Rachael Corson and Joycelyn Mate bonded over their shared passion. Now, they’re helping other black people embrace their natural hair
Rachael Corson and Joycelyn Mate agree that they couldn’t be in business with someone who wasn’t a friend. “It’s such an intimate relationship,” Mate explains. “I probably talk to Rachael more than my husband.”
They met at the University of Birmingham in the late noughties. “Rachael was the other black girl at university,” jokes Mate. Their idea for their natural haircare brand Afrocenchix, now in its 11th year, was sparked by an act of friendship: Mate shared a bottle of homemade hair oil with Corson, who realised the all-natural product could fill what was then a gaping chasm in the market, and the pair got to work. “We had a hair oil, a skin oil and we made 50 of each,” says Corson. “We put in £50, which paid for about 100 bottles of oil. And that’s where we started.”