There’s a science to looking good, and Abigail Kuehl thinks she has the secrets to making her clients’ hair look its best.
Kuehl has no background as a chemist, but she has more than a decade of experience as a stylist and salon owner, and around 2015 she co-founded the hair-care brand Antidote (whose name is usually written in all capital letters) with former Unilever executive David Calle.
Antidote produces salon-quality products made from natural ingredients.
About “In Good Company”
This is one in a series of occasional casual conversations with Maryland small business owners. If you or someone you know would like to participate, please email reporter Bria Overs at Bria.Overs@TheBaltimoreBanner.com.
Kuehl, 37, and her family followed her best friend, Kare, to Maryland in 2021, relocating from Wisconsin to Kingsville in Baltimore County, where she said she’s enjoying life so far.
In addition to running her own business, she is a wife, mother to three sons, and pursuing a bachelor’s degree in business administration and business and environmental economics at Towson University.
“We love being entrepreneurs. It’s a rollercoaster and nothing is ever the same,” she said. “One day it’s high and the next day it’s low and you have to push through it, but we love it.”
Her products are primarily sold in salons in Wisconsin, but now that she’s settled in Baltimore, she’s actively seeking partnerships with local Maryland businesses.
Baltimore Banner: How did you get into hair care and what prompted you to start Antidote?
Abigail Kuehl: I opened a boutique salon in Appleton, Wisconsin in 2013. It was located downtown and my goal was to focus on building more one-on-one relationships with my clients.
During that time, one of my clients who came to me had a partner who was relocating. He was working in the Netherlands at the time because he had worked for Unilever, a much larger company, for over 30 years. That was my business partner, David. I ended up having coffee with him, and that was the beginning of Antidote.
Antidote sells hair care products infused with essential oils, including shampoos, conditioners and styling creams. (Jerry Jackson/Baltimore Banner)
We discussed the needs of my clients and the concerns they were having with their hair. I have been helping my clients for years with issues like dandruff, scalp sensitivity, dry, weak and brittle hair, etc. I would say I was creating more holistic and plant-based formulations for them. I have done a lot of research on different plant-based ingredients that can help treat these issues for my clients and they were amazed.
Some were made in mason jars and had to be shaken in the shower. It was pretty messy at times, but they were seeing real results from these ingredients. I had coffee with David and I mentioned this to him. He was in consumer goods and he was like, “Oh, I love these companies. It’s such a unique space.” So we started talking about what this might look like and how we could scale this up to meet the needs of more people.
You went from homemade products in mason jars to bottles with your company name on them. When do you think the focus became more on business?
We started working together in 2015. If you think about it, there are a lot of natural brands on the market, but what I and my clients struggled with was finding something that was natural, plant-based, and professional salon-safe.
We’re not chemists. I consider myself a chemist, but we don’t have that background at all. David had a great network of contacts that he could leverage. We found three retired chemists who had worked on different types of consumer products.
They helped me with ingredient formulations, finding natural, long-lasting preservatives for the products, ingredients that would work for specific issues, etc. I would often talk to my clients about the scalp issues they were suffering from, so I helped them find and combine ingredient mixtures to treat some of those issues.
Antidote co-founder Abigail Kuehl founded the company in Baltimore County in 2021. (Jerry Jackson/Baltimore Banner)
You moved to Baltimore County for work and personal reasons during the COVID-19 pandemic. What was that like?
Baltimore is a great hub for new entrepreneurs and companies. We’ve noticed that just through networking. I think Baltimore is similar to our hometown in some ways. It’s much bigger, of course, but it definitely encourages new ideas and I think that’s what sparks innovation within the community.
What are your future plans for you and Antidote?
Last year, Antidote had some pretty big goals, starting with different packaging, changing the brand name a bit (it was previously called ANTIDOTE1848), and relaunching the whole brand.
We’ve streamlined, we’ve brought in new products, we’ve discontinued some things. We changed the look of the bottle, we changed the labels, so it was a big change for us. It took a lot of work. I feel like I’m still recovering from it.
I think the next big thing is we’re looking to expand. We have a very strong direct sales business. We currently have about 12 salons, none of which are in Maryland. Now that we’re getting our roots down here, my goal is to leverage all of the rebranding we did last year and find new boutique salons that can help grow Antidote in the region.
We have a very strong presence in Wisconsin and are looking to build that presence here within a very unique network of salons that are looking for something different in their approach to hair care for their clients.
