By Nnenna Ibeh
Abisola Aboh founded Full Bloom Beauty in June 2020 at the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Her beauty line has since provided natural products for afro hair textures using only 100 percent natural and plant-based vegan ingredients to formulate cruelty-free products free of parabens, silicones, sulphate, and other harmful chemicals.
Arralista, as she is popularly known by her customers, in an interview with AMAKA explains that Full Bloom Beauty centers Black women’s natural afro hair in its entire range and offers a variety of impressive products on its online store, made out of the finest natural ingredients, to help customers grow and maintain healthy, thicker, and longer hair. In other words, Abisola teaches Black women to love their hair.
AMAKA: You teach Black women to love their hair. How do you do that?
Abisola: I can talk about Full Bloom all day because that's what brought me here.
Full Bloom came about during the pandemic; like of all things, I started my own business during the COVID-19 pandemic. It sounds crazy because I never thought I would own my hair care line here. But as things turned out, a couple of years before that, I had started my own YouTube channel as a result - just because I wanted to show people how to treat my type of hair.
At that time, there were not too many options on how to treat African hair, especially here in the United Kingdom, where I live, there are a lot more in the United States. So, as a result of having my own YouTube channel, I just tend to use a lot of different products, and I was always very surprised. It didn't matter if it was an expensive product and a lot of times, I ended up very very disappointed about the results I got.
This led me to do a little bit of research and do things a little bit better and again because it was the pandemic, I also could get products like the way I used to do. I started to mix my own stuff and low and behold it started doing wonders for my hair.
My hair was so much better. It was growing longer, healthier, and just blooming, and people started to ask, "what are you using on your hair?" And I go like, you can never believe that they are products I produce for myself and they started to ask me to make them and also got wonderful results. Before you know it, the rest is history and Full Bloom… was born.
AMAKA: It is strange that when many people were in panic, you were being creative on how to help the Black women. How did you manage to do that?
Abisola: One of my key things is life is when things don't work the way they are supposed to
I think the pandemic exposed many things for us Black women. It exposed the fact that a lot of us women really do not know how to care for their hair properly; we just lack that knowledge because a lot of us don't just know what to do with our hair.
So with the pandemic and our inability to go to the saloon like we normally do now became a very big issue. People were looking for ways to care for their natural African hair. That's the gap Full Bloom Hair plans to close, and don't get me wrong, Full Bloom Beauty is for every hair type, whether you're relaxed or not.
After I had my daughter, I knew I didn't want her to relax her hair, and I knew I couldn't be a hypocrite relaxing my hair and telling her not to. So I knew the only option was to learn how to care for my hair properly, and that just started.
I now teach other women how to care for their hair while creating natural and bigger products without harsh chemicals that ruin their hair.
AMAKA: There are numerous products in the market, and Black women have been using them for their hair. What makes Full Bloom different?
Abisola: Believe me, there's a huge amount of products that are sold to Black women that shouldn't be out there. And one thing is it also takes time for the side effects of these products to begin to take a toll on our hair in our lives.
Again, we are getting a lot more woke, a lot more information about how to care for ourselves, and it's up to us - that is the way I always think about it - to solve our own problems.
All our (Full Bloom Beauty) products are natural and vegan. Not only are they natural, we go the extra mile to make them vegan. And it's easy to make natural products, and that's not completely to say that only natural products work for our hair type.
AMAKA: Could you highlight some of the natural products Full Bloom Beauty uses?
Abisola: Generally, I just like that cleaner space, so we only use cold-pressed natural oils and Ingredients, which are slightly more expensive, but in the long run, they are better for your hair.
Our products are also good for babies. I was speaking to a friend once, and it hit me that even from the point of delivery at the hospitals, we are already loaded with baby packs filled with products.
And it's a psyche thing because you see it as some act of kindness, thinking they've given you something to start your baby's journey, but on the contrary, it is a marketing strategy they have adopted. They give you these products in an organisation you trust, and you feel, oh, because my doctor and nurse gave them to me, they are the best products to use for your baby. They give you these samples, but I tell you, they are the worst products you can ever use on any baby.
And in our ignorance, we take these things and use them on our kids. A lot of times, the questions I get from mothers are about what they can use on their kids.
I teach African women to know that what they give is what they get in return. So if you care for your hair minimally, your hair will tell you that you neglect it but if you really really care for your hair, your hair will tell me, and I love that about our hair.
Our most popular product is the hair growth oil, and that's just because it's what you can see with the fastest result, and women are maybe more interested in growing their hair than any other thing.
We also tend to let people know that hair care is holistic and you have to take care of a range of things for you to see the result you so desire.
AMAKA: What are some of the ways Black women can care for their hair type?
Abisola: Our hairstyles are the biggest contributor to what or how our hair looks. People are losing their edges due to the kind of hairstyles they make. We need to make more protective hairstyles, and that is why we have hair growth oil which anyone can apply by themselves and massage into their scalp and revive their edges. So I teach people how to restore their edges using hair growth oil.
So when they find out that the oil made their hair grow and also did not make their scalp itch, they want to try other Full Bloom products, and then we work them through holistic hair care, which involves other products.
There is the Deliverance (it delivers your hair from whatever it might be going through), the cleanse (our shampoo), and we restore our hair with our restore conditioner.
The Deliverance is made of Ayurvedic oil which Indian women have used for a very long time. This is followed by the use of the Cleanse, which also washes the hair clean without robbing off your natural hair oils. Contrary to our Caucasian brothers and sisters with silky hair with lots of oil, our hair is often dry, so the cleanse helps us to maintain our natural hair oil. And we should cleanse our hair once a week. We had a lot of bad messages about not allowing water on our hair, but the truth is we should wash our hair at least once a week.
Then with the restore conditioner, we restore all the moisture back into our hair. Some women tend to leave the conditioner in their hair for hours because they want it to get softened but that’s wrong. You don’t need to do that; five to ten minutes is okay for conditioning.
You can also do the leave-in conditioner and you follow that up with a hair butter called Embrace. Embrace will help your hair embrace moisture better. If you were just to apply your leave-in conditioner like that, it will evaporate and get dry, leading to hair breakage but with the Embrace layered on; it takes up moisture. After that, you can go in with the finishing oil, which helps you protect your hair by sealing the moisture.
You can braid your hair after the process, and the ideal period to carry your braided hair is one month, although many people carry it for a longer period. And you find out after this process that when you take out your braids, your hair looks healthier and longer.