The Rucker family has always understood the power of patience.
The brood of eight was led by a green-thumbed patriarch with a passion for growing and gardening, and a mother who’d make magic out of the fresh ingredients. Their father often shared that timing, consistency and care were what crops needed to thrive. Similarly their mother, a wiz in the kitchen, would spend long days simmering the produce her husband brought home to produce the concoctions she’d mix for her family. Everything from home remedies, tasty meals or haircare concoctions: olive oil for moisture, avocado for nourishment, carrots and turnips for hair growth.
Years later, the youngest Rucker siblings Ione and Ellen Rucker took those down-home childhood experiences to the lab and launched their haircare line Rucker Roots in 2011, a vegan line of products whose ingredient story draws inspiration straight from their parents’ hands.
“We use things that are straight from our lived experiences,” Ellen tells ESSENCE. “And it’s that legacy we want to people to feel every time they use one of our products.”
It was at the height at the infancy of the natural hair movement, when Black women were still in search of products that were specifically tailored for a variety of textures. At the time, Rucker Roots created a revolutionary styling system designed to heat treated hair, something that was atypical as most natural hair brands catered to wash and go styles.
More than a decade after its inception, Rucker Roots is booming, both via e-commerce and on big box retailer shelves—the sisters just announced a major distribution deal with Walmart—but the journey to success wasn’t streamlined. In fact, it was filled with heartache and immense challenge.
“We’ve had to shift focus from the company quite a few times because life threw us some major curveballs,” Ione tells ESSENCE.
One of the biggest was the untimely death of their beloved brother in 2016, an expected blow that rocked the family, and shifted Ione and Ellen’s priorities.
“It was a huge setback in our business because he was only 44 when got ill, so we were frozen for a little while,” Ione says. “It was tragic because we were all the way in San Francisco, California. He was at home in South Carolina.”
She said they spent that entire year mourning, and then they were plunged into grief when their father passed suddenly just a few years later in 2019.
Their comeback story was the stuff of a hero’s tale.
Ellen, who also faced her own share of personal challenges was also grappling with the realities of a child facing serious health issues, and then ultimately undergoing a divorce.
“This is truly a sort of comeback story,” Ellen shares.
And what a comeback it is. Earlier this year, the sisters announced a landmark distribution deal with Walmart, which lands their products in 785 stores, including international locations.
“We’re in Dubai now,” Ellen gushes, adding that the timing of the deal was divine.
“Walmart came to us in 2019, but we just weren’t ready,” she shared candidly. “Now, it’s only up from here. It’s our time.”