CurlMix Is On The Verge Of Closing Down As Its Co-Founder Kim Lewis Turns To Community For Protection
CurlMix Co-founder Kim Lewis says her business is on the verge of closing.
As AFROTECH™ previously told you, CurlMix is a clean, natural haircare line founded by Kim and Tim Lewis in Chicago. The pair appeared on “Shark Tank” in 2019 and rejected a $400,000 offer for 20% of the company. Instead, they raised $1.2 million on their own in 2020 for 10% of the brand. By the following year, they had launched a crowdfunding campaign, raising more than $3.6 million in 30 days.
The business launched a separate crowdfunding campaign in 2024, which led to $5.7 million from 9,248 investors, according to information from its Wefunder.
With a mission to protect Black ownership, the business is now fighting to stay open. In an Instagram post, Kim revealed that 20,000 orders are needed to ensure the business’s survival.
“This has been the most difficult year in business. This year in business was harder than COVID with tariffs and taxes and ingredient costs going up and shipping time slowing down,” she said in a video shared on Instagram. “Our team went from a size 40 to 14, and that partially explains why, you know, we’ve had some delayed orders or longer replies and customer service. Everyone on my team is doing two to three different jobs.”
She continued, “We hire locally stateside for most of our roles, and it has just been so hard to stay alive. So many of my friends’ businesses have closed, and I made a post about this last year that we didn’t want to be one of them. And our crowdfund that we raised last year was not enough. We needed four times what we actually raised and we didn’t get it.”
To keep the business afloat, she said her family pulled together cash and she borrowed money from some mentors. She also acknowledged this has been the most efficient that the business had been with capital since its inception, and they have lost the least amount of money for the revenue they obtained. However, these strides have not been enough for the business to sustain in a challenging market.
“Cash is tighter, it’s hard to get inventory. Business is just harder to run and funding has dried up. There’s no other place to get the money,” she explained.
CurlMix is launching a new campaign that asks customers to spend $100 for the Protect CurlMix Bundle, which contains 10 full-size bestsellers, “made fresh to order,” according to its website.
“You guys invested in CurlMix, you bought equity in our company and I want to continue to show up for you. So I’m not giving up … If we get 20,000 orders in, the next 60 days, we can stay alive and thrive,” Kim said in the video. “We will have turned the business around and we should be self-sufficient after that. I just need help one last time.”
“We have a high standard of quality in our ingredients, our products and what we serve. And what we give you. And I want to continue to do that for women like us, people like us,” she added. “I think we deserve that. I want to continue to add jobs in the community. I want to keep jobs local. I want to make impact, and you guys can be a part of that.”
For more information about the campaign, visit CurlMix’s website.
