When I ask Ms. Tina Knowles, vice chairwoman of her daughter Beyoncé Knowles-Carter’s haircare label Cécred, how the brand has performed since its launch, she paints me a picture.
“I’m in airports probably twice a week, and without fail, there are people in the airport or on the flight showing me the results of Cécred,” she says, speaking on Zoom from the brand’s LA HQ. Often, they even ask her to touch and see how great their hair feels.
“My kids tell me all the time, ‘Mom, you can’t be putting your hands in people’s hair,’” she laughs. “But people want to show me their results — I can’t help it.
The response has been overwhelming.”
Beyoncé launched Cécred — a science-backed haircare label focused on hair and scalp health — in February 2024, alongside her mom and brand CEO and beauty veteran Grace Ray (who previously led prestige haircare brand Living Proof, and held roles at Smashbox and L’Oréal). Designed to improve the health and condition of all types of hair, the team spent six years before launch researching and developing patent-pending formulas that claim to improve hair and scalp health for all types and textures.
Now, after much demand from European consumers online, Cécred is landing in the UK on September 22. In its first physical retail launch outside the US, the brand will be available at premium beauty retailer Space NK both online and at 90 stores across the region.
“Throughout my years performing in the UK, I’ve seen the most beautiful diversity in people, hair types, and hairstyles,” Beyoncé tells Vogue Business exclusively in a statement. “Cécred is built on the ethos that no matter your hair type or texture, from straight to coily, you can show up however you choose. I’m so proud to bring a brand that supports such inclusivity to the UK.”
Cécred declined to share revenues, but growth has been “exceptional” so far, says Ray. Alongside shipping to 100 countries direct-to-consumer (DTC), the brand’s US launch in Ulta Beauty in February was the biggest prestige haircare rollout in the retailer’s history, Ulta announced at the time.
Cécred remains at the top of the prestige haircare category for the retailer, while its Restoring Hair and Edge Drops is the market’s number one prestige hair product, according to market research firm Yipitdata.
“Introducing our award-winning formulas and high-performance innovation to Space NK is a natural next step for Cécred,” Beyoncé adds. “And I’m so happy our UK community, who has embraced us from day one, can finally experience the products IRL.”
Personal and organic marketing
The Knowles family’s roots in the hair industry go back to the ’80s, when Ms. Tina ran a large, successful hair salon in Houston, Texas. When we speak, she recalls mixing formulas that were “tried and true” to keep hair healthy and moisturized, from natural materials like olive oil to more medical treatments for scalp health.
Then, she had Beyoncé’s hair to look after. “Her [career] started at 14 years old, and she’s always toured,” Knowles says.
“The wear and tear that you put on your hair just from the stage — from perspiring, the lights, traveling, using hard water in different places. But her hair is healthy and beautiful.” Shortly after Cécred’s launch, in April 2024, the star posted her hair wash routine to social media using Cécred products.
The video, filmed by Knowles some time before it was posted, now has 2.5 million likes on the brand’s Instagram.
“[The hair wash video] was not done for Cécred, we weren’t thinking about marketing,” Knowles adds. “That was me filming on my iPhone just saying, ‘This is amazing, people should see this.’” In the caption, Beyoncé acknowledged that many Cécred customers had been sharing their own hair wash routines.
Sure enough, Beyoncé has only shot two professional Cécred campaigns in its two-and-a-half year history, one as she launched the label and one for its debut at Ulta. Instead of endless Beyoncé content, Cécred’s Instagram and TikTok feeds are chock-full of user-generated content featuring real customers using the products, or team members in the office explaining their application for different hair types.
“In many ways, being a celebrity brand is the biggest challenge. It means people can write off the efficacy of the brand by saying, ‘Oh, that’s just another celebrity brand,” Knowles says.
“[Beyoncé] has done some things, but she is not the face of the brand. We intentionally did that so the face of the brand is our customers.”
“Everything we’ve done has been so organic,” she adds. “We could have done it with a professional setup, but it was real, and I think that comes through to the customer — they understand the difference.”
Beyoncé has since gone on to share more personal stories in a lower fi format, making Cécred a rare window into her (typically private) world. Earlier this year, the brand shared a video, narrated by Beyoncé, of her and daughter Blue Ivy combing out her husband Jay Z’s dreadlocks, so he could rock an afro for his May show in Philadelphia.
The clip garnered 705,000 views, and demonstrated how the brand’s detangling spray can break locs much faster than other products, a testament to its efficacy, Knowles says. “We came up with a product that literally can take down locs, much faster than usual, and keep your hair healthy in the process.
Why not put that out there for the world?” she says.
Fulfilment can be a challenge in these moments, acknowledges Ray, who adds that one of the biggest obstacles is scaling the business operations to meet “explosive viral demand”. “It’s been challenging and exciting moving into massive retail scale, because it requires an entirely different set of operational muscle, from supply chain execution to in-store programming,” she says.
According to the CEO, the key is boosting capabilities without overextending, which she feels the team has been able to do well considering the year’s “exceptional growth”.
Follow your gut and invest in the science
Before launch, Cécred established a custom research laboratory and test salon inside its Wilshire Boulevard headquarters, as well as working with several third-party laboratories on research, formulation and testing. “When we decided to [start] the brand, one of the decisions that Beyoncé was adamant about was that she didn’t want anybody telling her: ‘You spend too much on research and development [R&D], you spend too much on testing, or you need to take in money for this,’” Knowles says.
“She was adamant about funding her brand, and not having someone tell her what she couldn’t do or limiting the resources when it came to R&D. We did what we knew was right, we followed our gut, and it worked out.”
Personally, Knowles’s favorite item is the Reconstructing Treatment Mask. The product took the most rounds of R&D to achieve a molecular weight low enough to improve penetration into the hair, she explains. “I know that sounds very technical, but it can actually stop breakage; it adds the protein but also has a great balance of moisture. We sent it back [to the lab] a dozen times [before approving].”
“Our products are unique because they focus on need states,” Ray adds. “Instead of going after cosmetic improvements on the hair, we focus on the root cause of good hair health.” Cécred does so with its proprietary patent-pending technology, bioactive keratin ferment, which the brand claims improves the hair’s structural integrity, shine and strength, through wool-derived keratin, honey, and ferment that penetrates deep into the hair cortex to replace lost proteins.
“With this, we’re able to be transformative for all hair types and textures, through high-performing formulas delivered in packaging that is unique and luxurious. And it’s that combination that I think really crystallizes what makes the brand stand out in the prestige market,” explains Ray.
Cécred’s testing is a crucial part of the product launch process. Beyoncé, Ms.
Tina, and the rest of the Cécred team all try the products at the HQ, feeding back on the efficacy, look and feel of new launches, before testing with consumers. “We also test our products in three different continents to make sure there’s hair representation in how we validate product performance,” Ray says.
“What we’ve [then] been able to harness is a very engaged global community who advocate about Cécred and its performance — and then we supercharge that with content marketing expertise, a best-in-class social strategy, and a surround sound [of activations] that are very in the culture.”
After the UK moment, further expansion is on the cards, Ray says, but it will be gradual. “We see a lot of demand coming from many other markets, but just like how we approached our decision to launch in the UK, we’re going to take that same intentionality with how we proceed with future expansion,” she explains.
For Knowles, global retail is the goal. “I would love to see Cécred all over the world,” she says. “The dream is everyone can access and use the product and it becomes a household [name]”