Today we’d like to introduce you to Kelly Foreman.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
MopTop started with a two-year-old’s hair.
My middle daughter’s fine baby hair changed almost overnight into the tiniest, most beautiful teeny-weeny afro. And I’ll be honest, my first feeling wasn’t delight. It was fear. Because I didn’t just see curls. I saw what the world does to people who look a little different, and I knew it was coming for her.
I knew because I’d lived it. At thirteen, I was a tomboy with a mullet. People were mean in the way that sticks: the comments, the looks, the feeling of being seen wrong, or not seen at all. I carried that for years. So standing there looking at my daughter, I realized I wasn’t shopping for a product. I was fighting for her confidence.
That’s the whole reason MopTop exists: to embolden people to embrace how they are created, through JunkFree® haircare and honest solutions that build confidence, identity, and belonging. That’s a big mission for a bottle of conditioner. I’m fine with that.
I have three girls, all with different textures. Between all of us, there are four different textures under one roof. So this has never been a market segment to me; it’s my bathroom counter.
Building a company while raising them taught me things no business book did. The earliest and hardest lesson: you can’t do good business with bad people. I learned that the expensive way. There were faster routes to growth on the table, and most of them ran through people whose values I didn’t trust. I said no more than I said yes, and it cost me speed. It also kept the company mine and kept the mission intact.
In 2022, the mission got bigger. My brother, who is neurodivergent, was fired from a major grocery chain after seventeen years of flawless work. Seventeen years. Nothing about his ability changed. What was missing was on the other side: clarity, empathy, and systems built for people who think and communicate differently. He didn’t fail. The workplace did.
I’ll be his legal guardian one day, and that forced me to think hard about what happens to people like him when nobody is advocating. Every neurodivergent person’s situation is different, but the need underneath is identical: dignity, understanding, and a real shot.
So MopTop is two things now. It’s a textured haircare brand. And it’s a growing platform for inclusive workplace innovation. I’m building tools and work kits that help employers actually support autistic and neurodivergent employees, starting with individual strengths instead of deficits, communicating clearly, and creating environments where confidence can grow.
Through all of it, I’ve chosen mission over margin. Not because I’m noble, but because the shortcuts on offer would have cost the confidence of the kids and families we serve, and I’m not trading that for a better quarter.
When people truly see how beautifully they’re made, they don’t keep it to themselves. It changes how they treat everybody around them. That’s what I’m actually building.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Smooth road? Not even close.
I sometimes joke that if I had known everything I was going to have to learn when I started MopTop, I might have been smart enough to be terrified. Entrepreneurship has given me some of the most beautiful moments of my life, but it has also handed me situations where I thought, “You seriously cannot make this stuff up.”
We’ve had suppliers change how a product was made, including changing an ingredient without telling me, and suddenly I’m dealing with a mess I didn’t create but absolutely had to fix.
We survived COVID, supply-chain disruptions, manufacturing issues, inventory problems, cash-flow challenges, and all of the things that come with being a smaller company trying to compete in an industry filled with companies that have significantly deeper pockets.
I’ve also learned some harder lessons about people. There have been moments that had nothing to do with P&Ls, products, or marketing.
Years ago, I had special-needs students working in our warehouse when a truck driver arrived with a delivery. From the moment he walked in, something felt wrong. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing up.
We unloaded the truck. I contacted the trucking company, sent them the paperwork, and asked that the driver leave. He refused. Then he began banging on the doors of our building, terrifying the students who were working with us. I eventually had to call the police.
That day taught me something completely different about leadership: **trust your instincts and protect the people entrusted to you.** Business can wait. People come first.
There have been plenty of expensive mistakes along the way too. I’ve trusted people I shouldn’t have trusted. I’ve said yes when I should have said no. I’ve held on too long sometimes and probably walked away too late a few others. Entrepreneurship has a very effective way of teaching you the lesson again if you don’t learn it the first time.
But here’s the other side of the story.
For every crazy story, there have been extraordinary ones.
We’ve heard from people who spent years believing their hair was ugly, difficult, unprofessional, or something that needed to be fixed and then learned to see themselves differently. We’ve watched kids begin to love the curls they once wanted to hide. We’ve had parents tell us that something as seemingly simple as learning how to care for their child’s hair changed the way that child saw themselves.
Those moments outweigh the hard ones.
The struggles have definitely changed me as a leader. I’m much more careful today about who I partner with. I ask better questions. I trust my gut faster. I understand that a big opportunity with the wrong person is rarely a good opportunity.
And I’ve learned that resilience isn’t pretending everything is fine. Sometimes resilience is getting knocked sideways, being really ticked off for a minute, figuring out what the lesson is, fixing what needs to be fixed, and getting back to work. This is what I affectionately call the MLF degree: Major in Losing Flesh. Haha.
Twenty-plus years later, I don’t think the goal was ever to have a smooth road.
The goal was to build something worth fighting for.
For me, that’s still MopTop’s mission: **to embolden people to embrace how they are created.** And some of the hardest things we’ve experienced along the way have only made me more certain of why that mission matters.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
From an artist and creative standpoint, this might sound a little crazy, but I can look at someone’s hair and almost immediately see what it could look like with the right coaching, guidance, technique, and products.
It’s like I have a picture in my head before we ever start. I always say I wish I could somehow take a photograph of what I’m seeing, because probably 90% of the time, when we’re finished, their hair looks remarkably close to what I pictured.
And I absolutely love that.
Hair is like a thumbprint. No two heads of hair are exactly alike. Of course, there are similarities in texture, curl pattern, density, porosity, and all the other characteristics we talk about, but every person’s hair is uniquely theirs. I think that is incredibly beautiful.
Once I see the potential in someone’s hair, I honestly can’t unsee it. It’s one of my absolute favorite parts of what I do.
I’ve always believed appearance matters—not because I think everyone needs to look a certain way, but because of how powerfully it can affect the way we feel about ourselves.
The first thing you usually notice about someone is their face. The second is their hair unless their hair is particularly distracting, and then, let’s be honest, it might be the first. Ha!
We form first impressions incredibly quickly, and whether we like it or not, how we present ourselves is part of that. But what matters even more to me is what happens when that person looks in the mirror.
There is this moment when someone finally sees what I could see all along.
They see their curls differently. They stand a little taller. Their eyes and face change. Their confidence changes.
That’s the picture I want to keep bringing to life.
I want as many people as possible to look in the mirror and see the beauty that was already there, not because we changed who they are, but because we helped reveal it.
That, to me, is the art of what we do.
Who else deserves credit in your story?
My number one human fan, I’d have to say, is my sweet husband. He has been my supporter, cheerleader, advocate, and partner in crime. He has supported everything, and he sees what an amazing difference we get to make in people’s lives. We started with our own kids. I think also my kids deserve credit. We have been blessed with amazing, faithful, beautiful kids. We say “Strong like Bear, Brave like Lion!” They tease me, “Mom, stop talking hair,” and I can’t help it. I just love it. I love it so much, and I love seeing the beautiful changes in people, just them loving themselves. It’s all about Big Love.
Also, this might sound silly, but one of my goals is to be like Dolly Parton, minus a couple of things. Haha! I love what an amazing legacy that woman has left. She loved people big, and she helped as many people as she possibly could, and I love that. I want that to be what my life looks like…Obeying without Delay; it’s my calling, start to finish.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://moptophair.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/moptophair/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MopTopHair
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellycforeman/
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@MopTopHair
