Exclusive: Doaa Gawish, Founder Of The Hair Addict, On Breaking Social Stigmas To Celebrate And Care For Natural Hair

Egyptian engineer Doaa Gawish has always had naturally thick, vibrant, curly hair, but before founding her “The Hair Addict” community six years ago, she spent much of her time and money on hiding it. “I planned my entire week around my trips to the hairdresser. We did not think much about the label that was put on us. We did not think much about fighting it,” she remembers, speaking on behalf of the thousands of women in the community that used to do the same. “You just had to do something about your hair. You had to iron it.”

Today, The Hair Addict is a thriving small business selling products for all types of natural hair that focus on embracing and nourishing curly and textured hair rather than heating and straightening it. Having been totally self-funded so far, it has two branches in Egypt and the U.A.E., 24 employees, and an online community on Facebook and Instagram connecting to over 570,000 people.

The online push that came as a result of the global pandemic has helped accelerate growth. As consumers spent more time online browsing social media in 2020, The Hair Addict increased its online presence, promoted its products, and began shipping internationally. Gawish opened the second branch of The Hair Addict in Dubai in 2020 in response to increasing demand. As lockdowns and other restrictions eased, she also collaborated with major retailers and pharmacies in Egypt, including Samir William and the El Ezaby Pharmacy. Her products could be found in 80 outlets across Egypt as of April 2022; the founder has plans to reach 500 by the end of the year. “Offline sales are essential in Egypt because people turned online only during the pandemic, and although they are still doing online orders, the Egyptian consumer likes to see the product on the shelf,” says Gawish. “We have witnessed a boom in our sales ever since we launched the offline channel, in the online sales as well.”

As she expands her business, Gawish is also finding a new sense of purpose—something she found lacking in her previous occupation. Before 2016, Gawish worked in the corporate world, where she spent around 11 years at Procter & Gamble (P&G), climbing the rankings to become the supply network operations senior director of P&G Near East. Yet, despite building a successful career, Gawish was not happy with what she was doing. “I wasn’t very happy, but I thought that you did not need to like your work. You just need to do your best, and if it’s a good job giving you a good status in society with a good salary, this is all you need. I never questioned that,” Gawish recalls. “I felt I needed a hobby, and I saw a lot of women around me starting those Facebook communities talking about everything that they liked and sharing it with other women and interacting,” she adds.

Inspired, Gawish established her own Facebook group, “The Hair Addict,” in February 2016 and started sharing remedies for protecting natural hair from heat damage. “I always liked my hair,” she explains. “So, I used to explore natural hair care remedies to protect it from all the damage I was doing to it.”

To begin with, Gawish used her Facebook group to share advice and tricks to maintain healthy hair. Her tips were based on her own research, as well as consultations with pharmacists. “Pharmacists are mostly the ones who formulate products in Egypt, not chemists,” she explains. “People actually got very engaged, and they interacted with me because they felt that what I was saying was based on science.”

A few months after establishing the group, Gawish was sent by P&G to the U.K. to do an economics course at Oxford University over the summer. For the first time, she did not have easy access to a hairdresser, which meant she had to wear her hair naturally, unstraightened. This sparked an idea. “I thought that the thing that is most damaging to the hair is heat. So why not encourage people to leave their hair natural for summer?” she says. At that time, the majority of women in The Hair Addict community were suffering from and complaining about hair fall. This is a common problem for treated hair. “More than 50% of women will experience hair loss or Alopecia at some point in their life, says Dr. Jobeetha Yoosuf, Specialist Dermatologist and Head of the Department at Medcare Hospital, Sharjah & Medcare Women and Children Hospital, Dubai.

Working with her niece, Gawish created the hashtag #The_Heat_Free_Challenge, calling on women to wear their hair naturally for summer to prevent hair loss. She says the reactions were “aggressive.” Gawish realized that most women were not blow-drying their hair for their own preferences; they were doing it because of the pressure they felt from society.

Gawish decided it was time to fight this norm. She invited women that wore their curly hair naturally to the group to share their journeys, including the benefits of “going natural” and, most importantly, the transformation that they saw in their hair as a result. Over summer 2016, The Hair Addict community grew from 5,000 to 80,000 people organically, according to Gawish. She and the group members started to explore their natural hair journey together, each posting their experiences and sharing tips on how to bring their curls back to life.

Meanwhile, Gawish found out about the Curly Girl Method, a book by British author Lorraine Massey, on how to take care of wavy and curly hair. She reached out to Massey and invited her to join a live video discussion to share her thoughts and advice. One of Massey’s most important tips was to use hair products that contained good chemicals. “We consider anything that is water-soluble as a good chemical. Anything that stays in the hair, even though you are washing it with water, is a bad chemical,” Gawish explains. “With time, bad chemicals accumulate and prevent the water from reaching the hair shaft, so the hair becomes very dry.”

However, it was 2018, and the Egyptian market at that time had very few products suitable for naturally curly hair. Meanwhile, The Hair Addict Facebook group had expanded to around 120,000 people, and Gawish was receiving requests from people asking if the recipes she shared on the group were available as products to buy, as well as from haircare companies in Egypt asking to advertise for them. Recognizing an opportunity, she resigned from her corporate job to establish her own brand. The Hair Addict’s first product was a remedy for hair fall, The Indian Recipe, which is still a best-seller today. This was followed by The Swim-Proof Recipe. Orders came in through WhatsApp via the Facebook page in the beginning, until the website went live in November 2018. Today, the company sells 17 products, and it plans to expand its portfolio to 30 products before the end of 2022. Consumables are currently formulate locally and produced in Egypt to serve the Egyptian market, but the U.A.E. and Italy are being considered for production to serve the wider Gulf.

She’s not the only retailer in the market recognizing and responding to growing demand, with large conglomerates also getting in on the action. “Carrefour introduced new families in the shampoo category in 2019 across the U.A.E., Qatar, Oman, and Egypt, including moisturizing shampoo, natural and organic shampoo, and curl-defining shampoo,” says a spokesperson from Majid Al Futtaim Retail. “This category of products has been seeing a 100% growth in sales since 2020.”

But for Gawish, the business is not just about revenue; it’s about raising awareness. Other initiatives from The Hair Addict have followed #The_Heat_Free_Challenge, including “Naturally Beautiful In Special Occasions,” “The Natural Hair Fest,” “Haircare is gender-neutral,” and the #Teach_Them_Self_Love_School_Tour, which reaches out to children and teenagers and teaches them how to love and take care of their natural hair from a young age. These initiatives were further supported by the launch of The Hair Addict’s first line of products for children, the “Bubble Trouble” collection, in August 2021. The heat-free challenge also became a heat-free tour, with the company giving one-on-one sessions and face-to-face consultations with customers at selling points.

Gawish now plans to follow the same steps across the GCC market, starting with online sales, shipping directly from its newly-opened branch in Dubai, to put The Hair Addict products on GCC shelves by the end of 2022. A line of products for men is also under development.

And as she grows her business, the founder remains committed to educating the community on loving and taking of your hair naturally. “Eradicating the stigma around natural hair means targeting the root of the issue,” says Gawish.