Bask & Lather Founder Talks Growing Viral Haircare Brand

Social media timelines have not been the same since Bask & Lather hit the market. The thriving haircare brand wouldn’t exist without its founder Shaina Rainford, and her mother’s homemade growth recipe.

After her younger sister Aaliyah suffered from severe hair loss due to an intense scalp infection, Rainford’s mother formulated a recipe that grew her sister’s hair back. Rainford later used the same recipe when she experienced hair loss from having COVID-19 in 2020, and the formula also helped her grow her hair back. 

The Bronx native, a nurse practitioner at the time, knew she had something special in her hands and decided to share the product with the world.

For many the goal of entrepreneurship is straightforward, but Shaina Rainford’s founder journey was unexpected.

After sharing her and her family’s hair journey online, Rainford started selling the growth oils on Instagram and Bask and Lather was born.

Now, in 2026, the brand has expanded its offerings with collections that include its signature Scalp Stimulator Oil, as well as an array of products catered to various hair needs like shampoo, conditioner, styling products, and a new Scalp Therapy System designed to nourish the scalp, which is often neglected.

Insert Scalp System Photo: 

“Customers are like, ‘Oh, which one should I get?’ It’s not ‘Which one should I get?’ It’s when you should use one or the other, and you should have both because scalp care and hair care are not separate. They are different parts of your hair care journey,” Rainford told HelloBeautiful.

Bask and Lather is set to generate nine figures in revenue without investors, and it still remains a family-operated business

As of August 2026, Bask and Lather is available for retail in 1900 Walmart stores across 48 states. Now, that’s a Founder Flex.

HelloBeautiful’s Char Masona chatted with the nurse practitioner-turned-CEO about her entrepreneurial journey, her biggest flex as a founder, and more. 

HB: Bask and Lather started as a home remedy from your mom. You vulnerably shared about your sister’s condition and your own struggles with hair loss after having COVID. Let’s talk about the transition. What pushed you to say, ‘I want to start a business?’

Shaina Rainford: Bask and Lather was never really intended to be a business. It was one thing to see my sister experience hair loss and be supportive. It was a completely different journey to experience hair loss myself during that summer 2020. Nobody knew COVID hair loss was a thing.

And I remember using the same 2 oils that my mom used for Aaliyah and saying, ‘This is crazy’. Like, imagine how many other people that look just like me [are] going through this and have their backs against the wall and don’t know where to turn. And I just started sharing my before and afters and my sister’s on my Instagram.

Even though it was a bit embarrassing, I was just so astonished by the results. And people were like, ‘Well, what are you using in your hair?’ and then they wanted to buy some of it. So we started just like getting glass bottles from Amazon and filling it with the oils and people were picking it up and dropping it off. And then we started shipping. 

I was like, ‘Okay, I’m pretty sure we can’t keep accepting these types of like $1,000 a day in payments through Cash App, I’m pretty sure this is not legal.’ We need to make this a legitimate business. And my mom [and I], we created our LLC, EIN number, came up with a name and a logo, and [in] December 2020 we launched Bask and Lather.

HB: Let’s talk about working with family and Bask and Lather starting from your mom’s home remedy.  How does that shape your view on legacy as a businesswoman?

Shaina Rainford:  I would say that I was very blessed. We would fill oils all week long and then on Fridays we would restock. And then on Sunday, I would have a house full of friends and family who were all paid, who would pack up all the orders. We were packing up like over 1000 orders every Sunday, right from my living room. Right. And then we would sell out and then

restock again the next week. So, I was very blessed to be able to have resources and people that could help me fulfill and ship and do all of those things to keep things moving along. And then today, my family is still part of the business. 

My son is our head of growth. So, he’s behind a lot of our exponential growth over the last two years.  My stepfather runs one of our HQ warehouses. My mom helps with different things that I need to fill in gaps because the company has grown a lot faster than we’ve grown our infrastructure. So, it’s still very much family oriented. And then, I still have my first few real employees who started with the company when they used to work side by side when it was just me and my family. So, it’s great to just see the evolution.

