 So I'm always roasting natural hair YouTubers, natural hair community and stuff. But this time, I think it's time we talk about natural hair brands and stuff we've been letting them get away with for way too long. Natural hair brands, leave this kind of stuff in 2020, please, because we fail up. Hi everyone, welcome back to my channel. This is not a roast this year. It's more of a definitely things to leave in 2020. It's not gonna be about YouTubers this year. I hit them last year, I hit them the year before, but I feel like they've been hit enough this year especially. And I do feel like we've been letting natural hair brands get away with a lot, possibly too much. And I do feel like some of that needs to change. So we'll see how this video goes. It's not gonna be a ha ha, but let's see how upset I get. But let's see how calm I remain. So this year was a bit of a trying year for me. As you guys know, if you're subscribed to my channel, I did have a lot of hits. Definitely Ujjuri, Gorgeously Kinky, and she sent it. But I have a lot of misses also. I had products with no slip. I had gel-zabber water, super stripping shampoos, leave-ins I didn't penetrate, flicks galore, flicks, flicks, flicks everywhere. And I usually don't get flicks. They were just flicks all over this year. 2020 definitely did me wrong with triangle products. I got me thinking about natural hair brands and just the states of the industry and the states of the union between natural hair consumers, brands, influencers, and everything. So I decided to come out and do a general video about it. What advice can I give to these natural hair brands? No names will be called except one or two. Let's put it that way. Things that I've observed from natural hair brands pretty much from the beginning, but that really, we need to leave in 2020 and let's try to do better if we're 2021. Number one, low-quality products in general, like products that will just low-quality from junk. You know a slip-down moisture thing? Come believe it in 2020, natural hair product makers, natural hair companies, natural hair brand owners. Can we see slip-down moisture? Just for me, just for me. Can we see slip-down moisture in 2021, please? At least give us those two base lines for 2021. Is that all you're saying about? It's not even trying to put out a line, but out moisture. And I can understand if one person finds it's not moisturizing and everybody else loves it, but how are you gonna put out a line and nobody finds it's moisturizing? Like, do you have like a test group? Do you test some different textures? Like, what really happens in the background when you are developing a product? Like, I wanna know, like I want y'all to come and tell me cause everything I'm asking, I come really seriously asking. Like, how are you gonna put out a product and nobody thinks it's moisturizing? How do you test your products to see if it's moisturizing? Are you just testing on your own hair? Are you testing on your family? Are you testing on, you know, all different textures to at least try to get some assurance that it's gonna be moisturizing? Like, that's the base line. Like, if a product isn't moisturizing, it's really not good for much as a natural hair product. The second big one is slip, especially for like the tighter curls, but pretty much all natural hair. Like, if you really care about our hair and like having a break off, like, it would be nice if all products had slip. And I know, you know how to add slip. I know you know which ingredients give slip, so what is the difficulty with just adding some of them? Like, why is that hard? Like, you know, slippery L, marshmallow root, silk protein. Like, what is the difficulty with adding some of these things? Let me know, cause I wanna know why you're not doing it. And I understand that some products don't need slip, for example, shampoos. Even masks, I guess you can section and just put it on and don't try to just smooth it or something and don't try to detangle it without raking it through. But you know a lot of naturals, finger detangle a lot of naturals wanna rake through products. A lot of naturals need to keep detangling as they go to make sure everything stays in place. So it's really doing a disservice to all of them when you like, okay, my product just ain't gonna have slip. Don't even worry about it, no slip. I can't decide if it's worse to sit on the label or if to not sit. Of course, I guess it's worse to not sit and then have you surprised. It should be like warning, this thing in hand will slip at all. But sometimes I even see that on the label, I'm like, so you're letting me know that you couldn't be bothered to add slip to this. And I can understand if it's a product that doesn't typically have slip, like some kind of herbal treatment or a clear treatment. Even my kitchen might have slip there, but I mean, I can see it. But how you wanna have like a cream product without slip. That concerns me, that's bothersome. I don't understand your reasoning or how you could be content with putting out something like that. And some of y'all don't want to add ingredients for slip, but you're certainly able to add ingredients for definition in shampoos and stuff. I'm seeing y'all, I see y'all. I saw when that trend started, I remember exactly noting, okay, why the shampoo? How curle-fining ingredients? And some of them bold to actually put it like curle-fining shampoo, which is here and over there. Like if your shampoo curle-fining added has slip, great. If your shampoo curle-fining and have moisture, great. But