Fixing Beauty’s Data Blackout: How Carla Mbol Is Building the Inte

In an exclusive interview with Black Business Magazine, Carla Mbol, Founder and CEO of Carla+ Curls, shares how she is transforming the beauty industry by addressing the long-overlooked needs of textured hair consumers. With a mission to eliminate guesswork at the shelf, Carla combines AI, computer vision, and a zero-hardware digital ecosystem to provide brands with actionable insights while delivering hyper-personalized, inclusive experiences to consumers.

Interview By SK Uddin

Carla Mbol is the Founder and CEO of Carla+ Curls, a disruptive beauty technology company specializing in AI-driven hair diagnosis and data infrastructure. An alumna of the Next AI accelerator, Carla bridges the gap between diverse hair textures and the retail industry. She leverages her background in digital transformation and strategic communication to solve the “retail blind spot” for textured hair consumers. Her mission is to build a “Zero-Hardware” digital ecosystem that enables brands to capture actionable consumer data while providing hyper-personalized, inclusive beauty experiences at scale.

You’re building Carla+ Curls at the intersection of deep tech and beauty to solve what you call the “retail blind spot” for textured hair. What personal or professional experiences made you realize that AI—not more products—was the missing infrastructure for inclusive beauty?

The 105B global hair care market does not lack products; it lacks structured data and accurate guidance. Personally, my realization came from a place of shared frustration and systemic neglect. Like millions of women with textured hair, I grew up under beauty standards that conditioned us to alter our natural patterns. Driven by a lack of specialized knowledge at the shelf, we routinely spent fortunes on inadequate products, harsh chemicals, and straighteners.

The industry assumption that no guidance equals no sale is wrong. Consumers do buy, but they buy the wrong products. This guesswork creates an expensive cycle of trial and error, leading to damaged hair, a profound loss of self confidence, and zero brand loyalty. For brands and retailers, this retail blind spot triggers massive customer churn and a 67% cart abandonment rate.

With my background in digital transformation, I realized that solving this required standardizing scientific hair analysis through proprietary computer vision. By embedding our diagnostic algorithms into a frictionless digital touchpoint, we eliminate the trauma of the wrong purchase. We built the missing technical infrastructure to drive real retention, replacing frustration with accurate, data backed confidence.

Carla+ Curls is a Zero-Hardware retail intelligence platform that uses QR codes and AI to deliver personalized diagnostics and product recommendations. How does the experience work for a consumer?

We designed the experience to be completely frictionless. While legacy beauty tech relies on expensive, high maintenance in store kiosks or physical tablets, Carla+ Curls requires zero hardware. Standing in the aisle, a shopper simply scans a QR code on the shelf with their smartphone. No app download is required. The phone camera captures a quick photo of their hair, and our computer vision model instantly analyzes its hair profile including curl patterns and texture characteristics. By merging this visual analysis with immediate contextual hair goals and concerns, our AI engine delivers an instant, tailored routine recommending the exact matching products available right in front of them. The efficiency of this Zero Hardware framework is proven: during our recent pilot with Royalty Natural at the Beverly Salomon pharmacy, affiliated with Jean Coutu in Montreal, this exact frictionless funnel completely cleared target inventory and doubled on shelf sales within just three weeks. It proves that when you eliminate purchase doubt instantly at the shelf, conversion rates skyrocket.

You often talk about the “Data Blackout” in beauty retail. What does that mean, and what are brands learning through Carla+ Curls?

Most beauty companies can tell you what was sold. Very few can tell you who their consumers are, what was actually needed but could not find. That gap is the Data Blackout. Before Carla+ Curls, a consumer could stand in front of a shelf for ten minutes, leave confused, and the brand would never know why. Was the product unsuitable? Was the labeling unclear? Was the consumer looking for hydration, growth, or scalp care? Our platform transforms those invisible moments into actionable first party data. Brands can understand hair profiles, consumer concerns, recommendation trends, and engagement patterns in real time. This allows them to make better merchandising, marketing, inventory, and product development decisions. For many partners, this is the first time they have access to structured data about textured hair consumers at the point of decision.

As an alumna of the Next AI accelerator and one of the youngest Black women building at the intersection of AI, retail, and beauty, what has your founder journey been like so far—especially when it comes to securing “smart money” and strategic partners who really understand what you’re building?

One of the biggest challenges has been helping people understand what Carla+ Curls actually is. Because we operate in beauty, many people initially assume we are building another consumer app. In reality, we are building a retail intelligence platform that happens to start with textured hair.

As a founder, I have learned that raising capital is about finding partners who see past the superficial niche label and recognize an underserved global market with a massive data gap. This distinction changes the conversation entirely. We do not pitch simple cosmetic trends; we discuss first party data, customer intelligence, and retail analytics.

Programs like Next AI helped sharpen our technology, while being selected as a finalist for the prestigious Guy Laliberté Grant provided critical institutional validation. More importantly, our momentum became undeniable when we started demonstrating real world results. During our recent activation with Royalty Natural at the Beverly Salomon Jean Coutu pharmacy, our frictionless funnel completely cleared on shelf inventory within three weeks. We proved that we are not just improving recommendations; we are converting consumer uncertainty, frustration, and product guesswork into measurable, repeatable business outcomes for brands.

Looking ahead, what is your vision for Carla+ Curls as a global inclusive beauty infrastructure—across salons, retail, and international markets—and what excites you most about standardizing textured hair diagnostics worldwide?

My vision is for Carla+ Curls to become the global standard for textured hair diagnostics, moving the entire industry toward a model of Universal Hair Intelligence.

Today, a person’s hair journey is fragmented and frustrating, depending entirely on geography or random online information. By deploying our frictionless framework worldwide, we are building the definitive global data layer for hair care, powering the backend experiences for mass retailers, pharmacies, and e commerce platforms across Montreal, Paris, Lagos, and São Paulo.

What excites me most is the profound impact of completely transforming the game. By mastering the diagnostic infrastructure for textured hair, which is biologically the most complex spectrum, our AI engine inherently develops the capacity to analyze any hair type universally. We are shifting the power dynamics of the beauty industry. We are replacing decades of systemic retail neglect and product guesswork with scientific precision. What drives me is seeing millions of individuals finally experience accurate, data driven representation and guidance. We are not just making tactical product recommendations; we are resetting global beauty standards to build an ecosystem where automated, high level expertise is a right accessible to everyone, everywhere.

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this interview are those of the guest and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Black Business Magazine or its affiliates. The magazine is committed to supporting Black entrepreneurs and fostering conversations that promote inclusion and economic empowerment.