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Ciara Imani May, a Kansas City resident, is the CEO and founder of the plant-based hair extension firm Rebundle, which makes “braidbetter” hair extensions that contain none of the toxic plastics commonly found in beauty supply stores.
Ciara’s biodegradable company creates hair using ethically harvested banana fiber and recycled biopolymers, resulting in slightly fuller strands than typical synthetic extensions. May believes that her extensions are beneficial to both the environment and the wellness of her scalp.
May had several issues with fake braiding hair before launching the brand in 2019. According to HuffPost, her scalp would grow incredibly itchy and sensitive, making her dread wearing protective styles.
She wasn’t sure if her discomfort was caused by her hair at first, but she soon realized that it wasn’t the things she was using to care for her braids that were the issue, but rather the hair itself. She began investigating the synthetic hair industry to learn how plastic hair was created, then purchased lab samples of two famous brands and conducted “customer discovery” with people who wore braids.
The young entrepreneur revealed that she contacted anybody she could find who truly understood what types of natural fibers were being utilized to replace plastics, until she eventually settled on banana fibers.
Rebundle, founded in St. Louis, claims to be the first plant-based hair extension firm in the United States. According to HuffPost, it soft-launched in January 2021 before relaunching later with a patent-pending version of the product.
During the month of Rebundle’s debut, Sherrell Dorsey, the founder and CEO of The Plug, an online magazine focusing on trends in Black creativity in technology, tweeted in support of the eco-friendly braids. Some of the responses suggested a strong interest for the product.
