Tootilab

Celebrating female-founded brands you'll want to know.

Since November 2025, we've been spotlighting the next generation of female-founded consumer brands and celebrating female entrepreneurship, showing that building a business is a real, viable career path for women from all walks of life, regardless of background, age, culture, or circumstance.

We started Mindful Brand to support women in succeeding in business - not just through what we do, but also in how we shop. We believe in a future where more seven-figure consumer brands are built by women, and we're committed to helping make that vision a reality.

Deciding which businesses to support is a personal choice.

If, like us, you prefer to champion female-owned brands, we hope you enjoy this series.

Today, we’re featuring Tootilab, co-founded by Gaia Tonanzi in 2024 in the UK.

About the Brand

Tootilab exists to dismantle the myth that wearing hair curly is difficult, messy, or time-consuming - and they mean it.

While every other brand in this category has decided that curly hair is a problem, Tootilab was built on a different belief entirely. No overloaded shelves, no complicated routines - just science-backed formulas tested on real people of all curl types, simple enough to use every single day.

The name says it all. Derived from the Italian tutti, meaning everyone, Tootilab is for everyone with curly hair, from waves to tight coils, regardless of gender, ethnicity, age, or nationality. No matter where someone is in their curly hair journey, beginner or professional, everyone is invited - because your hair was never the problem. The brand’s job is simply to show you what it can do when it's treated properly.

Meet the Founder

Gaia is originally from Italy and moved to the UK in 2017 and is currently based in London.

She spent her entire career working in curly haircare - beginning with trend research and product concept development at the Boots manufacturing lab in Nottingham, before joining Curlsmith as their first employee in 2019, where she stayed until the company was acquired in 2022.

She then moved to a more corporate setting but quickly realised it wasn't for her. So the idea of launching her own brand started growing.

How She Started

Six months in her corporate job, Gaia was laid off the day she returned from her honeymoon, in October 2022.

Throughout her time there, she had been the only person with curly hair in the office - consistently advocating for formulas made for real needs, products tested on real people, and actual active ingredients over marketing claims. Every time, she was outvoted by those who saw curly hair as a trend to capitalise on. Being laid off became the push she needed to do it herself, and prove them wrong.

Meanwhile, her co-founder Julio, a long-time friend, brought the other side of the story. He grew his hair out during the pandemic, discovered it was curly, and had no idea what to do with it. He was exactly the customer Tootilab was built for: someone with texture they didn't know they had, surrounded by products that didn't work, looking for someone to just make it simple. The two joined forces, and Tootilab was born.

What She Learned

Gaia has learned that you have to lead with delusion and audacity.

Most companies we call successful today became so because they had the guts to dream bigger - to think like a bigger company.

That doesn't mean burning cash following the marketing strategy of a celebrity brand. But don't let your size limit you. If you have an idea, there are often 100 different ways to make it happen if you think outside of the box.

Where to shop

Tootilab is available to buy at www.tootilab.com and on Amazon (UK only).

Instagram: @tootilab

TikTok: @tootilab

YouTube: @tootilab

Facebook: @tootilab

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