Dawn Myers simplifies curly hair care with Mint tool

For anyone with a natural afro, wash days—the routine of cleansing and styling textured hair—are often tedious and time-consuming tasks requiring extensive detangling, products, and patience. Founder and CEO Dawn Myers recognized a longstanding gap in the beauty hardware space where textured hair has historically been overlooked, tracing back to historical mandates forcing people to cover their hair because it was deemed unacceptable, followed by hot combs and chemical relaxers aimed at straightening textured locks before society finally began embracing natural curls over the past 15 years.

Following a sketch on a legal pad, Myers visited local hardware stores like Ace Hardware and CVS to assemble a Frankenstein-looking prototype. That initial concept eventually evolved into Richualist, known for its flagship product Mint, a hair care tool designed to detangle, condition, and style hair in a single stroke using refillable product pods equipped with gentle warming technology.

"We get that styling time down to about seven to 10 minutes. It’s a massive game changer for the customer really stressed out by wash day."

Dawn Myers

The device not only saves time but also improves hair health, reducing shedding and breakage by up to 70% by eliminating endless tugging on strands during the styling process. Myers built the device in partnership with materials science company Dow after an early prototype caught their attention during a startup accelerator program, with Dow providing crucial engineering and manufacturing guidance as they targeted the same textured hair care category.

Securing early hardware funding for such a niche problem proved exceptionally difficult, and Myers encountered beauty industry executives in R&D suites who had no concept of what a wash day entailed. Persisting through those early hurdles, she secured backing from investor Mark Cuban and serial entrepreneur Emma Grede, which helped launch the product onto Ulta’s website earlier this year. The company is now preparing to market itself as sold out while mapping out further expansion plans.