Jessicurl speaks! (Part Five)

This might actually be my favorite segment of the interview. If you've ever spent any time at the Jessicurl site, you'll know that Jess is extremely committed to public service -- everything from Smile Train to Women Around the World to donating her own hair to Locks of Love. When you buy from Jessicurl, your money doesn't just go into Jess's pocket, it goes to support worthy causes worldwide.

What if bigger companies did what Jess is doing? And what if all of them did it? Maybe there would be fewer problems in the world that exist for lack of financial support.

Listen to Jess talk about why it's important to her to do more for the world than make curly hair pretty.

Previous installments of the Jessicurl interview:

Listen to Jess talk about her role in the company.

Listen to Jess talk about how to choose products and why product performance may change for you over time.

Listen to Jessicurl's stance on "natural" claims

Listen to Jess discuss silicones and sulfates

Listen to Jess talk about how products get developed and made, why you can't please everybody, and what to do if magnesium sulfate is troublesome for you.

Jessicurl speaks! (Part Four)

Anyone who has ever written to Jessicurl and received a response directly from Jess herself probably knows that she is actively involved in her business. As her business grows, though, she is having to prioritize how and where she spends her time. As marketing demands increase, she has to adapt from a purely customer service person to an emissary and public relations person for Jessicurl.

Listen to Jess talk about her role in the company.

Previous posts in this interview series:

Listen to Jess talk about how to choose products and why product performance may change for you over time.

Listen to Jessicurl's stance on "natural" claims

Listen to Jess discuss silicones and sulfates

Listen to Jess talk about how products get developed and made, why you can't please everybody, and what to do if magnesium sulfate is troublesome for you.

Jessicurl speaks! (Part Three)

(I'll be skipping Weird Product Wednesday today to bring you more of the Jessica McGuinty interview. WWW will return next week, though, so stay tuned....)

In this installment of the interview, listen to Jess talk about how to choose products and why product performance may change for you over time.

Previous posts in this interview series:

Listen to Jessicurl's stance on "natural" claims

Listen to Jess discuss silicones and sulfates

Listen to Jess talk about how products get developed and made, why you can't please everybody, and what to do if magnesium sulfate is troublesome for you.

Jessicurl speaks! (Part Two)

These portions of the Jessicurl interview are about ingredients: what is "natural", why Jessicurl products will never contain silicones, and how she developed hair cleansers without sulfates.

Listen to Jessicurl's stance on "natural" claims

Listen to Jess discuss silicones and sulfates

Jessicurl speaks! (Part One)

As regular readers of this blog will note, I've been interviewing owners of small, curly hair product companies to celebrate and showcase the ones who know what's in the products they sell (and why) and the ones who truly demonstrate respect for their customers. So far, we've heard from the delightful Marsha at Curl Junkie and Ayanna at Donna Marie.

This series would not be complete, however, without checking in with Jessica McGuinty, owner and founder of Jessicurl. I have a special place in my heart for this line because it was the first one I tried after going CG and I absolutely loved it -- until the magnesium sulfate caused me to have to cut back and use the stylers less often. But I still use the Aloeba conditioner several times a week -- I truly love it. Jess started her company in 2002 and traces her, um, roots to the discussion boards at NaturallyCurly.com, where she began making flax seed gel in her kitchen based on what she was learning about ingredients that worked for curly hair. Other curlies wanted to try her concoction and soon afterward, Jess started her own company, where that modest but potent flax seed gel became the venerable Rockin' Ringlets! You can read more about Jess and her story here.

Jess agreed to be interviewed but after seeing my questions, she asked if she could answer them verbally in order to give them the attention she felt they required. For those of you who've never met Jess, she is an engaging, personable, fun-loving, and articulate person (with great hair) with a gift for making people feel at ease. She was in San Francisco for a few days in April, so we got together and did the interview in person. And then we celebrated the success of the interview by going out for a beer. I tell you, we bloggers live a glamorous life!

Jess is such a generous person that she put the interview on her voice recorder then uploaded it in pleasantly bite-sized portions so that you can listen to all the pieces or only those that you think will be relevant or meaningful to you.

Part One: Listen to Jess talk about how products get developed and made, why you can't please everybody, and what to do if magnesium sulfate is troublesome for you.

Weird Product Wednesday: Afro Detangler

What smells pretty, is a popular leave-in among curly heads, and is only sold by the half-gallon? Why, it's Afro Detangler!

This product is yet another one that sort of slipped by me until throngs of people were using it. I finally looked up, said "Huh? Wha'd I miss?" and asked kathymack for a sample. Because ain't no way I was going to shell out $49 for a product I'd never tried. And that's some kinda confidence, don't you think, for a company to sell a product only in an impossibly large container? Based on the raves at NC.com, though, maybe that confidence is justified.





Plus, who the hell needs a product that takes up as much space as a half-gallon of milk?





Now, even though I am a bit of a lemming when it comes to product experimentation, I did want to see what was in this stuff before I committed even to a sample. Here are the ingredients:

Active Ingredients: water, avocado/mango/shea butter, vitamin E, avocado oil, lecithin, green tea extract, orange extract, CitroZine™ (Organic) as a preservative, natural fragrance.

"Well, that's a pretty nice list," I thought, eyebrows raised in interest as I PayPaled kathymack for a sample. I love avocado oil and shea butter as nighttime treatments (I sleep in one of them or coconut oil every night). Vitamin E is a known moisturizer and anti-oxidant for hair. And I didn't see anything on that list that I didn't understand, so I went ahead and ordered.

It smells very pretty indeed. Not overpowering or weird, just pretty. And if I didn't have fine hair, I think I would be in love with this product.

But alas, I do have fine hair, and all those oils make my clumps skinny. I like my clumps fat.

Thick, coarse hair is bound to love Afro-Detangler, and probably medium hair will, too. And although it did not weigh my hair down as I suspected it might, it did react on my hair like straight oil does, and that is to give me many smaller curls instead of fewer big curls.

Does anyone else experience this with products containing oils? I don't know the science behind the phenomenon but I do know that although my hair feels conditioned and soft with a small amount of the right kind of oils, it also separates into a bijillion curls. I guess that would be okay if that's the look I was going for, but most days, that isn't what I want.

Also, Afro-Detangler absorbed into my hair very quickly, as if it contained aloe vera. I wonder what ingredient made it do that?

So, I don't dislike this product at all. In fact, if it came in a container that didn't require two hands to wield, I'd probably buy some to use on occasion because it does condition beautifully and I can see why people would love it as a leave-in. For me, though, it just doesn't deliver the kind of curls I like.

So what do you think? Do you love it? What does it do for you?

Look no further for hair knowledge

Have you been trying to figure out what products to buy? Are you confused by how your hair behaves? Do you wish you had a little science on your side to get answers to your questions?

Tiffany Anderson (aka StruttsWife at naturallycurly.com) has written a book!

Tiffany has been dispensing information from NC.com for years and cutting curly hair for even longer than that. She understands that not all hair responds to the same products and she knows why. And now, with her book, you can understand it too.

This is a fantastic book -- I know because I had the honor of being one of the editors for it! It is without question the resource that so many of us have been crying out for.

It's called Live Curly, Live Free: Unlocking the Secrets Behind the World of Beautiful Curls and guess what? You can get your hands on it instantly because it's an e-book! Download it today. You will not be sorry.