The thing is with a lawsuit or with legal troubles within your business, you have to be advised with everything you say so you don't dig your hole any deeper. So people thinking that diva curl is gonna come out tomorrow or like the next day or a week later and just spread whatever information they want just to help people, it's just not realistic. Unfortunately, they can't unless they wanna dig their hole deeper and possibly get into more trouble. No answers that diva curl gives right now is gonna be acceptable. When people are experiencing hair loss, they're not happy. They're very angry and the only way to make somebody happy again when they're experiencing hair loss is to make their hair grow back and that's not gonna happen or give them a lot of money and settle it once and for all. But I would try to not take it personally that diva curl hasn't given the answers that you're looking for. This is a very big company. When they make a statement about anything, there are a lot of people that statement needs to go through in order to be released to the public and there's not gonna be a lot of statements made like that. I know there was already one that people aren't very happy with and it was very general. That's how statements need to be made in order to not get into more trouble and effectively have your company fail. Now for my conclusion. This is the part you've been waiting for. I understand how heartbreaking it can be if you're experiencing hair loss. It's tough. I've had so many clients with alopecia. I've seen it all and I seen how it affects their life in every which way possible and it is devastating. I totally understand. But you also have to think that diva curl was started by one or a few people with a dream to make every curly girl's hair fabulous, amazing, healthy, super defined, all around gorgeous and that was their goal. Their goal was not to make people's hair fall off. That's heartbreaking for both sides. So don't think that this is a one-sided thing. Like you as a customer might be really upset but the company's also really upset and they know if they did f**k up that they really f**ked up. Things like this, it becomes very trendy to report on this topic and it just becomes blown out of proportion. Nobody gets into this industry looking to break people's hair off. That's just the truth. It's not a good business model. Nobody wants that. I promise you. So I just wanna end this by saying be careful with jumping on the bandwagon and attacking this company that you don't have any true factual information as to if these products is what is causing your hair to fall off. You become more frizzy, tangled, unmanageable, whatever it might be. It might not even be diva curl and for all of you guys who are just jumping on the bandwagon just because you can get a refund, that's really lame. Again though, I feel for all you guys who have been experiencing problems with diva curl. I do. I'm not on anybody's side. I think both diva curl feels awful. There's nobody winning here and that's it. That is all the information I wanted to share today with you guys. I hope I've opened up your eyes to how hair care production works behind the scenes and things to look out for and just all around my findings when researching the topic about diva curl. I found this very interesting. Hopefully you did too and take everything I say with a grain of salt because I am not a scientist. I am a hairdresser who just finds these topics very interesting and wanted to bring you in a bit of a different direction than other people have when talking about this particular topic. So I hope you learned something. Hope you found this interesting or I hope I cured your boredom for the past 30 minutes. Also, if you are experiencing side effects to their products, they do have a hotline you can call. I'll leave it below. You can ask them anything you need to ask. I'm sure. I don't know. I've never called the hotline but I know that there is a hotline and I wanted to just mention that so you don't have to go leave comments on their Instagram bashing their company. Instead, you can just call somebody and talk to somebody. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram, Twitter and TikTok at BradMondoMYC. Follow my hair care brand X Mondo Hair on Instagram. Check out all the new products we have. They are so fabulous. We just released an oil and a balm. Everybody's living for both of them and I'm so happy about it. And that is all for today, guys. Thank you so much for watching. Don't forget to live your extra life. And I'll see you next time. Bye, guys. 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