Ashley Broderick
Founder of Nandi Nicole
Interview by: Emma Tucker
When Covid and its subsequent lockdowns arrived in the UK in 2020, Ashley Broderick found herself at a fork in the road. After studying design and architecture in the US, where she was born, Ashley had spent six years working in luxury property development, overseeing everything from sourcing vendors, to managing budgets as well as hiring and briefing the marketing and sales team.
Covid unfortunately left her out of work, but gave her an idea of how to fulfil a long-held dream of becoming an entrepreneur.
“Everyone was experiencing the whole essential vs non-essential debate of what gets to stay open,” she says. “A large topic in the beauty industry was that women are expected to have Zoom meetings and be presentable at all times, yet it was particularly women of colour that were struggling with much of this, and experiencing anxiety because many of our products are not on the high street. It really put into perspective how much our beauty needs are procured in the shadows. Why is that?”
Hair and skin care is something Ashley says she’s grappled with all of her life. Despite growing up in New York, and now living in London, she says even major cities (such as these) offer Black women limited options. Shops that sell products for textured hair are often “sketchy” places, with products scattered about in stores that are poorly lit, poorly taken care of, and totally lacking in specialist advice. Women run the risk of buying something that contains harmful chemicals, and are often prey to shop owners with little interest in their wellbeing.
“It’s sort of a point of trauma for me,” explains Ashley. “This is something I’ve experienced my whole life, even growing up in the US. Hair and beauty are a taboo topic especially in Afro-Caribbean culture where we’ve gone through a history of our natural hair texture, as it grows out of our scalp, being rejected. It’s always been a challenge to see ourselves in the commercial beauty space.”
In response, Ashley founded online stockist Nandi Nicole – a name that symbolizes the bridging of the modern-day multicultural woman with her African roots (Nandi is derived from the notable African Queen and mother of Shaka, King of the Zulus).
The business provides an ethical retail space for people of colour to shop for their hair and beauty needs with confidence, and is described by her as a “place where we take out the mystery and questions about whether these products are good for you or not, or whether the ingredients are beneficial to your particular texture or hair concern.”
Nandi Nicole stocks only clean beauty brands, free of toxic components, and with a range of items to suit different kinds of textured hair. “We’re really focusing on a part of the beauty community that has been really overlooked and thought of as unsophisticated,” adds Ashley, pointing out that the niche market in the UK alone is worth a huge amount, with Black women spending a collective £88m each year on their hair alone, despite the lack of access and hurdles involved in doing so.
As a graduate of the Barclays Black Founder Accelerator, Ashley is focused on building Nandi Nicole’s presence - and plans to develop it as a global resource for women seeking the best products for textured hair and melanin-rich skin. It’s also an opportunity to support and sustain brands that cater to this audience as, according to Ashley, many large stores or supermarkets only offer these products room for a very limited range of goods.
Ultimately, Ashley says she wants to create a place where “people feel they are celebrated and that there’s advocacy behind the retailer welcoming their custom. I see an opportunity as a retailer and a stockist to do more for our community,” she adds.