I noticed that a lot of brands are putting in curle-fining products to make people think that the product is moisturizing when it's not moisturizing. And I can tell on my hair when you did that because my hair just feels stuck together and it doesn't really feel moisturized. So you might have mistaken some people where other people are like wise to your game. So let's just leave the gimmicks and the shenanigans in 2020. Let the moisture do its thing with the curls and let the whole, whole what the moisture did. Like that's how it's supposed to work. I don't wanna just have blue together, tangle, dry hair, okay? Inconsistent product quality, especially for sales, Black Friday sales. I had no less than three products from three different brands that came in with pretty much water in the bottle. Like three products from three different brands. That really says to me that something needs to be done in terms of quality control. And I've heard from other people as well who got something different, who got the same thing, who had similar experiences with other brands. So kind of across the board, especially the smaller brands, handmade and stuff is great, but there also needs to be some quality control. I don't know how you can know that your product is supposed to be. And then you said, how you can know that your product is supposed to be one texture instead of a completely different texture? Like whereas, I don't wanna say where's the pride, but if it's handmade, you put your hand on it and you see every single one, right? So how does that work? Like how does that happen? You can feel free to explain it to me in the comments, but that's one thing I think we need to leave in 2020. Like, inconsistent quality unnatural hair products. The bigger the brand gets, the lower the quality of the product. And just in general, the newer products coming out for a lot of brands are lower quality. A lot of times they're even taking their existing products and changing, like swapping out the fancy oils, putting in cheap oils, removing either the oils. And they're not even reducing the price, they're like same price, but we're gonna cheapen the quality of the product. And that is really kind of sad to see they wanna be more in line with the FDA and so on. And maybe they can explain it to me here too, but I don't think that the FDA really prevents you from, even at least using fancy oils. I'm not even talking about extracts, because extracts can be hit or miss in terms of standard and so on. I don't think the FDA really cares if you are using argan oil or if you're using sunflower oil, you know? I don't think FDA really get on you for that. And those are some of the substitutions I'm seeing. So, I think in 2021, let's stand up for what we want for your own brand and for your consumers that you love, like your sister. Stand up for giving them quality products, products you believe in, natural products, products that are healthy for them, and products that will really benefit their hair to the max that you can give. Like, that's what I wanna see in 2021. I don't wanna see any formula changes where the product goes salt after 2020. It's getting harder and harder to find botanical new gels lately. That hurts me. I find it a little concerning, because back in the day, Kinky Curly, Uncle Funky, Kami Rose, it was really easy to find a botanical gel that defined my hair and held my hair. Now, most of the new gels have plastics in them, so I prefer to use a gel without any carbomber and stuff like that. Just personally, I noticed most of the new gels are basically souped up eco-styler. I do find some of them to be overpriced, and I do find it a little bit sad that botanical, organic, natural-type ingredients are just buzzwords more so now. Before, I feel like when the natural hair community just got started, Brand made an effort to really have their stuff to be natural from end to end, but now they're destroying some organic stuff and then throwing a bunch of chemicals at the back and just try to sell you a lower quality product with a couple of buzz ingredients. Not to say we have to leave it in 2020, but I would love to see more new botanical gels in 2021. Like, that's just my personal desire and have more high-quality products as options at least for your customers because we would buy them. Sometimes I've even seen even worse in some companies that they make botanical gels that they market to type three hair and then they stick the plastics in the type four hair products, so they're pretty much saying if you have type four hair, you need some carbomber to hold your hair and you don't deserve a higher-quality option. So I just find it kind of insulting and kind of infuriating to even see some of them have botanical gels but they don't have them with a strong hold. Like, it's possible to do a botanical gel with a strong enough hold for type four hair. Uncle Fungi's daughter managed it, completely managed it. I think that's why people started buying from natural hair companies in the first place because the products marketed to black women were subpar, were more dangerous, were lower quality. So don't do that to us again. Like that really hurts my feelings to see black women doing that to other black women. I make botanical gels at the whole type four hair so don't come and tell me it's not possible, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think we've lost the message a bit in terms of having higher-quality options. Like I said, nothing against carbomber. I don't mind having that as an