Blonde Solutions, an innovative hair care brand from co-founders Aymen and Lea Eldabli, is leading a blonding revolution. Partners in business and in life, the husband-and-wife duo behind the brand are reshaping the blonding category.
Their goal was to design a safer, smarter, and more inclusive approach to blonding that works for all hair types and textures, and to create something that they say wasn’t available to them as colorists. With its patent-pending Pigmented Toning Technology Lightener, Blonde Solutions delivers nine levels of lift while neutralizing brass and minimizing damage, eliminating the need for toners and extra steps.
Having recently marked a major milestone in the company’s growth, a distribution partnership with SalonCentric, I was happy to catch up with them to hear about the evolution of this blonding solution.
“We created Blonde Solutions because the professional blonding space hadn’t evolved in over 50 years — especially when it came to performance on all hair textures and tones,” said Aymen Eldabli, CEO and co-founder of Blonde Solutions.
MODERN SALON: What gap did you see in the blonding space that convinced you there was room for your brand?
AYMEN ELDABLI: I think the main thing that we noticed was that we kept seeing the same issues appear over and over again. As hair colorists, the biggest thing for us was delivering to our clients. If you’re promising them a look, or they’re pulling up something on their phone or in a magazine, you want to deliver. You want to give them what they asked for.
And I couldn’t give them what they were asking for. That was a problem, no matter what brand I used.
MODERN SALON: That’s the perfect answer because so many things in our industry are created as a result of a client asking for something. Stylists get creative in the salon because they want to solve a problem for their client. What’s one of the scrappiest things you’ve done to get Blonde Solutions off the ground and keep it growing?
On their new distribution partnership with Salon Centric: “As a woman leading our operations and infrastructure, helping scale Blonde Solutions to this point is deeply rewarding.”–Lea Eldabli, COO and co-founder.
LEA ELDABLI: Yeah, this is a really memorable one for us. It was maybe 2021, around Christmas time. We had a bunch of orders come in and we ended up taking our kids, and then one of our friends (who actually works with us now), her kids, and we had a sleepover at the salon.
Everyone brought sleeping bags, we ordered pizzas, and in the spa there’s a TV and stuff, so we set up a really cool sleepover for them. But unbeknownst to them, we were actually packing almost a thousand orders that night. The three of us packed a thousand orders in one night in order to hit this overnight free shipping thing. We were Santa Claus for a night.
MODERN SALON: So, what’s one thing that you had no idea about when you started the business and then had to figure out along the way?
AYMEN ELDABLI: I would really say everything: from supply chain to scaling the manufacturing. That was really new to us. We just learned by asking questions and asking for help. I don’t think people realize that it’s okay to ask for help when you’re in a new space. We just stayed relentless and resilient.
MODERN SALON: You’re doing your life together, and you’re doing your business together. Running a brand together, how do you protect your relationship while you’re making these hard business decisions side by side?
AYMEN & LEA ELDABLI: That was also something we had to learn along the way. One of the biggest things we ended up learning was that we really have to keep our marriage separate from our business.
In the beginning, if we had a disagreement at work, it would carry over to our dinner table. Now we understand that at work we’re “Lea and Aymen,” but at home we’re still Mom and Dad, or husband and wife.
We mentally separate it. When we pick up our kids at four o’clock, when sports start, we’re done. We’re in parent mode. It’s literally shifting into the family aspect of our relationship.
MODERN SALON: Now I’m really curious why you decided to niche down to blonding. Even the bold move of your brand name—Blonde Solutions. You didn’t leave it broad or open to interpretation. It’s, “This is what we are going to be. We’re not trying to be everything to everyone.”
How did you make that decision, and how has that clear-minded focus shaped your growth?
AYMEN: I think it really came back to the education we had in hair school. I was always taught that as a cosmetologist there were two main areas where you could make the most money: hair color with blonding as the backbone, and hair extensions.
When you try to do that as someone who works with all textures of hair, the industry didn’t really provide what you needed in terms of liquid tools to achieve the blondes your clients want. That’s how we were able to fill the gap with innovation.
No one had made any real changes to hair lightener for about 10 years. It might look different or be marketed differently, but it was all essentially the same. We took the approach of focusing on the lightener, which we call the foundation of the house. You can paint the house any color you want but is the foundation strong?
Our November 2022 cover was created using Blonde Solutions. From the cover feature: “Deciding to take your model from a Level 2 to a Level 10 in one session—not for the faint of heart hairdresser. But working together, the team of Geri Stigen (@geribleach) from Wisconsin and Shannon Demont (@shannondemont) from Massachusetts, did just that. Stigen did a global bleach application, staying ¼ inch off the base, and then went in and incubated each section, and reapplied. “The third time I applied, I hit the roots and pulled all the way through again. Each time, heavy saturation is key.”
Photographer: Udo Spreitzenbarth
Makeup: Deney Adam, Ulta Beauty Pro Team, and Dmitry Potapov
Nails: Tara Haye
MODERN SALON: When you’re choosing educators and creators to represent Blonde Solutions, what qualities matter most to you?
AYMEN & LEA: We did something a little unorthodox when choosing our educators. We did something the industry usually doesn’t do. Most bigger brands tend to lean on educators with a large following or people already known in the industry.
We actually did something called “Bleach Battles,” where we took diamonds in the rough and put them against each other in a room just to see if they could teach, to see if they could work while people were asking questions. That’s how we built our education foundation, all from people who really wouldn’t have gotten that chance to be educators.
We gave people who had been doing hair for over 20 years a chance to be educators for a brand that was on the come-up.
MODERN SALON: My last question is this: and I know this might be hard to envision because you’re so in the moment, but five years from now, what do you hope Blonde Solutions is known for in the industry?
AYMEN & LEA: Making the difference when it comes to blonding.
Before Blonde Solutions, colorists and stylists had to choose between reaching high levels of lift or maintaining integrity. When Blonde Solutions came in, we were the solution to that problem. We really changed the aspect of blonding so it can work for all demographics of hair, while maintaining the health and curls of everyone’s hair.
That just wasn’t available before. So we want to be those kids who changed the blonding industry.
About Blonde Solutions
Blonde Solutions is a professional-grade haircare brand committed to making blonding safer, smarter, and more inclusive. Founded by husband-and-wife duo Aymen and Lea Eldabli, the brand is the first of its kind to offer a pigmented lightening system designed for all hair textures. The company is proudly Black-owned, stylist-driven, and built for the next generation of professional beauty.
To learn more about Blonde Solutions or to shop the full product line, visit www.blondesolutions.com. For distribution inquiries, please contact info@blondesolutions.com.
