Hair Care Pioneer wants to start a shampoo revolution
Hair Care Pioneer Gail Federici wants to start a shampoo revolution
Unlike other hair products, shampoos are massaged into the scalp, so heavy silicones, conditioning ingredients and pearlizing agents that are engineered to “stay behind” can impact the scalp.
While beneficial when applied mid-shaft to ends for conditioning and styling, these ingredients can also build up and prevent healthy new hair growth, eventually leading to thinning and hair loss.
Case in point: More than 20,000 consumers are participating in a class-action lawsuit filed in 2014 against a popular hair care brand which is promoted as a revolutionary way to cleanse the hair without traditional detergents or sulfates.
The lawsuit claims that the company’s cleansing conditioners caused hair loss, bald spots, itching and rashes. In a rare move, on , the Food & Drug Administration issued a safety alert against the line of cleansing conditioners.
“It actually does not make sense to put ingredients into a shampoo that not only have nothing to do with the cleansing process, but in fact, do the opposite, says Federici. When you think about it, it becomes a blinding glimpse of the obvious.”
“We arrived at this “aha” moment while we were developing the Color Wow range. We couldn’t figure out why hair color never looked as fresh as the day it was done.
We made a sulfate-free shampoo that was as gentle as water so we knew the color wasn’t leaching out but it still looked dull after a few weeks.
After much analysis, the penny dropped. The shampoo wasn’t really cleaning the hair.
No shampoo was because they all contained these silicones, etc. that are not easily washed off.
That’s when we decided to do the unthinkable, pull out all these conditioning agents and silicones which was antithetical to the industry norm, and keep only the cleansing ingredients.”
Federici was disrupting the beauty industry with new solution-based innovations long before disruption was a cool marketing concept.
Then, now and always, her mission has been to create products to solve beauty problems that are plaguing women everywhere.
Customer-obsessed, renegade thinkers, she and her team are committed to address real, unmet beauty needs with high quality products that help consumers, enable upgraded professional salon services and provide unique, relevant retail offerings.
Federici Brands is founded on a 25-year legacy of award-winning, problem-solving hair care innovation from CEO Gail Federici. From launching Bain de Terre, the first professional spa-inspired hair care line, to teaming with renowned British hair stylist John Frieda to create, grow and sell his eponymous range of hair care lines created to address problems specific to frizzy hair and blondes.
Federici has achieved an unrivaled level of success by breaking rules and traditions, ignoring conventional wisdom and creating new beauty categories.
Federici Brands imports and adapts best practices and philosophies to the beauty industry. Like a top tech company, they 1) think different 2) lead rather than follow 3) focus on creating a unique, positive user experience. They have earned the reputation for creating disruptive technologies that improve lives, have lasting impact and ultimately achieve iconic status. Totally tapped into pop culture, Federici Brands’ “prescriptive” regimes not only solve serious problems but deliver aspirational results that resonate with the most trend-forward consumers.
