Dominican sisters and cofounders Cory Dahlia and Nicol Varona were both born and raised in Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic. They immigrated to Haverhill, MA, when Dahlia was 13 and Varona was 11 before finally settling in Reading, PA, and went on to study business and work in the financial industry. They were inspired to launch DN Organics after both of them started their curly-transitioning journeys in their mid-20s.
"After damaging our natural hair with heat tools, we lost our shape and curl texture. We grew up wanting our hair to be something that it wasn't. We always had the desire to have straight hair and we would do anything to get rid of our gorgeous curls," the sisters said. "In addition, society standards in the Dominican Republic, our home country, didn't make it easy for us to love and embrace our natural hair."
Their natural-hair journeys, combined with real-life changes they were experiencing in their personal and professional lives, inspired them to seek purpose. "We didn't realize it then but our transition to embracing our naturally curly hair became a lifestyle change for us, transforming for the better physically and mentally," they said. "We got more interested in beauty after researching how to get our curls back. We started a blog with friends to share tips about curly hair on social media."
This wound up sparking the sisters' interest in ingredients and the two started researching how to formulate products that were clean, easy to understand, affordable, and effective, and thus DN Organics was born.
The brand is dedicated to doing away with the "pelo malo" mentality while encouraging all women to embrace and love their natural curls.
"There's still a lot to do to help fix the trauma that we all have, whether we accept it or not. The 'pelo malo' mentality is still being applied in every aspect, even within the curly-hair community. We hear, 'Well you have the good curls,'[all the time] but that's not true," they said. "We shouldn't identify curls based on 'malo' or 'bueno.' We believe our hair is like our fingerprint: it's uniquely ours. We must nourish it, love it, and protect it like our identity. We want our customers not to compare themselves to anyone and to focus on our motto, '#LiveFearlesslyNatural.' Live life without fears of what their texture is or how others perceive it — just loving their hair. We want them to spend less time perfecting their hair and more time enjoying life. That's why we created our products: to help our community nourish, define, and strengthen their hair, no matter the texture."
