Mindy McKnight Debuts Hair Brand at Walmart
The mom to influencers Brooklyn and Bailey McKnight partnered with Maesa on the Hairitage line.
The latest influencer brand doesn’t include a single eye shadow palette — rather, it’s a clean hair-care line targeted at Millennial moms.
Mindy McKnight, founder of the YouTube channel CuteGirlsHairstyles and mother to twin-fluencers Brooklyn and Bailey McKnight, has partnered with Maesa to develop Hairitage by Mindy. Billed as cruelty-free and vegan, the line is set to launch in January into nearly all of Walmart’s doors. McKnight and Maesa would not discuss specific financial figures, but industry sources expect the line to be big, estimating it could do $40 million to $50 million in retail sales in its first year on shelves.
McKnight is both a mom to influencers and an influencer herself — her YouTube channel featuring how-to’s on kids hairstyles has 5.6 million subscribers.
She is also something of an expert on styling different hair textures — while her biological children are white, two of McKnight’s adopted children (she has six altogether) are black, and McKnight’s channel serves as a resource for styling textured hair as well.
With Hairitage, McKnight wanted to create a line where the products could all work for and were marketed to people of all different hair textures, rather than asking consumers to purchase separate products.
“My family is obviously diverse and very representative of what the new Millennial [family] looks like — we don’t all have the same hair type and we want things that feel inclusive,” McKnight said. “For me as a mom, I had to go into the store and shop many lines and aisles, looking for natural products that would work on my hair [and my kids’ hair]. It was a mixed up shopping experience.”
With McKnight, Maesa’s chief marketing officer Scott Oshry saw an opportunity to target an underserved market, the aging Millennial who is starting a family. “It’s interesting that a lot of people aren’t focusing on [this demographic],” Oshry said. “With
Mindy’s guidance, [we are developing something] relevant to where the market is now and relevant to where the market is going in the next seven years.”
Hairitage is launching with 16