The beauty industry has made significant strides in inclusivity over recent years and has broadened its scope to cater to a diverse range of skin tones, hair types, and gender identities. However, despite these advancements and the rise of innovative brands making a case for inclusive beauty, there remains a substantial gap in products and services tailored for the blind and visually impaired community. According to the World Health Organization, approximately 2.2 billion people globally have a vision impairment or blindness. Yet, the beauty market largely remains inaccessible to this demographic who also require equal opportunities to engage with and enjoy beauty products.
Against this backdrop, an Australian beauty brand is championing inclusivity for the blind and visually impaired. Sisterwould, an inclusive premium haircare, scalp and skincare brand co-founded by sisters-in-law, Rina Gocaj-Bekiri and Floriye Elmazi, is calling on a more inclusive industry by developing products designed specifically for those with vision impairments. The brand uses innovative approaches, including braille labeling on packaging, tactile markings for ease of use, coarse packaging for easy identification, and difference in product texture for easy identification, etc. These features are not merely add-ons, but integral aspects of the product design that ensures the vision- impaired can independently and confidently use beauty products.
The need for such inclusivity is pressing. Despite the beauty industry’s estimated worth of $599.33 billion in 2024, a significant portion of consumers remains underserved. Sisterwould’s premise, alongside some other brands like ILIA Beauty, Herbal Essences, and Guide Beauty, is a call to action for the entire industry to embrace universal design principles. By highlighting the importance of accessibility and inclusivity, this brand is not only enhancing the beauty experience for the vision-impaired but also challenging the industry to recognize and meet the needs of all consumers. In doing this, they have created two hero products, Give Me Life Shampoo and Give Me Life Conditioner. While the former has hero ingredients including watermelon seed oil, river mint extract, and finger lime, the latter contains shea butter, aloe vera, and ginger roots.
Two years after its inception in 2022, it achieved $25,000 in sales in two and half weeks through its DTC website and over six-figures in sales since launching. It also achieved 80% to 88% gross margins since it was founded, launching in Revolve after one year, as well as Oz Hair and Beauty in Australia. It is currently undergoing backend conversations with major retailers in store and online in the US and Australia. BeautyMatter spoke with one of the co-founders of the brand, Rina Gocaj-Bekiri, on how Sisterwould plans to further champion inclusivity for the vision-impaired beauty enthusiasts.
First, let’s begin with the "why." Could you tell us why you started the brand?
Sure! We co-founded the brand due to the daily frustrations faced by both our mothers who actually struggle with vision impairments. My role in being a recruiter and headhunter for over 15 years and working with leading global beauty and retail brands has been an incredible insight because it has really helped us build and shape the business, as well as understand what each role does. I would say that Sisterwould was created out of a need in the market. We saw a huge gap in the market for an inclusive beauty brand, as over time, inclusivity has exclusively been about able-bodied people with different hair textures and skin tones.
So, while that’s inclusive in so many different ways, we found that it excludes people that are differently-abled, and beauty brands do not typically create products with the differently-abled people in mind. As the industry evolves, consumers have become a lot smarter and have a voice. This is our "why"—which is essentially creating a brand with this group of people in mind.
What were the key drivers for you during your research and development stages?
During our R&D stages, we found a huge gap on the market just by researching ourselves. My co-founder wanted to focus on skincare, and I wanted to focus on haircare. So, we embarked on a three-year journey, creating a survey of over 12,000 people globally. We asked questions about product types, hair types, hair textures, etc., and when someone suggested they would like to have products that were easier to differentiate in the shower, it made us think and cycled back to our mothers. As we asked them questions on what they’d like to have in products considering that they have vision impairments, they both told us they’d like to be able to separate their shampoo products from their hair conditioners.
During the R&D stage as well, we found that both shampoo and conditioner have the same colors in almost any brand. They smelled the same, and they had the same texture. So for us, we wanted to develop a product that’ll position us as the first haircare brand that’s not only bridging the gap between inclusivity but is also bridging the gap between skincare and haircare and scalp and creating products with everyone in mind. It took us three years before launching because we needed to make sure the products work on straight hair, curly hair, kinky hair, permed hair, and bleached hair; ensuring that it had to pass a number of stability testings.
How did this research help you during your development stage, and what makes your product useful/different?
One of the unique things we did was partner with the nonprofit organization Vision Australia during our research. Through [them], we found that blind- and vision-impaired people actually use tape and rubber bands as elements to differentiate between their products. What we did was incorporate universal braille. It’s legible on a global scale. However, what we didn’t realize is that braille is really not enough as not everyone can read it, and it’s a very hard language to learn. Therefore, we decided to incorporate our own tactile and printing system, consisting of horizontal lines for shampoo and dots for conditioner. We also decided to take it a step further for inclusivity and actually get innovative tactile ingredients within our products.
What this means is that our shampoo has these little microgranular microbeads that gives it this little texture. The microbeads are biodegradable and dissolve when they come in contact with water. It serves two purposes. One, to help blind- and vision-impaired people differentiate the difference in texture and consistency in the shampoo against the conditioner. While the shampoo has the grainy feel, the conditioner is super thick and ultra luxurious. Second, the beads in the shampoo also serve as scalp scrub because there are skincare-like ingredients and coconut extracts in the little beads, which helps to gently exfoliate and cleanse the scalpas well as reset to better welcome the conditioner. Also, the shampoo color is pink with a refreshing river mint scent to it, while the conditioner is neon-green, which has this invigorating ginger root cinnamon scent that feels nostalgic. Ultimately, we formulated Sisterwould products to be scientifically created to bring hair back to its healthiest state.
How would you describe some of the challenges you faced in building this brand and products?
One of the biggest challenges we had to face was packaging. Having the packaging pass the stability testing to meet the requirement of the products and ingredients to then hold the braille, was a major challenge. The braille needed to be customized. It needed custom-made molding, and the molding had to have a certain percentage of a certain kind plastic for it to work. During the first round, we blew thousands of dollars because we needed to make it work. We had to add the braille, and we had to add the tactile ingredient—the horizontal lines for shampoo and the dots for conditioner—for people who can’t read braille. That was where the challenge came in for over a year and half. We stuck to our guns until we saw someone that was able to give us what we wanted.
How has the reception been? What is the target audience saying?
We track all of our data, and it's funny because we have a large portion of our customer base even requesting a men’s range. All of our vision- impaired customers have come to us with a lot of feedback, and that they have barely come across a brand that allows them to easily differentiate between products. We really just want beauty brands to be a lot more inclusive because it doesn’t take much to consider a target audience that is overlooked and underserved.
Does that mean you’re working on something new?
Absolutely! At the moment, we’re working on three new products. We have finalized the products, although they haven’t been put into production yet. These are haircare products we plan on releasing. Once they’re pushed for production, we have plans to start working on the requested men’s range. We would love to have a “his and hers” in our brand just because we know that it’ll do well for our brand in particular. Also, some of our customers have come to us with feedback and ideas on how to better our products, and we’re in the process of listening to them and trying to change a few things internally. For example, a lot of that would be working with colors, as our research has shown that blind- and vision-impaired people love high- contrast colors [as they’re easier to identify]. We’re working on a lot of things internally to be able and ready for retail and the new markets we’re targeting soon.
By prioritizing the needs of the vision impaired, Sisterwould exemplifies how inclusivity can be seamlessly integrated into product design and marketing. Its commitment to accessibility not only empowers visually impaired individuals but also sets a precedent and propels this discourse that moves beyond the traditional understanding of inclusivity.
