Meet Our Founder
A former L’Oreal exec and consumer goods expert with over 18 years of corporate experience across the US, Europe & Sub-Saharan Africa, with missions that have had her based in cities from New York to Paris to Accra, Ghana, and across the sub-Saharan African region, she has managed global beauty and food and beverage brands across Africa and the Middle East, where she honed her skills in the business of beauty, brand marketing, product & business development as well as distribution and logistics with a focus on the African consumer.
After years of nursing the ambition of owning her own beauty company since her early teenage years, a hair coloring accident a few years ago finally propelled her to produce what would become Olori’s first product. She had her mother mix a deep conditioning concoction that she had always used to nurture hers and her sister’s hair while they were growing up.
This love for healthy hair & skin drove Toyin to conceptualize the idea for the company over 15 years ago, working with her mother in what is now known as Olori Kitchen Lab, in Lagos, Nigeria.
‘This conditioning mix literally reversed the damage in my hair – hence the inspiration to name the starter range Damage Be Gone. I shared the sample mix with about 20 of my friends and family over a one-month period and when they kept asking for more samples, I realized I had something special in this mix and that’s literally how Olori was finally birthed out of my dreams and into real life.’
An African Family Heritage
Toyin’s natural affinity for entrepreneurship may also be tied to her grandfather, Jacob Soboyega Odulate, the inventor and founder of the iconic Nigerian household headache remedy, Alabukun Powder. As a young girl, she observed this long heritage of blending natural products in her family, and today all her recipes for the formulations of the different products are inspired from a mesh of passed down recipes from her mother and aunts, and grandfather’s ethos for creating effective remedies from locally grown & sourced ingredients.
Ethos
Olori, which means queen or woman of royal descent in the Yoruba language, which also serves as a backdrop to Toyin’s proud Yoruba heritage, is comprised of hair products made up of ingredients that are ethically sourced from women-led cooperatives across West & Northern Africa.
Our niche and focus are to create hair, body and skincare for women of African descent, uniquely targeted at their hair or skin textures, creating effective products to solve beauty problems naturally but effectively.
