{"id":39349,"date":"2026-08-11T21:29:56","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T16:29:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=39349"},"modified":"2026-08-11T21:29:56","modified_gmt":"2026-08-11T16:29:56","slug":"bask-lather-founder-talks-growing-viral-haircare-brand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=39349","title":{"rendered":"Bask &#038; Lather Founder Talks Growing Viral Haircare Brand"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<div class=\"listicle-slide\" data-page-number=\"0\">\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/hellobeautiful.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/50\/2026\/08\/1785966708777.png?w=683&amp;strip=all&amp;quality=80\" alt=\"A woman in a green suit sits with her hand on her chin, looking thoughtfully at the camera.\" class=\"wp-image-4599489\"\/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Source: Courtesy Of Talent \/ Courtesy Of Talent<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><a href=\"https:\/\/madamenoire.com\/tag\/social-media\/\" type=\"post_tag\" id=\"590362494\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Social media<\/a> timelines have not been the same since Bask &amp; Lather hit the market. The thriving haircare brand wouldn\u2019t exist without its founder Shaina Rainford, and her mother\u2019s homemade growth recipe.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After her younger sister Aaliyah suffered from severe hair loss due to an intense scalp infection, Rainford\u2019s mother formulated a recipe that grew her sister\u2019s hair back. Rainford later used the same recipe when she experienced hair loss from having COVID-19 in 2020, and the formula also helped her grow her hair back.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Bronx native, a nurse practitioner at the time, knew she had something special on her hands and decided to share the product with the world.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">For many, the goal of entrepreneurship is straightforward, but Shaina Rainford\u2019s founder-journey was unexpected.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">After sharing her and her family\u2019s hair journey online, Rainford started selling the growth oils on Instagram, and Bask and Lather was born.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Now, in 2026, the brand has expanded its offerings with collections that include its signature Scalp Stimulator Oil, as well as an array of products catered to various hair needs like shampoo, conditioner, styling products, and a new Scalp Therapy System designed to nourish the scalp, which is often neglected.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\u201cCustomers are like, \u2018Oh, which one should I get?\u2019 It\u2019s not \u2018Which one should I get?\u2019 It\u2019s w<em>hen <\/em>you should use one or the other, and you should have both because scalp care and hair care are not separate. They are different parts of your hair care journey,\u201d Rainford told <em>HelloBeautiful.<\/em><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Bask and Lather is set to generate nine figures in revenue without investors, and it still remains a family-operated business<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As of August 2026, Bask and Lather is available for retail in 1,900 Walmart stores across 48 states. Now, <em>that<\/em>\u2019s a founder flex.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>RELATED CONTENT: <a href=\"https:\/\/madamenoire.com\/1677273\/regina-hall-2026-interview\/\">On Her Mama \u2014 Regina Hall Talks \u2018Scary Movie,\u2019 Her Famous Friendships, Riding For Black Women &amp; Staying Fine At 55 [Exclusive]<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-instagram wp-block-embed-instagram\"\/>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"listicle-slide\" data-page-number=\"1\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em><a href=\"https:\/\/hellobeautiful.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">HelloBeautiful<\/a>\u2019<\/em>s Char Masona chatted with the nurse practitioner-turned-CEO about her entrepreneurial journey, her biggest move as a founder, and more.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>HB: Bask and Lather started as a home remedy from your mom. You vulnerably shared about your sister\u2019s condition and your own struggles with hair loss after having COVID. Let\u2019s talk about the transition. What pushed you to say, \u2018I want to start a business?\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Shaina Rainford: <\/strong>Bask and Lather was never really intended to be a business. It was one thing to see my sister experience hair loss and be supportive. It was a completely different journey to experience hair loss myself during that summer 2020. Nobody knew COVID hair loss was a thing.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And I remember using the same two oils that my mom used for Aaliyah and saying, \u2018This is crazy.\u2019 Like, imagine how many other people that look just like me [are] going through this and have their backs against the wall and don\u2019t know where to turn. And I just started sharing my before and afters and my sister\u2019s on my Instagram.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Even though it was a bit embarrassing, I was just so astonished by the results. And people were like, \u2018Well, what are you using in your hair?\u2019 and then they wanted to buy some of it. So we started just like getting glass bottles from Amazon and filling it with the oils and people were picking it up and dropping it off. And then we started shipping.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I was like, \u2018Okay, I\u2019m pretty sure we can\u2019t keep accepting these types of like $1,000 a day in payments through Cash App, I\u2019m pretty sure this is not legal.\u2019 We need to make this a legitimate business. And my mom [and I], we created our LLC, EIN number, came up with a name and a logo, and [in] December 2020 we launched Bask and Lather.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"listicle-slide\" data-page-number=\"2\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>HB: Let\u2019s talk about working with family and Bask and Lather starting from your mom\u2019s home remedy. How does that shape your view on legacy as a businesswoman?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Shaina Rainford:\u00a0 <\/strong>I would say that I was very blessed. We would fill oils all week long and then on Fridays we would restock. And then on Sunday, I would have a house full of friends and family who were all paid, who would pack up all the orders. We were packing up like over 1,000 orders every Sunday, right from my living room. Right. And then we would sell out and then <strong>r<\/strong>estock again the next week. So, I was very blessed to be able to have resources and people that could help me fulfill and ship and do all of those things to keep things moving along. And then today, my family is still part of the business.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">My son is our head of growth. So, he\u2019s behind a lot of our exponential growth over the last two years.\u00a0 My stepfather runs one of our HQ warehouses. My mom helps with different things that I need to fill in gaps because the company has grown a lot faster than we\u2019ve grown our infrastructure. So, it\u2019s still very much family oriented. And then, I still have my first few real employees who started with the company when they used to work side-by-side when it was just me and my family. So, it\u2019s great to just see the evolution.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>HB: Can you talk to us about the power of social media in your growth as a company?