The Power of Partnering (POP) is a half-day event where women entrepreneurs, business leaders, corporations and procurement professionals come together to train, network and create matchmaker opportunities to help create and reach procurement and business goals.
Each agenda includes educational resources from thought leadership and subject matter experts and the opportunity to showcase your capabilities statements in a meet the buyer setting or matchmaker sessions.
Ceata Lash is the Founder and CEO of The Puff Cuff. After a childhood of chemically straightening her hair, Ceata decided to make the big chop and transition to her natural hair.
Little did she know that going back to her naturally thick and curly hair would mean she’d be faced with the impossible task of finding a hair accessory to hold and style her hair. That is, until she came up with the idea of the PuffCuff.
Ceata is the winner of GWBC’s Perfect Pitch competition.
Connect with Ceata on LinkedIn and follow The Puff Cuff on Facebook and Instagram.
This transcript is machine transcribed by Sonix.
TRANSCRIPT
Intro: Broadcasting live from the Business RadioX Studios in Atlanta, Georgia, it’s time for GWBC Radio’s Open For Business. Now, here’s your host.
Lee Kantor: Lee Kantor here, broadcasting live from GWBC Power of Partnering event at the Georgia Power Headquarters. I’m so excited to be talking to the Perfect Pitch winner, Ceata Lash with The PuffCuff. Welcome.
Ceata Lash: Thank you for having me.
Lee Kantor: Well, I do not know what The PuffCuff is, but I’m sure you can tell me all about it.
Ceata Lash: All about it.
Lee Kantor: So, tell us about The PuffCuff.
Ceata Lash: The PuffCuff is the alternative to elastic hair ties. So, in order for me to style my hair in its natural texture, I would always have to be using hair ties or altering using shoe strings or whatever, because I couldn’t find anything to accommodate the thickness and texture of my hair. But no matter what tool I used, it was always causing me to have a headache, like a blazing headache. And not only that, the breakage from the tension and everything else.
Lee Kantor: Because you were kind of just rigging stuff, right? There was no kind of solution. You were just trying to make it work.
Ceata Lash: Totally rigging. Just rigging it. My go-to was boot size shoestrings from Walmart. Just going and buying them by the case.
Lee Kantor: Just buying a bunch of it.
Ceata Lash: Right. And I would tie it around my neck and then cinch it to, like, get all my hair up.
Lee Kantor: The way you wanted it, right?
Ceata Lash: Yeah. And just pray that it stayed there all day.
Lee Kantor: And just hope that it would last all day.
Ceata Lash: Right. But even if it lasted all day, I was an ugly acting person by the time.
Lee Kantor: You weren’t happy.
Ceata Lash: No. Hungry and angry, because that’s when we lived in Chicago. At least people in Chicago have Drive With The Purpose. Here, it’s a whole different story.
Lee Kantor: So, now, you have a problem, obviously, and now you are just trying to figure out a solution. What kind of compelled you, did you have the skills, “Okay. Let me solve this problem for everybody here. Let me just invent something that’s going to solve this problem”?
Ceata Lash: So, to be completely transparent, I was solving the problem for me.
Lee Kantor: Right. Exactly. That was that bonus that everybody else got to solve the problem, too.
Ceata Lash: Figured that, you know, maybe some girlfriends, maybe I’d sell it on Amazon or eBay.
Lee Kantor: So, you weren’t really looking at it as this is a thing.
Ceata Lash: No, not at all. I literally was just like, I’m not going back to chemically straightening my hair. I just need to be able to put it up.
Lee Kantor: And it’s just ridiculous this problem hasn’t been solved yet.
Ceata Lash: Exactly. And then, it took me a long time to believe that it wasn’t being solved.
Lee Kantor: But because you kept searching everywhere.
Ceata Lash: I kept searching.
Lee Kantor: And asking friends, I’m sure.
Ceata Lash: No.
Lee Kantor: No? You were just trying to —
Ceata Lash: Because it was one of those things before curly hair was a thing. So, all of my girlfriends, mom, dad – I mean, not dad – moms, aunties, grandmas, they were straightening their hair. I was like a fish out of water.
