Los Angeles entrepreneur Julissa Prado transformed her personal natural-hair journey and Mexican family traditions into Rizos Curls, a self-funded Latina-owned beauty brand now sold through major national retailers.
Editorial Note
Minority-Owned Business Spotlight is a New To Education series highlighting businesses with publicly documented minority, immigrant, women, veteran, Indigenous, or historically underrepresented ownership stories.
This article is provided for educational and informational purposes. Inclusion does not constitute an endorsement, sponsorship, paid promotion, investment recommendation, or claim that the company holds a particular government certification. Product availability, retail relationships, formulas, prices, and business information may change.
For Julissa Prado, curly hair was not simply a beauty concern.
It was tied to identity, family, confidence, culture, and the feeling that existing products were not designed with people like her in mind.
Growing up in Los Angeles, Prado experimented with different ways of managing her curls. She wore her hair pulled back, used heavy styling products, straightened it, and spent money searching for products that could provide the results she wanted.
She eventually began making her own mixtures and became known among friends and family as someone who understood curly hair.
That personal experience became the foundation for Rizos Curls, a Latina-owned hair-care company Prado launched in 2017.
The brand now offers products for curls, coils, and waves through its own website and major retailers, including Ulta Beauty and Target. Its growth offers a useful lesson in how an entrepreneur can transform a problem experienced within her own community into a nationally recognized business.
A Business Idea Rooted in Personal Experience
Prado did not begin by studying a market report and deciding that curly hair represented an attractive business opportunity.
She started as a customer who could not find what she needed.
As a young girl, she saved money to buy curl products, but many did not work the way she hoped. Over time, she experimented with ingredients and techniques while helping relatives and classmates care for their hair.
Her approach was also influenced by knowledge passed through her Mexican family. Prado has described learning about natural ingredients and traditional remedies from her grandmother, who lived in a rural community in Mexico.
That family knowledge helped shape her belief that ingredients should provide meaningful benefits rather than appear on a label mainly for marketing.
Rizos Curls grew from the intersection of those experiences: dissatisfaction as a customer, practical knowledge developed through experimentation, and cultural traditions surrounding natural ingredients and personal care.
Education and Business Experience Helped Shape the Brand
Prado is a graduate of UCLA and later completed a master’s degree before working in the corporate world.
Her education and professional experience gave her skills that would become valuable when Rizos Curls began to grow.
Creating a beauty brand involves much more than developing a product idea. A founder must understand manufacturing, contracts, pricing, packaging, distribution, inventory, marketing, retailer expectations, customer service, and cash flow.
A good formula does not automatically create a sustainable company.
Prado initially viewed Rizos Curls as a passion project she could manage while continuing her established career. The company grew faster than she anticipated, eventually requiring her to leave her corporate position and focus on the brand full time.
That transition demonstrates why entrepreneurship rarely depends on passion alone.
Founders must be willing to learn unfamiliar areas of business and make difficult decisions without knowing exactly how the market will respond.
Rizos Curls Was Built Without Traditional Outside Funding
One of the most notable parts of the Rizos Curls story is that Prado and her brother grew the company as a self-funded business.
Bootstrapping can allow founders to retain more control over their company, products, values, and growth strategy.
It can also create intense pressure.
A self-funded business cannot spend money as freely as a company backed by major venture-capital investors. Inventory must be purchased before it is sold. Retail expansion requires products, packaging, transportation, marketing, staffing, and enough cash to continue operating while waiting for payments.
Prado has compared managing that growth to playing chess. Each expansion decision has to be considered carefully because entering too many stores too quickly can create financial strain.
When Rizos Curls initially entered Target, the company reportedly began in approximately 100 stores rather than launching immediately across the retailer’s entire national network. Its later relationship with Ulta Beauty also expanded gradually.
That controlled approach allowed the company to demonstrate demand before taking on the costs of larger distribution.
For students and emerging entrepreneurs, the lesson is important: growth should be sustainable, not merely impressive.
Representation Became Part of the Product
Rizos Curls was created for people whose hair had often been overlooked or treated as a problem to be corrected.
Beauty advertising historically centered straighter hair textures and narrow standards of professionalism and attractiveness. Consumers with curls and coils frequently had to combine products, seek advice from relatives, or learn through trial and error.
Prado built her brand around celebrating curls rather than controlling or hiding them.
That message appears in the company’s imagery, bilingual communication, community language, and emphasis on people with varied curl patterns.
Representation in business is not only about placing a diverse face in an advertisement.
It can influence which problems a company notices, which products receive investment, which customers are considered important, and how those customers are spoken to.
Prado understood the emotional side of natural hair because she had experienced it herself. That gave the company a perspective that a larger beauty corporation might have struggled to reproduce authentically.
From a Small Launch to Major Retail Shelves
Rizos Curls has developed a broad line of shampoos, conditioners, styling creams, gels, treatments, sprays, oils, brushes, and other curl-care products.
Ulta Beauty currently lists dozens of Rizos Curls products, while Target identifies the company as a Latino-owned brand on its product pages.
Major retail placement can dramatically expand a small company’s reach. Customers who might never discover an independent online store can encounter the products while shopping for familiar national brands.
Retail success also introduces new challenges.
Products must remain available across many locations. Packaging must meet retailer standards. Customer reviews become highly visible. Competing brands may have far larger advertising budgets, and poor inventory planning can result in empty shelves or excess stock.
Rizos Curls’ gradual expansion suggests that the company treated national retail distribution as a long-term operational challenge rather than simply a publicity milestone.
