Our Story

Tiana Adames is the founder of Filedaria, a growing hair salon that services the Afro-Canadian community of Oakville, Ontario. She faced a constant battle to find high quality products to use with her clients.  The truth was high quality natural products made specifically for Afro hair are extremely difficult to find in Canada. This certainly was not the case back home in the Dominican Republic, where Tiana trained as a hairstylist and ran her own salon for several years. The products she used in the Dominican Republic were of the highest quality. The solution became clear. She needed to bring Dominican hair products to Canada!

There are a lot of great brands from the Dominican Republic, but the one that caught her attention was Afro Love. This was a recent addition to the product lineup of Halka Industrial in Santo Domingo.

After meeting with Halka representatives and testing out the different products in their lineup, it became clear that this was the right company and brand to partner with. Halka had been in the hair product design and manufacturing business for a long time, and their products have always worked for all hair types, including Afro hair. This reflects the beautiful Dominican people, who are of all races and hair types.

Afro Love was inspired by the Afro movement that has been growing and spreading across Dominican Republic and Latin America, whereby people of African heritage are reclaiming their natural hair. In 2016, Ricardo Esteban from Halka, initiated the project. A team of chemical engineers, marketers, and advertisers were formed. They consulted with some recognized influencers within the Afro movement. These influencers taught the team about the lifestyle, aspirations, and the acceptance of race. They also learned about the natural ingredients that needed to be included as well as which raw materials to avoid (because they are considered harmful to both hair and general health).

After 8 months of analysis and collection of market data, pricing, international competitors, points of sale, etc. Halka began to develop the formula; over 500 samples were created before the final formulas were completed. Thanks to the love, commitment, and dedication of everyone involved, Afro Love launched their first 5 products in 2017.

To date, Afro Love has successfully been introduced in 19 different countries across the Caribbean, North & South America, and Europe. We are extremely excited to bring Afro Love to the Canadian market.