Pattern Is Bringing Curl-Conscious Thinking to the Flat Iron
Tracee Ellis Ross’s haircare company built its first straightening tool for curls, coils and tight textures, and the strategy behind it is a lesson in growing with the customer you already have.
By Black Beauty Founders Staff
For years, much of the textured-hair conversation centered on embracing curls and coils. Pattern Beauty’s latest expansion makes a different point: versatility belongs in that conversation, too.
Pattern, founded by Tracee Ellis Ross, who also serves as co-CEO, has introduced its first Vibrating Flat Iron alongside a Detox Shampoo and Blow Out Primer, all designed for curls, coils and tight textures. The collection debuted August 13 on patternbeauty.com and reached Ulta Beauty stores nationwide on August 23.
The $119 flat iron uses ceramic-coated plates that vibrate up to 12,000 times per minute, technology designed to reduce friction and snagging so the iron moves through hair in fewer passes. Users choose among 14 heat settings that top out at 450 degrees, and the vibration can be switched off. The $25 Detox Shampoo lifts buildup, chlorine and hard water minerals without stripping moisture, while the $27 Blow Out Primer preps damp hair with heat protection and humidity defense.
The campaign said as much as the product. Ross appears in a sleek straight style for the first time in years, alongside Anderson .Paak and Ryan Destiny, in visuals inspired by late-’90s and early-2000s R&B videos. A textured-hair company is saying, clearly and stylishly, that straight styles belong to its customer too.
That is an important evolution. Black hair consumers have often been marketed to through rigid categories. Natural. Relaxed. Protective. Straight. Curly. Real life is considerably messier, and much more interesting.
The opportunity is not to tell her which version of her hair is correct.
Someone can wear a wash-and-go on Monday, braids next month and a silk press for an event without changing her relationship to her natural texture. The opportunity is to build products that perform across the ways she actually chooses to wear her hair.
Pattern’s expansion also offers a business lesson for founders weighing adjacent categories. The company did not jump from conditioner into an unrelated product simply to add SKUs. Its first heat tool, a blow dryer, arrived in January 2023, followed by an interchangeable curling iron and a hair steamer. Each one extends the same problem Pattern has worked on since its 2019 launch: giving textured-hair consumers tools designed with their needs in mind.
The flat iron moves Pattern closer to becoming a complete textured-hair system rather than a collection of wash-day products.
The Founder Takeaway
Growth does not always require finding an entirely new customer. Sometimes the next category is sitting inside something your existing customer has already been asking you to solve.
Read your reviews, your DMs and your customer service inbox before you read another trend report.
One reviewer on Pattern’s site, 71 years young, said she has tried just about everything over the years. This iron, she wrote, takes the prize.
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