MADISON, Wis. – A Wisconsin mom’s hair bonnets, invented from necessity, are now being shipped around the world.
Dione Laufenberg works from her dining room table. Her house is nice and quiet, now that her daughters are back at school most of the week.
"I have two girls, and they have a lot of curly hair,” she said.
Her daughter Gianna is 10, and her daughter Misha is seven. Like so many Black moms, she knew before they were even born that caring for their hair would be a priority.
“Both my my daughters are biracial, so their hair isn't really like mine or their father’s,” she said.
That meant she went on a journey to figure out what works best for them.
“I had always chemically altered my hair or done something to change the curl pattern,” Dione said. “When I saw just how beautiful their curls were, I was like, 'I don't want to mess this up!'”
It took a while to find the right routine. But as she worked through it, she blogged about it and shot tutorial videos, to help other multicultural families find their own routines.
“Both my girls’ hair is almost to their waist at this point. So I could spend many, many hours doing their hair,” she said. “So if I can do a style, we can sleep with a bonnet on, or sleep on a silk pillowcase, and have that style go two or three days before I have to start the whole wash cycle all over again, it saves a lot of time. Kids don't really want to sit still and have grooming every day anyway.”
As they figured out how to make their best hair days, Dione realized there was one product she just couldn’t find.
“I just realized that there wasn't really good sleep caps that were specifically for children,” she said. “That would adjust as children's heads grow continuously as they develop.”
Before that, they had been buying bonnets from the drugstore. They're often lined with cotton, or satin, which is very different from silk.
Dione set out to make the perfect kids’ silk sleep cap herself. With that, SwurlyCo was born.
“To me, it was more of a passion project. I'm the kind of person that loves to dig into research and figure things out.”
That passion project has turned into a burgeoning business.
“We definitely felt the boom last year from people shopping online, a focus on people shopping small, and people supporting Black-owned businesses,” she said.
The name represents not only the swirls and curls in natural hair, but the families themselves. "Swirled" is a common term used by multicultural families.
There are fun colors and prints. Laufenberg said at sleepovers when she was a kid, she would sometimes feel embarassed to wear a bonnet to bed, especially when she was the only person of color there. Part of her goal is to make kids enjoy wearing the caps. And they're not just for people with textured hair; Laufenberg said they're for everybody.
It started with children’s sleep bonnets, and now she’s expanded to silk-lined hats, silk scrunchies, and silk pillowcases.
Her dining room table, once clear, quickly fills with products, boxes, and stickers. She has packaging down to a science. Which has become necessary, now that she ships all over the world.
“We are shipping [to] Switzerland, Canada, Iceland… I mean places that I've never even dreamed of going to. That's really like neat,” she said. “Like we could go there, and someone could be walking down the street with Swurly on.”
Her goal is to give everybody good hair days.
“I get DMs and private messages from moms that said that they found the information to be really helpful … families with multicultural makeups, we have a strong community.”
To learn more about SwurlyCo, you can head to the brand's Facebook page or their website.
