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Hair Today
Topics: Entrepreneurship-GeneralDemographics-Race-African American, BlackLifestyle-Fashion and Beauty
Hair Today
Topics: Entrepreneurship-GeneralDemographics-Race-African American, BlackLifestyle-Fashion and Beauty
Hair Today
Upgrade founder Britney Winters (Photo by Marie De Jesús)
When Britney Winters (MBA 2016) tuned in to this year’s Super Bowl, she was more focused on the halftime show than the game itself. When that moment came, Winters watched as Grammy Award–winning singer Mary J. Blige rocked 40 cascading inches of wavy golden hair—a custom wig provided by Upgrade, the business Winters launched in 2019 with initial funding from classmate Ekaterina Lazaroff-Puck.
Like so many startups, Upgrade was born from a pain point. As an MBA, Winters, lacking options in Boston, traveled to New York to have her hair done—an expensive, labor-intensive process. And time was precious: In addition to her studies, Winters was guardian of her sister, who was 14 at the time. “I remember thinking, ‘This is absolutely crazy,’” she says. After writing a paper about Drybar and its disruption of blowouts, Winters brainstormed applications for the $5.8 billion global wig and extensions market.
Today, Upgrade is an e-commerce site where customers can create a customized wig at an average cost of $500; it also has a brick-and-mortar location in Houston’s Third Ward, where Winters was raised by her grandmother. In addition, Upgrade offers a B2B, subscription-based software product for independent stylists to manage orders, payments, and shipments, and will soon introduce a microloan product.
With a Series A fundraise to come, Winters hopes to increase Upgrade’s market share, offering more and more women like herself a convenient, time-saving option: “In the morning I’m no longer wrestling with my hair,” she says. “I just throw on a wig and go—and that has been life-changing.”
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