Maintenance category of the hair care products is full of products that consume more than 50% of your store shelf space. The items in this category are products that should be kept in everyone’s bathroom. These products are used to maintain your hair on a daily routine. Products included in this category are Shampoos for cleansing, Conditioners for making your hair soft and silky, and most importantly the moisturizers to keep your hair looking young and healthy.

One of the most important daily routines to keep your health is to keep it moisturized. Heat is the number one major enemy to our hair. Chemical and heat styling has a negative effect on the hair.  Everyday use of hair dryers, hot irons, and straighteners can damage your hair by drawing moisture from the inside of the hair, making it brittle and fragile. Also having curly and fine hair requires a lot of moisture because the hair strands are thin and curly, the hair is naturally at the potential point of breakage, and it is at the weakest state of the hair. Moisturizing is also required for people that wear their hair in styles and trends like, braids, twist and loc, that tends to have very dry hair due to all the twisting and turning of the hair fibers which also leaves hair vulnerable to breakage.

Before you go and buy a bunch of hair chemicals to moisturize your hair, you must understand how to keep your hair moisturized in a healthy way. Like plants, you can damage your hair by having too much moisture which causes hair swelling. Hair swelling is referred to a state when the hair stands are holding more moisture than it can hold, and the hair can become damaged.

So, how do you find out how much moisture is right for your hair?

You can easily do a simple “Hair Porosity” test at home. Hair porosity refers to the ability for a strand of hair to absorb water and retain moisture. Simply shampoo and rinse your hair to remove any product buildup. Once your hair is clean and dry, drop a single strand of your hair into the glass of water. Watch the strand to see if it sinks to the bottom of the glass or floats at the top. If it sinks to the bottom, you probably have high hair porosity. If the hair floats somewhere in the middle you have normal hair porosity, and finally, if the hair strand floats to the top and takes a while to sink, you most likely have low hair porosity.

So, what does all this mean? Having a low hair porosity means that your hair is hard to get chemicals to absorb into the hair. It requires a lot more time and effort for it to take effect.  It also means that once the hair absorbs it’s hard to release, meaning it is hard to dry. So, be mindful that you do not over saturate your hair. It can do more damage than good. On the other hand, having a high hair porosity means that your hair can absorb moisture more quickly, which also means that it has the ability to dry faster. People with high hair porosity will need to moisturize more often than people with normal and low hair porosity. Now, you guys with normal porosity, you guys are not off the hook. The porosity levels can change depending on the way you treat your hair. Using heat can damage your hair and change your hair porosity level.

Now that said, let’s look at some of the moisturizers that are on the market.

We have products like Leave-in Conditioners, Hair Mist, Hydrating Masks, and Hair essences to keep our hair moisturized to meet the needs to all the levels of hair porosity. Recently, I ran across a whole line dedicated to moisturizing that caught my attention. The line was made by African Pride, one of the legacy brands that has been producing great quality products for decades. They just released its AP Moisture Miracle line. This line includes formulas that have great moisturizing and hydrating attributes like coconut, shea butter, and aloe.

AP Moisture Miracle line

There are also a couple of new products that’s been consistently coming up on my feed is this NEW brand calledNouvelle Nouveau. They have two new items that are made for everyday maintenance to moisturize and maintain healthy hair and skin.

Nouvelle Nouveau Leave in Detangler

This Leave in detangler uses the coconut oil benefits to moisturize and softens hair enough for easy handling

Nouvelle Nouveau Daily Dose Healing oil

Essential oils for daily protections to strengthen the hair and skin

Besides moisturizers, for best everyday practice to keep your hair healthy, you need to make sure that your hair is clean and healthy. Shampoo and Conditioners are a must have products that everyone can use daily. Now, I am not going to explain what shampoo and conditioners are, but I am going to mention that too much of a good thing can turn bad, so again, depending on your hair porosity level, you must determine if too much shampooing or conditioning can damage or benefit your hair needs.

Although it seems like there are so many products we have to memorize and learn to sell them, we can make it easier if we organize everything into categories. Last month we discussed the Styling category.  This month we went over what type of products are in the maintenance category. Next month we can discuss the Treatment category. I hope that this categorization of products will eliminate the generalization of haircare into lump sum group to clarify what we are selling in our stores. Happy selling~!