After years of using hair relaxers, Adria Marshall was eager to ditch the chemicals and embrace her natural curls. But when she hit up the top beauty brands in search of a product that worked with her hair texture, she often came back empty-handed.
“If by happenstance I found a product that worked for me, when I flipped the jar over to look at the ingredients, there was a lot to be desired,” she recalled. “As a gardener, I was really concerned to see what was inside these products.”
Marshall started tinkering with ingredients from her local farmer’s market to make a styling gel that provided the moisture and hold she was looking for. Through trial and error, she created the basis for Orange Marmalade, the flagship product of what would eventually become Ecoslay, from her kitchen. Today, the company is a multi-million-dollar sustainable hair care brand.
“My personal values are sustainability, kindness and ingredient integrity. Those really became the pillars of my company, and it’s why I chose the name, which to me says: ‘slay your look, not the planet.’”
In 2018, Marshall set up her own e-commerce website, and sent a sample of Orange Marmalade to an online hair care influencer she respected. What she didn’t realize was that the influencer uploaded a video giving the product a glowing review. Orange Marmalade became an overnight success, and Ecoslay went from zero orders to 1,000 in two weeks.
“When I started to see email after email with new orders, that’s when I knew it was getting out of control,” said Marshall. “My mood went from elation to panic very quickly.”
Marshall, who was still creating the product from her kitchen, realized she needed to scale, and quickly. She reached out to factories for help with manufacturing, but found none shared her commitment to using local ingredients found in nature. That’s when she decided to hire staff and partner with a local farmer with a plot on the Truly Living Well urban farm in downtown Atlanta who shared her ethos for organic ingredients and championing small businesses.
“I was shocked to learn there was a farm of that scale inside the Metro Atlanta area. But it’s amazing to drive 20 minutes and go pick the crops that I put inside our products,” said Marshall.
Over the next few years, she expanded Ecoslay’s product line to include cleansers, conditioners, gels and other hair products for textures ranging from wavy to kinky. In 2020, with a full line of products and an efficient manufacturing process, she was ready to scale and Marshall opened her Amazon storefront.
Marshall, a former program manager, says that Amazon’s tools have proven invaluable for keeping her business on track, including Amazon Inventory Management, which helps her forecast the amount of products she needs to send to the Amazon warehouse to make sure she’s never out of stock.
Another program that helped Marshall take her business to the next level was Amazon’s Black Business Accelerator, which provided free resources and support to ensure Ecoslay thrived.
“Fun fact, our BBA representative was actually a customer of ours,” recalled Marshall. “She was passionate about our brand and thought it could really go somewhere with Amazon Prime. And she was right.”
BBA gave Marshall pointers on how she could improve the quality of her brand page in the Amazon store by using A+ Content to add video, lifestyle images and a hair quiz. Within a year, sales increased tenfold—and have doubled year-on-year ever since. Ecoslay is now a $3 million business, with nearly a third of that revenue coming in from Amazon.
“We’re on track to hit $1 million in Amazon sales alone this year, which is insane,” said Marshall.
Ecoslay’s success has given Marshall the means to give back to the local community and planet. In 2023, Ecoslay launched the Farm to Pouch initiative, ditching plastic bottles in favor of more environmentally-friendly pouches—culling 82% of plastic from Ecoslay’s packaging. Marshall also launched the Ecoslay Foundation—whose mission is to tackle homelessness and food waste—and partnered with non-profits HEY! Atlanta and Atlanta Mission to hire people from Atlanta’s unhoused population to work on the farm and in Ecoslay’s kitchen team.
Marshall values how Amazon has made it easy to rally excitement for the causes she champions by giving her a platform via her brand page.
“Amazon has made it really easy for us to show our customers our values by giving us flexibility to share our story,” said Marshall. “I don’t want our customers to think we’re just another hair brand. I want them to know that we actually care—about the impact we have on our community, and about what our customers put inside and on their bodies.”