Lee Kantor: So then, you have an idea, okay, maybe this will work, and then you just start iterating and trying different things.
Ceata Lash: Yeah. The idea first came from a little clip that my grandmother and mother had that actually was by Goodie a thousand years ago, and it was about the size probably about a-half-dollar, if people even know what a-half-dollar is nowadays.
Lee Kantor: Is that some new crypto thing?
Ceata Lash: Right, some crypto and it’s a half what? Is it paper? But the teeth went all the way through, and I was like, okay, the only thing getting through teeth like this that are so close are straight hair. I need something just with the teeth shorter and much larger.
Lee Kantor: But at least that gave you an idea.
Ceata Lash: It did give me the concept.
Lee Kantor: Right. So, now you have that, and then it kind of evolved. Were you actually like —
Ceata Lash: Whittling out? Yeah. Yeah, I did. No, literally I did. I had a friend, one of our good friends from college, he was a carpenter. So, I was like, “You know what? Can you make me one of these?”
Lee Kantor: Make me one of these?
Ceata Lash: Make it out of wood.
Lee Kantor: Did you sketch it out?
Ceata Lash: So, I’m a graphic designer by career.
Lee Kantor: So, you can draw things like that.
Ceata Lash: I could draw it, but I couldn’t make it flat.
Lee Kantor: Three dimensional.
Ceata Lash: You know, flat from 3D to 3D. So, yes, he carved it out of wood for me. And then, at that time, I was working for a community college outside of Chicago, and, of course, that was when community college adjunct professors work at night, so I cataloged stocked when the catalog actually was a catalog book. And I just wanted somebody to meet me for lunch to discuss it and finally someone did, and that’s how it kind of went from there.
Lee Kantor: So then, it went from this wooden prototype and then you just started kind of —
Ceata Lash: Went from a wooden prototype to a 3D print, one of the first ones ever.
Lee Kantor: You were probably excited about 3D printing, right?
Ceata Lash: I was. I was. Like, this is cool. Not that everybody’s going to have one at home now.
Lee Kantor: Right, but it works for me.
Ceata Lash: But it works. Yeah. So, the adjunct professor and the engineering department that met with me, he connected me to a CAD engineer, and then the CAD engineer did my 3D prototype for me. We worked through the different iterations there.
Lee Kantor: How many iterations?
Ceata Lash: Maybe four.
Lee Kantor: Really? So, you were pretty close?
Ceata Lash: I was very close. The thing that kept tripping us up was how to do the teeth on it and how to do the hook, because it was hard for them to understand how much density and pressure thick hair could put on a tool. And they were like, “Yeah, you should just be able to use a little plug and stem for that rivet part.” Like, I know where.
Lee Kantor: You’re not understanding this.
Ceata Lash: Right. This is this is serious hair. And I don’t even have the most hair —
Lee Kantor: That somebody could have.
Ceata Lash: Right.
Lee Kantor: So, they were just putting it right into your hair? Were you kind of the guinea pig of this?
Ceata Lash: I was the first, of course. But then, I tried it on everybody on campus that would let me, and then my church members, and my family.
Lee Kantor: And then, like, you were trying to break it, right?
Ceata Lash: I was trying to break it. And we kept breaking the hooks. And then, finally, the manufacturer of my injection molder, he was able to help me come up with the design of the hooks.
Lee Kantor: Because they were thinking, “No, we got this.” And then, you were like, “No, you don’t got this.”
Ceata Lash: No. I have several of the broken prototypes left at home.
Lee Kantor: Be part of the museum, right?
Ceata Lash: Exactly. That’s why I kept them, like this is going to be worth something someday.
Lee Kantor: So then, what compelled you to get involved with GWBC?
Ceata Lash: Because I had every mentor say you really need to get certified as a woman-owned business. And I’m like, I don’t even know if I’m a business yet.
Lee Kantor: It didn’t feel like a business?
Ceata Lash: You know what? It felt like a business. But I had everybody telling me it’s not a business. It’s a product. I was like, yeah, well, this sure as hell feels like a business.
