The Steam Bar: the premium “skinification” hair and scalp care brand for textured hair

The Steam Bar isn't just another inclusive hair care brand.

Founded by British-born Nigerian Judy Koloko, the brand offers a premium product line for textured hair that merges the art of "skinification" with hair steaming - a ritual used by people of colour for generations that infuses humid heat to treat the scalp and promote hair health.

The product line includes a scalp serum, shampoo, conditioner and hair mask packed with high-quality skincare ingredients to nourish the hair and scalp as well as a steaming cap.

Alongside the products, The Steam Bar opened the first Black hair salon within a department store in Europe, located inside Selfridges London, that offered a range of textured hair services.

In this exclusive Q&A, we sat down to chat with Koloko about all things hair...

re/sources: Can you tell us why you created The Steam Bar? What is your mission behind the brand?

Judy Koloko: The Steam Bar was inspired through my journey in experiencing damage to my scalp and hair due to styling practices and I’ve learnt that this is quite prevalent within the afro hair community.

In order to address this damage, I sought out salons and products that could help but everything I came across fell short of the mark for me in terms of results and a standard I’d come to appreciate and I know we deserve the best. Just like we appreciate a high standard in our travel and shopping experiences, premium hair care destinations and products should also cater to us in this way.

Through my process of getting my hair back to its optimum health, I revisited the ritual of steaming which is a practice I have done on a monthly basis when I was younger as it really helped nourish and hydrate my hair - it was during these years that my hair was at its best. However, I found that as I got older (I entered into modelling and had a long term career as a fashion agent), I neglected caring for my hair as I opted for style over care - often causing damage to it.

In developing The Steam Bar I worked with world renowned Trichologist, Iain Sallis. He educated me on the myriads of benefits that steaming has on a physiological level; especially for afro hair types. We also discussed the importance of scalp care as an often overlooked key aspect to healthy hair growth and something that I was keen to integrate into the brand’s proposition because we need to be aware of what lies beneath. It was from him that I became aware of skinification - when highly active ingredients such as hyaluronic acid and glycerin are used in hair care products. Scalp is skin and we should be treating our scalp as we do our skin, creating a healthy scalp environment by cleansing, hydrating and moisturising our scalp to promote healthy hair.

re/sources: Your products are formulated for afro and textured hair. What sets them apart from what’s already on the market?

Judy Koloko: What sets us apart is our approach is skin care for the scalp.  We worked with an amazing formulator and renowned cosmetic scientists who have particular expertise in understanding the skin microbiome and ingredients that support and nourish this. We call our approach Skinification - we have used ingredients such as hyaluronic acid, glycerine and prebiotics that are usually found in skincare in our hair care products to ensure the best level of treating the scalp as the basis to support healthy hair growth.

The ingredients are highly active and when you pair this with steaming, it's allowing the scalp's pores to open up. The heat and all of the ingredients are able to penetrate into the scalp through the steaming process. It’s skinification meets the ritual of steaming. 

There’s nobody else out there doing it like we are and also the fact that we're also offering a professional salon experience that provides direct education and care to our community. We want our Sanctuary to be a place where our community can come into and feel like they are being seen and that they belong and are held. 

re/sources: Can you tell us more about The Steam Bar experience at Selfridges? Why did you choose to partner with Selfridges?

Judy Koloko: We decided that Selfridges would be a key retail partner for us because of its reverence from an industry and community perspective. 

I knew that I wanted The Steam Bar to be available in a bricks and mortar store that aligned with our values of quality, luxury and inclusivity and when I had initial talks with the team there they immediately got what our mission was and wanted to support. 

We launched the product range with them in November 2023 and created history in spring 2024 by opening The Steam Bar Sanctuary pop-up - the first dedicated textured hair service to be available in a European department store.

Education and immersive experiences are key to us serving our customers and the salon space allowed us to do just that. We curated a menu of treatments and services that were specifically for the needs of the afro and textured hair community including our Signature Steam, Silk Press, Braids and even a wig dry cleaning service!

It was a huge sell out and we had a lot of requests from people outside of London who wanted to experience the sanctuary. So much so that during our second one at Selfridges, London, we agreed to open another pop-up in Selfridges Manchester in partnership with Collinge & Co.

re/sources: What’s the most requested hair treatment?

Judy Koloko: The deluxe steam bar silk press package. I think everyone loves the fact that the steam prior to the press silk will prep the hair for the heat that will come after. The saviour mask has ingredients that provide cuticle defense so it aids in achieving a seamless silk press whilst protecting the hair strands. The press is a great one, people love the opportunity to wear their hair straight (the beauty of afro textured hair), but at the same time they know there are no chemicals involved that will have long term effects on their curl pattern and texture.

re/sources: As a founder and entrepreneur, what was the most challenging part of creating your brand and the products? And the most fulfilling? 

Judy Koloko: As a start-up it's always quite challenging in finding the right team and the funding. You want to work with the best in every area of the business but most times this comes with a big price tag. It is then about convincing whoever it is to come on the journey; that what we are doing really is impacting people’s lives, helping an underserved community feel seen and that they deserve they belong. 

Start-ups are not for everyone, and you really do have to have the stomach and resilience for it. Fundraising at the beginning is very hard - for a lot of investors it's very much about traction and numbers. When you have very little of this it's hard-to-get people to buy into the vision.

The most fulfilling thing is when you can see that the work you are doing is really impacting people's lives - be it because they loved their salon experience, or their scalp is feeling better, or they are learning so much more on how to create a healthy scalp environment - for me, knowing that they have walked away with the tools/knowledge to promote hair health puts a big smile on my face. 

re/sources: Are you working on any new products? Can you give us a sneak preview of what you have coming up?

Judy Koloko: We have launched four wet products and two accessories - one of the latter being our microwavable steam cap which is amongst our top three bestsellers along with our mask and serum. 

People seem to love our mobile steaming cap. The cap has gel pads in it and when placed in the microwave it heats up. You then place the cap on your head, which then activates our hydrolysed pea protein in our saviour mask - this ingredient prevents cuticle damage. 

We have a more advanced/plug in steaming cap that we are working on, which will be more intense and work at a higher temperature than the mobile one.