Community Has Remained Central to the Brand
Rizos Curls describes its mission through three ideas: curls, community, and culture.
The company does not market hair products as isolated objects. It presents them as tools supporting confidence, shared knowledge, and acceptance of natural texture.
Prado has also used her platform to support immigrant communities and encourage Latina entrepreneurship.
In 2025, Rizos Curls worked with the Los Angeles-based organization Kids of Immigrants on an initiative supporting immigrant communities. Prado has also participated in programs intended to expand opportunities for Latino entrepreneurs.
These activities strengthen the connection between the founder’s personal story and the public values of the company.
Community-centered branding can be powerful when the work is genuine.
Customers increasingly notice the difference between a company that uses cultural language for advertising and one whose leadership, products, partnerships, and decisions consistently reflect that culture.
What Future Entrepreneurs Can Learn From Rizos Curls
The first lesson is to pay attention to problems that established companies have normalized.
Prado could have accepted that curl products simply did not work well for her. Instead, she treated that frustration as evidence that an underserved market existed.
The second lesson is that cultural knowledge can have commercial value without losing its meaning.
Family remedies, beauty practices, language, and community experiences can inspire new products when they are handled respectfully and thoughtfully.
The third lesson is to grow at a pace the business can support.
Landing a national retail opportunity can look like immediate success, but fulfilling that opportunity requires capital, staffing, inventory, and reliable operations.
Finally, education and professional experience can remain useful even when an entrepreneur changes careers.
Prado’s academic and business background helped prepare her to manage challenges far beyond hair styling or product development.
Entrepreneurship often combines knowledge from several parts of a person’s life.
Why Latino-Owned Businesses Matter
Latino entrepreneurs are creating businesses at a rapid pace, but access to funding remains uneven.
Many founders depend heavily on personal savings, relatives, community support, and revenue generated by the business itself.
That funding gap can limit how quickly a company can hire employees, develop products, enter stores, purchase equipment, or survive an unexpected disruption.
Success stories such as Rizos Curls matter because they challenge the idea that Latino-owned companies must remain small or confined to neighborhood markets.
A culturally specific business can grow nationally without abandoning the community that inspired it.
At the same time, one successful brand does not erase the structural barriers other entrepreneurs face.
Highlighting Rizos Curls should therefore involve more than celebrating a founder. It should also encourage discussion about financing, retail access, representation, business education, and who gets the opportunity to transform an idea into a national company.
Key Takeaways
Rizos Curls was founded in Los Angeles in 2017 by Mexican American entrepreneur and UCLA graduate Julissa Prado.
The brand emerged from Prado’s personal experience searching for effective products for curly hair and from natural-ingredient knowledge passed through her family.
Prado and her brother built the company without relying on traditional outside investment, expanding carefully as the brand entered retailers such as Target and Ulta Beauty.
Rizos Curls combines product development with a broader message centered on natural-hair acceptance, Latino culture, community, and representation.
The company offers students and future founders a practical example of identifying an underserved market, using cultural knowledge responsibly, maintaining authenticity, and managing growth carefully.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who founded Rizos Curls?
Julissa Prado, a Mexican American entrepreneur from Los Angeles, founded the company in 2017.
Is Rizos Curls Latina-owned?
Yes. The company publicly identifies itself as Latina-owned, and major retailers including Target also identify it as a Latino-owned brand.
What type of products does the company make?
Rizos Curls makes shampoos, conditioners, gels, styling creams, hair treatments, sprays, oils, brushes, and other products for curls, coils, and waves.
Was the company funded by investors?
Prado has described Rizos Curls as a self-funded company built with her brother. That approach allowed them to maintain control but also required careful management of growth and retail expansion.
Where are the products sold?
Products are available through the Rizos Curls website and major retailers including Target and Ulta Beauty. Availability may vary by location.
Final Thoughts
Rizos Curls began with a problem many people had been taught to treat as personal.
Julissa Prado could not find products that worked for her curls, and the wider beauty industry did not consistently reflect people with her hair texture, background, or cultural experience.
She turned that frustration into an idea.
More importantly, she turned the idea into a functioning business by combining family knowledge, education, corporate experience, product development, and careful financial decisions.
The result is not only a line of hair-care products.
Rizos Curls represents what can happen when entrepreneurs recognize that the people overlooked by an industry are not a niche to be tolerated. They are customers whose needs, identities, and purchasing power deserve serious attention.
For students and emerging founders, Prado’s journey is a reminder that a business idea may already exist inside a familiar frustration.
The challenge is learning how to develop it responsibly, communicate its value, and build an organization capable of growing without losing the purpose that made it meaningful.
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Sources
Rizos Curls — Meet Founder and CEO Julissa Prado
https://rizoscurls.com/pages/julissa-prado
Rizos Curls — Founder Story
https://rizoscurls.com/pages/founder-page
Daily Bruin — UCLA Alumna Julissa Prado Makes Waves in the Hair-Care Industry
https://dailybruin.com/2026/05/03/alumnus-julissa-prado-founder-of-rizos-curls-makes-waves-in-hair-care-industry
Good Housekeeping — How Julissa Prado Crafted a Natural Hair-Care Brand for Every Curl Type
https://www.goodhousekeeping.com/life/inspirational-stories/a68114196/julissa-prado-rizos-curls-interview/
Ulta Beauty — Rizos Curls Brand Page
https://www.ulta.com/brand/rizos-curls
Target — Rizos Curls Refresh and Detangle Spray
https://www.target.com/p/rizos-curls-refresh-38-detangle-spray-10-fl-oz/-/A-76559390