Lee Kantor: Exactly. I’m feeling the pain of a business.
Ceata Lash: Right. Feeling it, right. So then, like I said, I didn’t start on this path to build any business.
Lee Kantor: You were just solving your own problem.
Ceata Lash: I was just solving a problem and figure, like, there’s probably a couple other folks that could use this, too. But it’s grown.
Lee Kantor: So, what have you learned, that there’s a lot of people that can use this solution?
Ceata Lash: There are more people than I know that I didn’t even realized. Because in the very beginning, I’m an African-American woman, I figured it was just going to be African-American women using this. But then, the more I put myself out in different situations, it was, no, this is a curly hair problem. Curly hair is not a problem. I don’t want to say that. But this is a solution for those with curly hair, and curly hair comes across all ethnicities. And then, it was like, “Oh, by the way, it works with locks, it works with braids, it works with wigs if the wig is curly.” There’s so many different applications.
Lee Kantor: That you didn’t even think about it at the time?
Ceata Lash: I had no clue. Like, even right now, we’re partnering with the University of Rochester Medical Systems because their nurses have realized that there is a gap in being able to take care of their patients that have textured hair, and they don’t teach you how to care for hair during nursing school.
Ceata Lash: So, if you have textured hair, if you’re admitted to the hospital, most likely you’re going to be there for at least five days. So, if you’re five days laying on a pillow, all of the matted up hair, most likely, usually you end up having to get your hair cut off. And it’s like that does something different to your dignity, your self-esteem, even the amount of care that you get because you have maybe a nurse or a doctor, or whatever, who has a different race than you.
Lee Kantor: Right. It’s not even in their radar.
Ceata Lash: Right. It’s not in their radar. And it’s like not trying to be feeling any type of way about it. But it’s just in your nature, you know, if you’re looking disheveled, it’s like —
Lee Kantor: It’s going to impact your recovery.
Ceata Lash: Yeah. Exactly.
Lee Kantor: So, now you’ve learned a lot just going through this process.
Ceata Lash: I’ve learned so much. It’s overwhelming. Totally.
Lee Kantor: Right. So, now, what do you need more of? How can we help you?
Ceata Lash: Money.
Lee Kantor: Money? Are you looking for investors or are you looking for clients? What kind of money? Because there’s smart money —
Ceata Lash: Right, there’s smart money and there’s dangerous money and there’s bad money and there’s fast money, and that’s the stuff that you learn along the way.
Lee Kantor: That’s right.
Ceata Lash: I’m looking for a strategic investor because I want to scale and there’s so many different applications for this. In the climate that we’re in now, people aren’t spending money the way they used to, but there’s so much of the market that I haven’t tapped yet.
Lee Kantor: And the problem hasn’t gone away.
Ceata Lash: The problem’s not going away. Because COVID really, I think, sparked it, but it’s a unisex hair tool. You have so many more men growing out their hair, and y’all’s hair is better than ours because you haven’t destroyed it with chemicals and stuff for the past 20 years or 30 years of your life. So, when you do have curls, the guys curls are way much better than ours.
Lee Kantor: So, if somebody wants to learn more and connect with you, is there a website, social media? I would imagine this does really well on social media your product.
Ceata Lash: Yes. So, we are everywhere on social. You can purchase The PuffCuff at thepuffcuff.com. We’re also on Amazon. But of course, I get more money if you purchase it directly from me and not Amazon. And on social, on every single channel, we are @-T-H-E-P-U-F-F-C-U-F-F, @thepuffcuff.
Lee Kantor: Well, congratulations on all the success and the momentum. You just have to be over the moon proud of what you’ve accomplished so far.
Ceata Lash: I so needed it.
Lee Kantor: A big achievement.
Ceata Lash: Thank you. Thank you very much.
Lee Kantor: Well, thank you again for sharing your story. You’re doing such important work and we appreciate you.
Ceata Lash: I appreciate y’all. This is great. Thank you.
Lee Kantor: All right. This is Lee Kantor, back in a few at GWBC Power of Partnering.
