How we will change our industry.

How we will change our industry.

How we will change our industry.

How we will change our industry.

How we will change our industry.

How we will change our industry.

How we will change our industry.

How we will change our industry.

How we will change our industry.

September - Update

As a Ruka Hair customer you no doubt have shopped with us because you were recommended by a friend, saw one of our ads or perhaps even discovered us in person at one of our Pop-Ups.

Regardless of how you came to find Ruka, we’re happy to have you here on this journey with us, and our mission has remained the same since our inception: to create a shopping experience we didn’t see growing up, a shopping experience we believe Black women want and deserve.


So, what's going on?

So far in 2022 we have proudly served thousands of you both online and in store, however a small proportion of our customers have got in touch to let us know that their recent purchases have not met their expectations, and the quality they have grown accustomed to expecting from us.


Some of you Ruka babes have been with us since the very beginning; with several orders under your belts, you are well versed with our usual hair quality and standards, enough to know when something is just not like us and is therefore worth drawing our attention to.

For this support and rapport with you our customer we are supremely grateful. Honouring and serving you will continue to be our highest priority - we will not allow any of our production partners to compromise on this privilege. And so, in navigating this unregulated industry, we invest extensively in lawyers and contracts to introduce this new, but long overdue standard. Our quality expectations must be clearly understood as a non-negotiable factor in doing business with us.


What does this mean for the future?

We're taking a few products back to the lab until our manufacturer can consistently get them right. These are the select products that in the past month, have continuously failed to meet the mark of expectation. They'll be marked on the website as 'in the lab' for development.


Your continued honest feedback and faith in our capabilities has emboldened us to be proactive in identifying areas for improvement and striving each day to deliver on our mission. The sheer volume and scope of black women we are serving has grown globally and with that growth comes a greater responsibility.

Though it is only a small proportion of our consumers who have raised concerns about their recent order, for us, even that small proportion and the margin of error it creates is enough for us to say we’re going to pause, take the necessary product lines back to the lab, with some with small to no defect being set aside for our Marketplace to reduce our carbon footprint. We ultimately have to pave the way for regulation within the hair industry by holding these production partners accountable for meeting our expectations and the quality standards they agreed to.

If you have any thoughts about anything we have mentioned here and would like to speak to us, please do reach out via help@rukahair.com and we will be happy to answer your questions.


With love,

Team RUKA, xx

 


Price promise

We want to work together with you to reduce the Black Woman Tax (the tax we pay on products just for having curly / coily hair) by reducing the prices of our products as we scale. Every Ruka purchase gets us one step closer towards being able to reduce our pricing without compromising fair pay to our hair donors and texture creators - who are so often exploited in this industry.

Ethics and transparency

We promise to continuously review our product development process, to ensure that we are pushing the industry to a standard of sourcing and manufacturing that empowers, uplifts and protects women. We’ll do all of this, whilst maintaining radical transparency with you so you can learn alongside us and hold us accountable.

Sustainability

We commit to having 100% sustainable packaging by the end of 2022. We’ve seen the level of waste that our industry generates - from old human hair products to plastic shampoo packaging. We also know that the limited good product options for Black women often leaves us with no choice but to go with unsustainable options. You shouldn’t have to compromise the health of the planet to maintain the health of your hair, so our commitment is to have totally recyclable/compostable packaging by the end of 2022.