When Cora and Stefan Miller first embarked on their entrepreneurial journey, the goal was to empower young kings through haircare products. Today, that continues to be their North Star.

Young King Hair Care was initially launched as a direct-to-consumer (DTC) brand in December 2019, since then they’ve achieved massive success as the first multicultural beauty brand for young men. The business solves an issue that they knew all too well, finding hair products designed specifically with their son in mind was far and few between.

“We’ve evolved,” said Cora Miller during an interview with aspireTV when asked if the vision for the company has shifted in any way. “Just how we show up for boys, young men, and teens along the way. I honestly think our mission has always been grounded and redefining grooming for the next generation, so we’ve always been about championing young men of color and making sure they understand the importance of self-care and grooming and what that means for them as they go out in the world and show up, being and feeling like their best selves. That’s never changed. That’s at the root, the core of what we do that drives us every day. But, I do think how we show up for them has changed because our boys are dynamic, they’re evolving, their styles are evolving and so we want to make sure we can always meet them where they’re at.”

There’s really no exact recipe for the success that the Millers have achieved with Young King Hair Care, however, Cora does admit that they lean on parents and young men on what their needs are and center their products around them.

“We recently launched a collection for locs, braids, and twists, but this has been in the making for years,” she explained. “That collection, when we initially launched, I would say within the first couple of months, people were asking us, ‘Well, what about loc products?’ And we’re like, oh yeah, we sould probably do that. But, let’s do all these other things first, but have kept that coming up over and over again and so we’ve been slowly, but surely building this collection.”

 

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She added, “Leveraging the feedback from our community, testing it with various people who are close to the brand that have always rode for Young King, and sending out samples and having them try it to make sure it was right. Our development process, in summary, always starts with the customer, understanding what they want and then me, because I kind of lead this process. We have a Black chemist who specializes in textured hairs so we work very closely with her and her team to really develop the products so that they adhere to what the core of Young King Hair Care’s essential products stand for, which is plant-based or natural ingredients.”

A family affair, Young King Hair Care is all about the Millers starting with Cora’s husband and co-founder Stefan who serves as the marketing guru behind the brand. Their son, Kade, is the inspiration behind the line and Cora is the CEO. 

“He’s just my good kind of creative partner where we can bounce ideas and talk through things and strategize, and its just been dope working with him to create Young King Hair Care and bring it to life,” she said of her husband and partner in crime, Stefan. “With our son being the inspiration, we definitely bring him in all the things, like, ‘Yes, Kade, you’re gonna come with us to this photoshoot so you can see how we are bringing this all to life.’”

Cora recalls how it even goes as far as taking their children to see the products on the shelves in stores like Target so that they can witness all of the hard work, and the reward that goes into building something from the ground up.

“He even started mimicking my husband because we go to the shelf every time we go to Target, Walmart or CVS, we are always checking out how Young King Hair Care is looking on the shelf and making it look nice. Now, Kade does that on his own. He knows we gotta go to the aisle, he’s fixing the products n the shelf, so its been really cool just to see him kidn of grow up with the company. This whole idea came to mind when he was like 12 months and now he’s seven so just to see him kind of grow up and even you can just see from our pictures of him. It’s been so great to have him be a part of what we’re building and then even my daughter, my husband and I joke like now we have to have a business for Cree and I’m like, ‘Nah, she has just broken right up in there.’ Just to be able to showcase what this journey, literally building from scratch, starting from the bottom up, and working hard and persevering, weathering all the challenges along the way. I hope more than anything, that’s what our children can take away from seeing mom and dad build Young King Hair Care.”

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