Shampoo bars have struggled to gain mainstream adoption in the beauty market, facing a classic problem when sustainability is central to the marketing: consumers often think they are being forced to make a compromise.
But Cassandra Morales Thurswell, founder and CEO of hair care and beauty brand Kitsch, is leading with results instead of sustainability. While many early shampoo bar products asked consumers to make the switch for environmental reasons, including the elimination of plastic, Thurswell said her company positioned the bars as an upgrade instead of an alternative. Kitsch's bar shampoo was developed for results including softness, manageability, and curl definition, outcomes that customers prioritize when selecting hair care items.
"They're so effective that it's undeniable," Thurswell told CNBC Senior Media and Tech Correspondent Julia Boorstin during the latest episode of the "CNBC Changemakers and Power Players" podcast.
Thurswell was named to the 2025 CNBC Changemakers list.
Kitsch had considerable success in the hair care market for over a decade before the shampoo and conditioner bars debuted, and its track record with consumers helped as it brought out additional products. Thurswell, who launched Kitsch in 2010 when she was 25 with $30,000 in savings, has grown the company into a major player in beauty aisles across national retailers. The company spent years gaining the trust of women through hair accessories including its original elastic bands, then pillowcases, shower caps and towels, before launching shampoo and conditioner bars.
"We were already in the shower with them," Thurswell said.
The Kitsch founder does tend to think ahead — in fact, Thurswell told CNBC that she maintains the practice of "future journaling," a written form of visualizing success in which she lays out major goals as if she had already accomplished them.
Shampoo bars do require a shift in habit, and many consumers still assume they will not perform as well as liquid formulas. The elimination of plastic bottles and reduced packaging is a nice to have, she says, but it can't require a sacrifice. Once customers see results, the switch tends to stick, Thurswell says, but some of the market may never come around to the concept. Among people who remain skeptical based on feedback she has received: her own mother. "She's like, 'I just don't get the bar thing,'" Thurswell said.
In fact, just last month Kitsch launched its first line of liquid shampoos (fully recyclable packaging and made with post-consumer recycled material).
Throughout Kitsch's history, Thurswell says she has prioritized feedback from customers, starting with the original elastic hair bands. "When I was out there making these hair elastics and going door to store and making sales, I would ask so many questions. 'What's working? What's not working? How can I change it?' And every single day, I'd make all these refinements to that one specific product, and I'd go back to the store the next day with their suggestions," she said. "That's what made Kitsch successful."
"I can say 16 years later, not only was it the re-orders that helped us bootstrap to the scale that we are, but it's the feedback and being very customer-centric," she said. "It's a very undervalued trait that a lot of brands don't realize. If you really listen to the customers, if you really listen to what they're saying, they're telling you what's the next product. They're telling you what you need to change to make it easier for them. They're telling you what price it should be. And I just absolutely loved it from the very beginning ... and I never told anybody that they were wrong for the feedback that they gave me."
Thurswell still gathers customer feedback through trade shows, retailers, online reviews, social media, including recent TikTok live shopping events, any other ways to connect. That was the case with shampoo bars, too. Customers were direct about what made them hesitant and what convinced them to buy the bars, she said.
Kitsch also keeps tight control over product manufacturing and supplier relationships — facets of the business many retailers outsource — and does its own warehouse fulfillment, "which is incredible intel," Thurswell said. "If you haven't packed and shipped one of your own products before, I highly recommend it. You learn a lot from that experience," she said.
It's an experience that allowed Kitsch leadership to stay close to the waste issues generated by traditional packaging, and sustainability was a significant motivating factor for the company to create shampoo and conditioner bars. "You can't unsee all of the boxes, all the tape," Thurswell said.
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