How these pharmacists turned their beards into a big brand

Dr. Derick McElveen Jr. is a trained pharmacist and entrepreneur. He is the co-founder of EveryDay Fresh Club, a self-care brand created to fill the void of hair products created by and for Black men. The brand offers natural hair and beard care products designed without harmful chemicals or preservatives.

McElveen, a Jacksonville native, started the brand with Dr. Theron Douglas, who is also a Jacksonville native. They both worked their way through pharmacy school and also tackled COVID-19 head-on as first responders.

The duo first met in 2017 while working at a military base. The two bonded by sharing their experiences in college before discussing grooming hacks that best suited their jobs’ strict clean-shaven demands, according to the Florida Star.

McElveen attended a historically Black university, Florida A&M University, where he received his doctorate. According to him, his interest in pharmacy was sparked by witnessing the relationship between his grandfather and his grandfather’s pharmacist. His grandfather would later open his own pharmacy, where McElveen interned in high school. “For me, it was a cerebral decision. I love science. I love helping people and information,” McElveen told News4Jax.

Douglas loved math and science. He schooled at the University of Florida as an engineering major but later chose pharmacy. Starting EveryDay Fresh Club with McElveen was primarily motivated by the lack of Black-owned beard care brands. McElveen and Douglas used their expertise to develop a line of grooming, shaving and hygiene essentials, which became known as EveryDay Fresh Club.

Before starting the brand, Douglas was often stopped on the street by men who would ask him about the products he used on his beard. That was when he and McElveen became serious about building their brand.

In 2020, McElveen received an invitation to pitch their products at the TechStars Start Up Weekend competition hosted by Elevated Ventures and the University of North Florida’s Center for Entrepreneurial Growth.

“We spent a whole three days building the model and doing the marketing research. That’s when I realized this isn’t just a product or something that was fulfilling a need for us, this fills the needs for a lot of people and there is a really large market for people who aren’t being addressed. And that’s us,” McElveen said.

McElveen and Douglas placed third in the competition for their Beard Meringue and earned resources for business development, sales modeling and consulting, according to News4Jax. EveryDay Fresh Club would officially launch in June 2022.