By: Sarah Summer

In the crowded and competitive world of beauty and personal care, one firm has carved out a distinctive position by focusing on the power of multicultural consumers. Romina Brown, Founder and CEO of Strategic Solutions International (SSI), has spent over two decades helping brands and retailers understand, serve, and grow with these audiences.

Brown is no stranger to driving business success. Before launching SSI in 2004, she built her career in executive marketing and sales positions at Eastman Kodak, Sara Lee, and L’Oréal USA. Those roles gave her firsthand insight into how global brands approach strategy, market development, and consumer connection. What she observed was an industry that often overlooked the importance of multicultural consumers, even though these shoppers were already influencing category growth.

That gap became the starting point for SSI. Today, SSI is recognized as a well-regarded and trusted category growth management firm in the multicultural beauty industry. The Chicago-based company provides retailers and manufacturers with the data, insights, and strategies they need to stay relevant in a shifting market landscape.

A Distinctive Firm Identity

SSI is also notable for its representation. It is one of the few female-led, Black-owned category management firms in the industry. Brown is supported by a global, diverse team of analysts, researchers, marketers, and technology experts. Together, they bring both technical skill and cultural fluency to every project.

This dual strength is one reason SSI’s work resonates so strongly. The firm is not simply producing reports; it is offering insights that reflect lived experience and a nuanced understanding of consumer behavior. For clients, that means actionable strategies that have the potential to drive measurable growth.

What SSI Provides

At the center of SSI’s offerings are its Syndicated Retail Insights Reports. These reports transform retail data into customized, comprehensive intelligence that explains not just what is happening in the multicultural beauty market, but also why it is happening. By contextualizing data with cultural insights, SSI helps brands and retailers make more informed decisions.

SSI also conducts custom brand analysis and research, ranging from focus groups and surveys to product use tests and roundtable discussions. This research gives clients the nuanced understanding they need to position new products, track launches, and gauge consumer sentiment.

In addition, SSI delivers Multicultural Beauty Category Insights that help companies better understand the shifting needs, preferences, and values among multicultural consumers. With multicultural beauty increasingly driving industry-wide trends, this knowledge has become essential for success.

The SSI Pulse Report

In 2025, SSI launched its new Pulse Report, a monthly series designed to provide partners with timely, actionable intelligence. Each edition combines retail sales data with cultural context and identifies potential implications for brands.

The September 2025 Pulse Report highlighted several key developments:

• Retail chain sales in multicultural hair care have declined since late 2024, while growth is accelerating online, in beauty specialty channels, and in independent beauty stores.
• Black-owned multicultural hair care brands are showing strong performance at Target.
• Amazon is emerging as a rapidly growing channel for textured hair care.
• TikTok campaigns are having a noticeable influence on retail chain sales, emphasizing the growing role of social platforms in driving beauty purchases.

As Brown explained in the release announcing the findings, “Category performance at retail chains has softened, but the growth of Black-owned brands and the influence of digital platforms like TikTok suggest that multicultural consumers are playing a significant role in shaping the industry. Brands that act on this data can stay relevant and see continued growth.”

Market Impact

The insights are more than just numbers on a page. For many companies, SSI’s intelligence is the missing link between data and execution. While large corporations often have access to vast amounts of syndicated data, they may lack the ability to interpret cultural nuances. Smaller companies might not have the bandwidth to access or analyze data at scale. SSI helps fill both gaps, democratizing insights and elevating the conversation.

The firm also publishes thematic reports such as The Glow Up: Black Women Redefining Beauty Through Wellness and Wellbeing. These studies not only highlight purchasing power but also examine the broader values and perspectives that shape consumer choices. By exploring how wellness, identity, and culture intersect with beauty, SSI equips its partners to stay ahead of emerging trends.

Brown’s Leadership

Brown’s leadership has been recognized across various industries. She is a member of the Nielsen Connected Partner Network and has served on boards and panels that focus on business growth, consumer trends, and multicultural strategy. Her work has also been featured in publications such as Rolling Out, where she discussed the importance of data in understanding the Black hair care market.

For Brown, the principles guiding SSI are simple but unwavering: integrity, accuracy, and contextual insight. “What we do is rooted in data and numbers,” she explained in a 2020 interview. “There’s a high level of accuracy that is required when you’re reporting. The biggest piece is extracting insight.”

That commitment to extracting insight — not just reporting statistics — has helped SSI maintain and build on its competitive advantage. By combining large data sets with smaller, nuanced data, SSI creates a more accurate picture of how consumers actually use products.

Looking Ahead

As SSI enters its third decade, the opportunities are significant. Multicultural consumers are no longer treated as a niche audience. They are increasingly shaping mainstream trends in hair care, skin care, and personal care, influencing everything from product development to marketing campaigns.

Brown believes that companies that treat multicultural beauty as an afterthought risk falling behind. Instead, she encourages brands to embrace cultural intelligence as an integral part of their growth strategy. With SSI as a partner, companies gain access to insights that are not readily available elsewhere, particularly data from the independent beauty supply channel, which represents nearly 45 percent of multicultural beauty sales.

For brands seeking to connect with consumers authentically, SSI offers both the numbers and the narrative. For Brown, that combination is what will continue to drive growth across the beauty industry.

Follow her insights at https://ssiconsults.com/