HB: Can you talk to us about the power of social media in your growth as a company?

Shaina Rainford: Social media has allowed us to grow to a multiple nine figure-a-year business without investors, without debt and without retail. We haven’t even entered retail yet. We will be very soon, next month. But, it’s like a unicorn. It’s unheard of. Our competitors, 80% of their business is retail and we’ve done it completely opposite because we’ve dominated social media and we were able to use a little bit of resources, have much higher profit margins, direct-to-consumer and scale the business significantly without diluting our profit margins. Also, when you’re in retail, you don’t have that endpoint with the consumer. You can’t see their name, their address, who they are, where they live, what’s their persona, how many times they came to your site, how many times they’ve repurchased, right? You lose some of that. So I’m glad that we did things our own way.

HB: Do you have any advice for anybody entrepreneurs who want to follow that path of the no investor route?

Shaina Rainford: I will say it’s not for everyone. With investment up front, you get access to capital to scale, you get access to resources, which I think is even more important than the capital. You get access to resources to get the right people, the right processes and infrastructure on your team. My way is not a way that the type of product that we sell, you have to have the margins to be able to acquire a customer and be profitable on the first order to be able to scale the way we scale and not like in fashion, [or] in beverage. Some other industries, you’re just not going to have that margin. It depends on the type of products you sell and your profit margins.

Two, you have to really understand every single aspect of your business. So for me, I was able to be very lean. Up until early last year, we had 7 to maybe 10 max employees, depending on the season of the year, onshore and then customer service offshore.

And the reason we’re able to operate lean is because one, there’s every single thing in the business I know how to do, from e-mail, SMS marketing, to managing social media, to managing our cash flow and finances, to writing a purchase order if I need to. There are lots of people that don’t know how to do that. If you’re not a person that can be very lean and kind of stretch yourself thin to be able to move things along, you sometimes need partners who come in and can give your company money and resources to be able to scale. It really varies business to business. And I think that while it’s great for me, because at this scale, I don’t have any investors. I own 100% equity of the company. It’s mine and I have no one to answer to. That’s why I can make decisions with 80% of the information. I don’t have to write a 200 page deck and present it to a board to make something happen for my customers.

I’m a big proponent of staying in your own lane, understanding your own business and not following what everyone else is doing because everything that glitters is in gold and you don’t know what’s going on on the other side.

HB: What would you say is your biggest flex so far as a founder?

Shaina Rainford: I think my biggest flex is scaling to multiple nine figures a year in revenue that we’re going to do this year without investors, without debt, without retail, still with the lean team. We’re still sub 30 people. It truly is a unicorn of a business, all glory to God and also just being able to stay true to every single decision I make is with the consumer in mind. 

I never will, again, because I don’t have those partners to answer to who are all about profit margin, where I have to make decisions that affect product quality or ingredient integrity because I’m trying to please people who have shared ownership of my company. So I think that’s my biggest flex.

HB: The one Bask and Lather product that everybody needs?

Shaina Rainford: Dang. All right, it’s summer right now. I’m going to say our viral Stronghold Thick Edges Edge Control.

HB: What would you say is a harsh truth or a hard pill that we as Black women have to swallow about our hair care?

Shaina Rainford: I think our hair care is a journey. So interestingly enough, we have grown significantly with the same core hero SKUs (stock keeping units).

We just launched our first ever collection on July 1st. I think of hair care as a journey. So, this new collection is all about scalp and I was inspired to make this collection two years ago because my son developed seborrheic dermatitis and I found out 65% of black women have scalp issues. And we can grow your hair and length retention, but I created this new collection that’s basically like skincare for your scalp and balancing and hydration. 

Customers are like, ‘Oh, which one should I get?’ It’s not ‘Which one should I get?’ It’s when you should use one or the other, and you should have both because scalp care and hair care are not separate. They are different parts of your hair care journey, and our hair, it requires more work. It has more needs, but we can grow it and keep it too.