Small Business: Salt, surf and saving the ocean with Gypsea Sol

Danica Horton, founder of Gypsea Sol, couldn't find any products to help her surf-damaged hair, so she decided to make her own.

Danica Horton, founder of Gypsea Sol, talks to Tom Raynel about how surfing inspired her, and why she has taken a different approach to post-surf care. Each Monday, we interview a small business owner, which is now a regular feature of NZME’s editorial campaign On The Up, showcasing uplifting stories of success, inspiration and possibilities.

What is Gypsea Sol?

We’re a local surf brand owned by a young Kiwi couple, myself and my husband, and we spend every spare second at the beach, like most Kiwi couples do. Everything we do at Gypsea Sol is about helping people feel more connected to the ocean.

In particular, we have our range of beauty essentials to save your surf hair and your salty skin after the water. Obviously that includes our hero product, our after ocean hair care, which just won silver at the Universal Beauty Awards in London for the best leave in conditioner.

What inspired you to start the business?

Probably around five years ago at that fateful time I was learning to surf with Mitch and “the boys”, and I quickly realised that the surf industry still wasn’t designed for me because, yes, I wanted to be out in the water, but I also wanted to feel confident and good about myself afterwards.

I care about my hair, I care about my skin. I still want to feel girly and confident after the beach as well, especially because we also love to go straight from beach to bar and go grab a beer, and I would be sitting there with my bird’s nest hair and my dry cracked skin and not feeling myself, so the thing bugging me the most was my hair.

I know it sounds very superficial, but it was breaking on me, it was turning to straw. So I said to Mitch, there’s got to be a product out there that I can put in afterwards, help me detangle it, help me repair it. I did some research, talked to a few hairdressers and they couldn’t think of anything.

So yeah, in the midst of Covid, we reached out to a local cosmetic manufacturer in Auckland who we’re still with and set about designing our after ocean hair care. You should see my hair now really it has worked.

Gypsea Sol's hair care product is designed to be used after being in the ocean, so not to take chemicals into the ocean that don't belong there.

What makes the products unique, and why the focus on after the ocean?

There are a range of natural ingredients from obviously from New Zealand and we’ve got Kakadu plum, pro vitamin B5, argan oil, all the good juicy things with our manufacturers. We set the brief that this is for particularly salt and sun water damaged hair, and they came back with this miracle combination.

It was a huge commitment from the beginning, a huge focus, and I even wanted to put it in the title of our hero product, obviously After Ocean. It’s definitely an emerging market, we didn’t quite see it three years ago, but in the last six months there’s probably been five or six new hair masks or conditioners to put in before the ocean.

Some of these aren’t even safe, which just blows my mind that people are even buying them and promoting them. But even the ones that are really safe and natural, it’s still at the end of the day, a man-made beauty product that was never meant to be in the ocean. So we’re very committed to making sure our entire beauty range from the hairspray, the face mask to the body butter is all designed to be put on after you get out of the water.

What has been the biggest highlight in starting the business?

Our community. I spend hours behind a computer, behind the camera, and you don’t actually realise your impact. When you’re out in the community and people recognise you and people come up and say they use your products, that’s when you get out and you really can see the benefits and the change that you’re creating, which is absolutely needed. Otherwise I’ll just be sitting behind a computer all day, as you know.

If someone posts a reel anywhere online about someone who’s hair is damaged or anything, people tag us straight away. They’re sending it to us, they’re giving each other their products. They’re, yeah, they are our greatest asset.

Gypsea Sol's hair care product is designed to be used after being in the ocean, so not to take chemicals into the ocean that don't belong there.

What would be your advice to other budding entrepreneurs wanting to start a business?

I think I would say combine a true and justified and measurable problem in the market that you have found with something that you’re incredibly passionate about. I think when the rubber hits the road and you’re in the grind of that small business, you need that passion to keep you going. Our passion for the ocean and the passion for helping people will always prevail over everything else and at the end of the day that that’s what keeps us going.

Tom Raynel is a multimedia business journalist for the Herald, covering small business, retail and tourism.