option but there should be a botanical option for all. Everyone should have access to a botanical option if that's what they want. The other thing I still see some brands doing is not listing their full ingredient list and then they have the list to get mad at people who ask for it. That's definitely something I want to see left in 2020 especially if you're not even listing the preservatives, the irritants, the allergens. At the very least, list your preservatives, list all the allergens and list all the irritants in your product, like at the very least. And if you're not doing that, at least have it on hand so if somebody asks you can give it to them. Actually, refusing to give a customer the full ingredient list on the product is actually is ridiculous and illegal. And lying and saying that the product label has the full ingredient list. When it has no preservative, you have all sorts of waters and fruits in there with no preservative, shelf life of 12 months and you're trying to tell people that that's the full ingredient list. People are stupid. You all need to cut that mess out. You're very lucky that you're playing with the right one because the wrong one would report you to the FDA and let them sort it out. And you'll be the one crying how unfair it is and you'll be the one blocking people off of social media and like just avoid all that drama by being professional now. So first of all, get it together and start listing your full ingredients list. And second of all, get it together with your customer service. I think the biggest one for everybody is customer service. We've been really relaxed so far. Oh, it's a small company, you know, they're working hard. They don't have time to respond to emails and stuff. We've been like letting that slide. I've been defending you all but is it really right? Like is it right that people can send emails and ask questions and not get responsive? Is it right that people can receive their package with items missing and not get a response from you right away or even an explanation or even like you're charging them for everything and not putting everything with no explanation and you're charging the full amount and then you're not even responding to the emails. Those things are not right. I feel like when somebody buys a product they're also paying for customer service. So when you're charging a certain amount of money and customer service is not included I do feel like if you're rubbing them. And I do feel like you should probably sell fewer items on Black Friday or whenever. You should probably sell fewer items at a time so that you can properly handle your customers. And I know some of you all be like, oh, you know, we gotta live too and stuff. Which is fair. But if you feel like you have to live, raise your price. Raise your price so that it includes customer service and hires someone. But it's just not right to just ignore people's emails or not responding in time and so on. It's not right to just not even bother with customer service. And I've seen too many natural hair companies doing that. Please, let's leave that in 2020. We don't want that in 2021. Do better, figure it out. Raise your price and be transparent that this is my price with customer service. So people know they're gonna get customer service because it's really not fair. Don't have new sales before you finish processing customers from your old sale. Like that's an easy way to piss people off. But again, more customer service and focus on giving the best that you can and a good service to your existing customers, people that you're dealing with now before you get a whole bunch of new orders. And I'm not calling any names. I just know that I've heard that some brands do that. And it's just not right. It's not professional for you to be taking a bunch of new orders and you're having sort of true your old, your back love from months ago. Like, I don't really think that's right. Let's just call it a spade a spade. Usually I define you all night. This is all with love. Let's try to do better for 2021. If somebody gets their product broken and you wanna give attitude, you wanna challenge them, I had a case where I got a broken product and I told the owner and she literally set me a half bottle of replacement. So basically she's saying, well, you could probably get some from the bottom of that broken one. Just take this half. That was the pettiest, most unprofessional, most disrespectful experience I ever had in my life. Needless to say, I never bought from them again. If you wanna be a business owner, you have to leave the petty behind. Leave the unprofessional behind. Leave that kind of behavior behind and start to walk upright. That's all I can say about that. Besides if I'm never buying from them ever again and I'm never reviewing anything from them ever again. Don't treat customers like that. Just add a little bit of petty. You saved like two, three dollars and you lost hundreds of dollars from me and from whoever else saw and was equally appalled. So why? That kind of lack of home training that translates to your characters and adult and then translates into your business practices. It's unnecessary, unnecessary stuff. Treat your customers right. I still get hot thinking about that. I still, and that happened like years ago. And I still get hot because I was just so stunned that I've never seen anybody do that. Like it literally set me a half empty bottle of product. Like who does that? Who does that? I really should have like taken them to the Better Business Bureau or