Meet Toyin – The Visionary Behind OLORI
Toyin is a beauty entrepreneur and corporate powerhouse on a mission to take African beauty global. Her love for beauty started young—rooted in childhood memories of exploring her mother’s makeup bag and discovering haircare secrets in the family bathroom. But it took 15 years, a career in global cosmetics and consumer goods across the US, Europe, and Africa, and a deep understanding of brand marketing, product development, and distribution to bring OLORI to life. She saw a gap in the market—premium, African-inspired haircare designed for multi-textured hair.
But the true spark? A hair-coloring mishap that led her back to a cherished family remedy—her mother’s deep-conditioning formula that revived and restored her hair. What started as a personal fix soon became a must-have for friends and family, fueling the birth of OLORI’s flagship Deep Conditioning & Restorative Treatment and the launch of the Damage Be Gone range.
From that moment, OLORI became more than just an idea; it was a movement. The Damage Be Gone collection was born, setting the foundation for a brand dedicated to transforming and celebrating African hair—powered by nature, tradition, and innovation.
After years of nursing the ambition of owning her own beauty company since her early teenage years, a hair coloring accident a few years ago finally propelled her to produce what would become Olori’s first product. She had her mother mix a deep conditioning concoction that she had always used to nurture hers and her sister’s hair while they were growing up.
This love for healthy hair & skin drove Toyin to conceptualize the idea for the company over 15 years ago, working with her mother in what is now known as Olori Kitchen Lab, in Lagos, Nigeria.
An African Family Heritage
Toyin’s natural affinity for entrepreneurship may also be tied to her grandfather, Jacob Soboyega Odulate, the inventor and founder of the iconic Nigerian household headache remedy, Alabukun Powder. As a young girl, she observed this long heritage of blending natural products in her family, and today all her recipes for the formulations of the different products are inspired from a mesh of passed down recipes from her mother and aunts, and grandfather’s ethos for creating effective remedies from locally grown & sourced ingredients.
Ethos
Olori, which means queen or woman of royal descent in the Yoruba language, which also serves as a backdrop to Toyin’s proud Yoruba heritage, is comprised of hair products made up of ingredients that are ethically sourced from women-led cooperatives across West & Northern Africa.
Our niche and focus are to create hair, body and skincare for women of African descent, uniquely targeted at their hair or skin textures, creating effective products to solve beauty problems naturally but effectively.