California Naturals Launches Kids' Line to Build a Modern Family Brand

California Naturals is going small to make its business bigger.

Weeks after closing a Series B round and naming Glossier alum Hayden Hiatt as CEO, the brand is entering the children’s personal care category with its first-ever kids’ line. Called California Naturals Kids, the haircare and body care line will be available at Target, Sprouts, Amazon, and Ulta’s website, alongside the brand’s direct-to-consumer (DTC) platform. The launch illustrates California Naturals’ ambition to be a modern family brand with products spanning multiple categories, life stages, and retail shelves.

Why It Matters: The global children's personal care market is booming, projected to reach billions as millennial and Gen Z parents seek the same clean, ingredient-conscious standards for their kids as they do for themselves. California Naturals' move reflects a broader industry shift where brands are scaling by capturing entire household routines rather than single demographics.

For founder Shelby Wild, California Naturals Kids marks a major step toward cementing the brand as one that the entire household can turn to. “It’s not a haircare brand, it’s a heritage brand,” Wild says. “This is our first time crossing categories and won’t be our last. There’s so much more to come and so much opportunity across the home.”

California Naturals joins a growing cohort of brands bringing premium beauty expectations like ingredient transparency, benefit-specific formulations, and elevated branding to children’s personal care. This trend is gaining momentum across the industry; for instance, Dr. Squatch recently entered the kids' personal care space with its Lil' Squatch line, targeting Gen Alpha with natural, kid-friendly formulations. The global kids’ personal care market is worth an estimated $38.6 billion, according to Dataintelo. Skincare is the largest segment, accounting for 34% of revenue in 2025, while haircare, the second-largest segment, accounted for 23% of category revenue.

Beauty industry experts cite a desire for gentler and cleaner ingredient profiles, more diverse haircare needs, and kid-specific lifestyle factors like chlorine, ultraviolet rays, and outdoor play as drivers of heightened engagement in the category. While California Naturals’ broader customer base is primarily composed of adults in their 20s to 40s, Hiatt says its kids’ line will serve the “toddler to teen” set.

California Naturals Kids’ collection is starting with two shampoos, two conditioners, an all-over foaming wash, and a no-knot detangling spray. Like the brand’s existing products, the kids’ collection uses food-grade flavorings rather than traditional fragrance compounds to achieve its fruity and floral scents (mango, cherry, honeysuckle, strawberry, mango coconut, and sweet pea melon). California Naturals Kids shampoos, conditioners, and cleansers come in 12-ounce bottles and are priced at $11.99.

California Naturals describes the collection as 98% naturally derived. It features ingredients like coconut water, aloe, argan and jojoba oil, shea butter, and hyaluronic acid. The kids' line swaps the brand’s standard cleansing system for a gentler coconut-derived surfactant system, with colorful labels that feature artwork drawn by Wild’s daughter. For the line, the brand’s signature flower logo has been reimagined as a brightly colored pump dispenser meant to delight young customers from the shower floor.

In response to consumer demand, California Naturals Kids contains products specifically designed for curls: Curly Kiddo Shampoo and Curly Kiddo Conditioner. Wild, who introduced haircare brand Playa in 2017 prior to launching California Naturals in 2023, estimates about 30% of the kids’ market in the beauty and personal care space is made up of kids with curly hair.

“It’s not a haircare brand, it’s a heritage brand.”

“When I was doing Playa, I remember a woman that told me Playa shampoo was the only thing that would work on her son’s textured hair,” she says. “I would hear those stories from time to time and I was like, ‘Why is no one addressing this?’ So it was incredible that we were able to make this product and for Target to adopt it.”

A kids’ line was on the table at California Naturals from the beginning, but Wild recounts that discussions with Target accelerated its development after the retailer identified an opportunity to offer clean haircare for kids. Hiatt believes the biggest opportunity is bringing clean kids’ formulations to mass shoppers without premium pricing.

“There are indie brands making fantastic products for kids that are fully organic, with a surfactant base that could be made in a kitchen, but at the same time, that product’s going to be $25 to $30,” he says. “The general mass consumer is not able to either afford that or even know where it exists. Our ability to bring that clean product to the mass consumer is really the biggest differentiator.”

California Naturals is already in talks to extend the kids' line’s presence beyond its launch retail partners. The brand is sold at Walmart and CVS. Retailers are eager to bring in products for kids that speak to new parents who aren’t necessarily interested in buying the same products for their kids that their parents bought for them.

“More often than not, you end up talking to a category buyer who is a parent, and they’re not buying products for their kids from their own assortment,” says Hiatt. “The current assortment is just so stale and so stuck to 15 years ago, with a lot of licensed big-box product.”

Amazon is California Naturals’ primary stock-up and replenishment channel, which inspired the brand to create larger sizes of the kids’ line there from day one. This channel-specific strategy aligns with broader e-commerce trends, as seen during recent shopping events where long-term brand equity, rather than steep discounts, drove major beauty sales on Amazon. While bundling also tends to happen on Amazon, DTC delivers a more comprehensive experience for true brand fans.

“At retail, things have to be a certain size and price to work within a competitive set, but we all know as parents that we’re going to need a larger size because kids are going to blow through this product. Amazon is an outlet to provide that larger format,” says Hiatt. “We certainly want consumers to come to our DTC channel and see everything we have to offer, because that’s the only place you will actually see the entire California Naturals assortment.”

California Naturals has planned a tiered launch approach for the line’s debut, with announcements on its social media channels, a top-of-funnel streaming campaign, and influencer seeding with parent lifestyle influencers who recommend products they use on their own children rather than traditional haircare influencers. The marketing push follows the brand’s “Keep It Real” campaign unveiled last month encouraging consumers to spend more time outdoors and away from screens.