For its luncheon on February 3, the Chinese Business Club, France’s leading business club, welcomes Kelly Massol. A familiar face on Qui veut être mon associé? (French adaptation of SharkTank TV show, ndlr) the jury member on M6’s entrepreneurial reality show is also a successful businesswoman. Through her brand Les Secrets de Loly, she has made textured hair care cool and trendy again. Harold Parisot, founder and CEO of this unmissable premium event on the Parisian entrepreneurial scene, tells us more.
Curvy and bossy, Kelly Massol’s curves are as striking as her chatty personality and self-made woman’s background in hair care products, especially when you consider that she entered the entrepreneurial world with a seed capital of just… 1,500 euros!
With her tenacity firmly anchored in her body, she has turned Les Secrets de Loly, her brand for textured hair, into a viral and commercial success, with sales set to reach 25 million euros by 2023.
Such an inspiring figure could not fail to answer the call of the Chinese Business Club lunches. As one of the few women to have taken part in the TV show Qui Veut Etre Mon Associé (French adaptation of SharkTank TV show, ndlr) with Catherine Barba and Stéphanie Delestre, she also becomes the fourth member of the show’s jury to take part in this Chinese Business Club highlight, after Anthony Bourdon, Tony Parker and Eric Larchevêque.
A model of success… from scratch
Born in Paris into a modest family, Kelly Massol was placed in foster care at the age of 15.
“By inviting this profile of guests to the Chinese Business Club, I’m keen to inspire the club’s start-ups and give them easy access to the best role models, because the quality of a network can change everything. Like Anthony Bourbon and Jonathan Anguelov, she is one of those personalities who experienced great family instability at a very young age ”, says Harold Parisot, CEO and founder of the Chinese Business Club. He adds: “Of course, their success has much more merit in itself, as fighting relentlessly in such a context to achieve their successes proves to be particularly rare.”
Unable to find healthy hair care products for natural hair at a time when Taylor Swift’s “baguette” (straight hair) blondness was taking the world by storm, she came up with the idea of creating her own brand of hair care products for textured hair in 2009.
She founded the company on her thirteenth month’s Social Security salary, and worked as a teleconsultant until 2012. She then prepares her own formulations, by hand, in her own kitchen. If she is convinced that she understands the expectations of her fellow human beings, it’s because, since 2004, she has been running an association and online forum called “Boucle et Coton”, which aims to help women better understand their natural hair. With six out of ten people in the world not having straight hair, the potential is there, all the more so as the market is proving to be very poorly addressed by the major players in the sector.
With sales of 150,000 euros, the company was profitable in its first year. Despite an early focus on distribution, sales stagnated. Opting for a repositioning in 2019 to advocate more positive values and more education, the company managed to break the stubborn barrier to the purchase of its products… and sales suddenly took off. By 2022, sales had risen by 565% to 16 million euros.
For Harold Parisot, “Kelly Massol’s turnaround in product distribution is doubly interesting. Firstly, because she has decided to offer her potential customers a proud look at textured hair, and therefore at themselves. And secondly, because she does it in a pedagogical way, taking her time, without rushing. A true entrepreneurial spring in her step.”
Today, Les Secrets de Loly is valued at 70 million euros (2023 figure) and boasts 7,300 points of sale in fifteen countries, including Spain and Germany. The latest market to open up is the United Arab Emirates, thanks to a partnership signed with the Chalhoub Group, the Middle East’s leading luxury and beauty retailer.
Proof that her intuition was right, Sephora has just signed a distribution agreement for her hair products, while in the spring of 2023, L’Oréal launched its own Afro and curly hair care brand, Carol’s Daughter, in France.
Kelly Massol has no intention of stopping there, and is now working on the opening of “l’Académie” in Paris’s 7th arrondissement, a textured hair training facility for the hairdressers of tomorrow.
A turnkey address book
Since its creation in 2012, the Chinese Business Club has provided a “turnkey” address book and investor network for entrepreneurs, startups, VSEs, SMEs and ETIs.
As its CEO points out, “It’s a unique place in France for exchanges and influence in the business world, which has been growing steadily in recent years.” He adds, “The number of members has grown, with just over 130 today. And, over the past 3 years, more and more start-ups have joined our club.”
Kelly Massol inaugurates the 2025 season of the Chinese Business Club, which once again promises to be rich in meetings and feedback. The CEO confirms the presence of exceptional guests of honor such as Marc Simoncini, serial entrepreneur and founder of the Meetic dating app; Arthur Mensch, founder of the Mistral AI unicorn, Jean-François Cirelli of Blackrock, Antoine Arnault of the LVMH luxury group and journalist Hugo Clément.
Featured Photo: © Chinese Business Club
