“It’s the next frontier”: Creating Australia’s fastest-growing hair care brand

Hair care, previously the step-sister to makeup and skincare, is starting to take centre stage as a major beauty category.

This can be seen with the cult-like following that hair care brands like Bread and Ouai have earned and the introduction of celebrity hair care lines including Beyoncé’s Cécred and Jennifer Aniston’s LolaVie.

One entrepreneur hoping to capture a share of this growing market is Jordan Mylius, who previously drove the global growth of self-tanning and skincare brand Bondi Sands and is seeking to achieve a similar result with his recently launched hair care brand, Hairification. 

Positioned as a mass brand, Hairification was conceptualised to fill the gap in the market for efficacious hair growth products with grocery store accessibility and price point.

The skinificatin of hair 

Mylius noted that skincare brands saw exponential growth throughout the pandemic as consumers swapped out colour cosmetics, an effect he refers to as “skinification”.

“We’ve seen other areas, sunscreen, and self-tan and body care, they’ve all gone through what I would like to call the skinification of those categories, whereby you see these categories, having skincare actives added to products that never had been before,” he told Inside Retail..

While hair care lagged behind other categories in its adoption of actives, that is starting to change with brands like Hairification, which aims to create the next generation of hair care formulas that deliver results the same way consumers expect skincare to do.

“I wouldn’t say I’m some trailblazer,” Mylius said. “I think it’s just the next frontier.” 

Consumers are driving this shift by applying the same standards they have for their makeup, skincare, sunscreen and tanning products to hair care. 

“There are so many very well-informed consumers out there when it comes to every category in the health and beauty sector, we wanted to ensure that we have the claims substantiated using actives in the percentages as tested to deliver results,” said Mylius.

Efficacious formulas for educated and savvy consumer sit at the heart of Hairification’s strategy across its two product categories and six SKUs. 

“I didn’t want to release a product that would say, yes, we will stimulate hair growth, or we will come back frizziness or we will come back dryness, dehydration, breakages, whatever it may be, but not actually be able to deliver that,” explained Mylius.

“That was the key part of the brief to my formulator, which we’ve certainly nailed.”

Creating a masstige product 

Mylius’s experience in FMCG beauty categories, including self-tanner and oral care, primed him to see opportunities in the grocery beauty landscape.

He had no interest in creating an exclusive hair care line available at a few retailers and at a high price point that a small number of consumers could afford.

“I like to deliver everyday products that are accessible to everybody – and that comes from a distribution standpoint and a price standpoint, but also a consumer understanding,” explained Mylius.

While that end of the market is more saturated, “if you get it right, the opportunity is much greater,” he said.

Australian grocery stores have been increasingly diversifying their beauty product categories and brands to account for an evolving industry and new demographics.

“Coles in particular have been very vocal about what their strategy is for health and beauty – and that is to have brands that are new, or indie brands or brands that are already successful in the pharmacy landscape,” said Mylius.

The hair growth market

Within two months of launching last October, Hairification was stocked in 1556 Coles stores and is now in 400 Priceline stores. But despite its nationwide presence, there are no guarantees of customer conversion, Mylius said.

“One thing that’s very important to me is that in-store experience and consumer education – it is a little bit more challenging when you’re in the grocery space,” he said.

“Not only is it extremely expensive to be doing at shelf point of sale and it’s also quite fleeting in the respect that you only have a very short window that the point of sale is up for,” he added. 

Hairification was the first start-up hair care brand to penetrate all Coles stores and in just three months surpassed growth hair care competitor Growth Bomb’s market share, to become the top-selling hair growth range in the grocery store. 

 Hairification is already preparing for global expansion and expects to do $10 million in sales in its first year.

“We’re certainly working towards a very meaty growth target of at least 200 per cent year on year [growth] in these early, high-growth stages of our brand life cycle,” concluded Mylius.

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