something. I shouldn't have accepted that. I just kind of chalked up the L but the person I am now would not have accepted that kind of treatment. I would have gotten my refund. I'm a simple one. It could be simple again until the feds come for you. Don't have promotions and then not announce the winner and you're on social media and you post more kind of thing but they're lying for the winner pass and nobody's seeing the winner. That's called a scam. Of course like social media like you're not really preparing anything you're just tagging some people and liking a photo but it still is not a good look and unprofessional. It's an easy way to put yourself, your customers pass them present and future. So just simple things like that. You have a giveaway, give away the thing. Think of like you announced but you didn't announce it properly. Put it properly on your page exactly how you put the giveaway. Put the winner so that everybody can see it either on the same post or on a new post. Thank you leaving 2020 that we've been letting you all get away with way too long is dishonesty. Some of you only need to be honest. Stop deleting reviews. Stop blocking customers who leave criticisms or questions on your profile. Like that's not really the way to handle it. I've seen some brands coming in like okay DM me we'll discuss. That's how you handle it. You don't handle it by just glistening and blocking because people aren't stupid. If I go to a site and all the reviews are like positive 75 star not even a three or two anywhere the whole entire site. I know you're lying. I know you're deleting reviews. People aren't stupid. So why would you do that kind of unprofessional stuff? Like just don't stop doing it. If you're like deleting and blocking people guess what they're going to tell 10, 20 people that you're deleting and blocking them. It's going to get around. People are going to know. And I know a lot of people are just like you and don't care and don't have any kind of character and be like oh I'ma still buy I'ma still do it. I don't care. I like my brothers. I don't care who they step on. I don't care who they wrong. But there are other people out there who are going to care and who are going to stop dealing with brands that mistreat customers mistreat influencers and so on. So be honest. Don't be those people. Don't be that kind of person. Don't be that kind of brand basically. Honesty, fair play, loyalty, gratitude, humility. Like there's a whole list of virtues that seem to be missing in certain people. And another thing we need to live in 2020 is marketing to self hate, texturism, insecurities. I want to see brands stop doing that. We don't need to see before be kinky looking here and after be sleek looking here or after be loose defined curls and stuff. Like tie for hair shouldn't be a before. Like your natural curl pattern shouldn't be a before. Shouldn't be a like oh this is a hot mess because it's looking kinky and oh I put it in some kind of permanent or smooth knit out somehow. It's silky now so it's looking good. I really like those ads. I really sick of seeing them and I really hope that they go away. Some of them even like have girls with lucid curls and then they comb out the hair and like shake it up to try to make it look as kinky as possible. And then they wash with the product and all of a sudden it's loose. So try to kind of imply like your products fixed or tame or change kinky hair. I just don't like that kind of marketing. How about somebody who had like a really nice style before and then she had like a really nice different style after with your product. I mean that works right? You don't have to change it from kinky to silky every single time. Maybe the after could be a nice afro. Maybe the after could be nice cornrows. Like it doesn't have to be some kind of smoothed out silked out or defined style every single time for the after. You've made all this money from the natural hair community. Even though you can say whether you're giving people what they want. You've made so much money from us. I think the way to give back is to give us back our confidence and our love and appreciation for our hair and for all the diverse types of natural hair. Giving those who want to embrace their kinks. Giving those who want to embrace their and transform natural hair. That opportunity and that showcase and that highlight and even trying to maybe expand the number of people who accept their hair as is. Because it's not somebody's before image in every single ad. So if we could not normalize curls and sleekness and shine so much in 2021 that would be great. If you can leave that in 2020 that would be great. For 2021, let the afros, let the cornrows, let the variety of natural hair shine pretty much. And normalize diversity. Pretty much. Can't believe we need diversity with natural hair movement. But let's normalize that for 2021. Instead of bottling curls or selling products to get curls. Tell me which products give me the best afro. Tell me which products give me the best cane rows or mini twists or cornrows. So that's my list. I know I didn't get everything. So definitely let me know in the comments or let us know in the comments what other behaviors, what else brands need to leave in 2020 and what you want to see from brands in 2021. Let's chat them in the comments. We are the customers. We are the influencers. We want to have a good relationship with brands and it is a relationship and they need to do their part as well. So thanks for watching. Happy new year. See you in 2021. Bye.