BunJen Rose, right, and Jess Shailes.

Here at NaturallyCurly, we understand just how much a niche industry can take off, and how it can affect lives in amazing ways! We understand it because we’ve seen it! Curly hair, while not as niche as some may think given we are the 60 percent, is not considered a huge market – at least, not yet!

So due to our niche understanding, we super love when we see other women starting up their own sites for niche markets, which is why when we heard about two UK women and their new site for everything redhead, we were stoked.

According to Scunthorpe, a news site in the UK, Jen Rose and Jess Shailes, a mother daughter duo, started the website when their favorite brand of shampoo specifically designed for redheads was discontinued. Despite years of being the pun of bad ginger jokes, the women didn’t see the discontinuation as funny – and they figured many other redheads wouldn’t either.

“Having lived with pale skin and red hair all our lives, we understood the frustration of not being able to find the right products for our hair and complexion,” said Rose. “I managed to find a really good shampoo, but even that was discontinued. It made me think, why not set up a business specifically for people with red hair?”

Their website, www.everythingforredheads.co.uk, features everything from hair products for redheads and cosmetics for pale skin. In fact, their reach has expanded past that of redheads and pulls in many other pale skinned customers who find that cosmetics often don’t do their skin any justice.

“If you have a very pale complexion, finding the right products can be a nightmare,” said Rose. “Regular make-up can be too dark, so if you wear it you tend to look a bit like a clown.”

Of course, the site also aims at encouraging redheads to embrace their hair color and offers solutions to parents of kids who are bullied for their natural hair color.

“I don’t find jokes about redheads offensive anymore, but when you are younger everybody picks on the ginger kids,” said Rose.”It ranges from the mildly laughable to the downright ridiculous and, well, ‘Gingist’.”

The site offers photo galleries, quotes of encouragement and even a ginger jokes section to help encourage and support the redhead and pale complexion community. And even in the niche market, the site has been a huge success.

“We thought our customers would be based solely in the UK. It didn’t seem like something that would appeal to places like the Mediterranean because people there tend to have dark hair and, well, Mediterranean complexions,” said Rose. “But we now have customers across Europe, including the Mediterranean and Finland, which came as a bit of a surprise. We also have customers in the United States, so for a business launched in the recession, we feel very proud.”

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Final Thoughts

Come on, curlies, let’s show these two some curly love!

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