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Shaina Rainford: <\/strong>Social media has allowed us to grow to a multiple nine figure-a-year business without investors, without debt and without retail. We haven\u2019t even entered retail yet. We will be very soon, next month. But, it\u2019s like a unicorn. It\u2019s unheard of. Our competitors, 80% of their business is retail and we\u2019ve done it completely opposite because we\u2019ve dominated social media and we were able to use a little bit of resources, have much higher profit margins, direct-to-consumer and scale the business significantly without diluting our profit margins. Also, when you\u2019re in retail, you don\u2019t have that endpoint with the consumer. You can\u2019t see their name, their address, who they are, where they live, what\u2019s their persona, how many times they came to your site, how many times they\u2019ve repurchased, right? You lose some of that. So I\u2019m glad that we did things our own way.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>HB: Do you have any advice for entrepreneurs who want to follow that path of the no investor route?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Shaina Rainford:<\/strong> I will say it\u2019s not for everyone. With investment up front, you get access to capital to scale, you get access to resources, which I think is even more important than the capital. You get access to resources to get the right people, the right processes and infrastructure on your team. My way is not a way that the type of product that we sell, you have to have the margins to be able to acquire a customer and be profitable on the first order to be able to scale the way we scale and not like in fashion, [or] in beverage. Some other industries, you\u2019re just not going to have that margin. It depends on the type of products you sell and your profit margins.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Two, you have to really understand every single aspect of your business. So for me, I was able to be very lean. Up until early last year, we had 7 to maybe 10 max employees, depending on the season of the year, onshore, and then customer service offshore.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And the reason we\u2019re able to operate lean is because one, there\u2019s every single thing in the business I know how to do, from e-mail, SMS marketing, to managing social media, to managing our cash flow and finances, to writing a purchase order if I need to. There are lots of people that don\u2019t know how to do that. If you\u2019re not a person that can be very lean and kind of stretch yourself thin to be able to move things along, you sometimes need partners who come in and can give your company money and resources to be able to scale. It really varies business to business. And I think that while it\u2019s great for me, because at this scale, I don\u2019t have any investors. I own 100% equity of the company. It\u2019s mine and I have no one to answer to. That\u2019s why I can make decisions with 80% of the information. I don\u2019t have to write a 200 page deck and present it to a board to make something happen for my customers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I\u2019m a big proponent of staying in your own lane, understanding your own business and not following what everyone else is doing because everything that glitters isn\u2019t gold, and you don\u2019t know what\u2019s going on on the other side.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"listicle-slide\" data-page-number=\"3\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>HB: <\/strong>What would you say is your biggest flex so far as a founder?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Shaina Rainford: <\/strong>I think my biggest flex is scaling to multiple nine figures a year in revenue that we\u2019re going to do this year without investors, without debt, without retail, still with the lean team. We\u2019re still sub 30 people. It truly is a unicorn of a business, all glory to God, and also just being able to stay true to every single decision I make is with the consumer in mind.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I never will, again, because I don\u2019t have those partners to answer to who are all about profit margin, where I have to make decisions that affect product quality or ingredient integrity because I\u2019m trying to please people who have shared ownership of my company. So I think that\u2019s my biggest flex.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>HB: The one Bask and Lather product that everybody needs?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Shaina Rainford: <\/strong>Dang. All right, it\u2019s summer right now. I\u2019m going to say our viral Stronghold Thick Edges Edge Control.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>HB: What would you say is a harsh truth or a hard pill that we as Black women have to swallow about our hair care?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>Shaina Rainford: <\/strong>I think our hair care is a journey. So interestingly enough, we have grown significantly with the same core hero SKUs (stock keeping units).<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">We just launched our first ever collection on July 1. I think of hair care as a journey. So, this new collection is all about scalp and I was inspired to make this collection two years ago because my son developed seborrheic dermatitis, and I found out 65% of black women have scalp issues. And we can grow your hair and length retention, but I created this new collection that\u2019s basically like skincare for your scalp and balancing and hydration.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Customers are like, \u2018Oh, which one should I get?\u2019 It\u2019s not \u2018Which one should I get?\u2019 It\u2019s w<em>hen <\/em>you should use one or the other, and you should have both because scalp care and hair care are not separate. They are different parts of your hair care journey, and our hair, it requires more work. It has more needs, but we can grow it and keep it, too.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>RELATED CONTENT: <a href=\"https:\/\/madamenoire.com\/1678903\/chloe-bailey-coco-jones-strung-peacock-exclusive-video\/\">Chl\u00f6e Bailey, Coco Jones &amp; The Cast Of \u2018Strung\u2019 Spill On Peacock\u2019s Wildest Thriller Yet And The Ending You Won\u2019t See Coming [Exclusive Video]<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Source: Courtesy Of Talent \/ Courtesy Of Talent Social media timelines have not been the same since Bask &amp; Lather hit the market. The thriving haircare brand wouldn\u2019t exist without its founder Shaina Rainford, and her mother\u2019s homemade growth recipe. After her younger sister Aaliyah suffered from severe hair loss due to an intense scalp&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39350,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/madamenoire.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2026\/08\/1763423610048-e1786029686716.jpg?quality=80&strip=all&w=1680&crop=0,0,100,960px","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39349","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrity-gossip"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39349","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39349"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39349\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39350"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39349"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39349"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39349"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}