INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
In the age of Amazon, where up to 90 percent of all consumers use it to buy goods and Amazon is accounting for a rapidly-growing percentage
of a consumer’s total retail spend (along with other giants like Walmart), direct-to-consumer brands — leveraging social media
alongside tech-first apps — are emerging as sometimes surprising, but often effective, competition.In one of the latest developments,
London-based celebrity hair colorist Josh Wood — who has worked with the likes of David Bowie, PJ Harvey, Florence Welch, Saoirse Ronan
and Elle Macpherson, as well as with fashion designers Miuccia Prada, Donatella Versace and Marc Jacobs (and, disclaimer, me: I tried out
his products before agreeing to write this story) — has raised $6.5 million led by Index Ventures, with JamJar Investments and Venrex
also participating, to launch his products into cyberspace with the aim of disrupting the at-home hair color industry.At-home hair color is
a huge market that has largely been untouched in terms of innovation
Some 80 percent of women over 25 color their hair, with 75 percent of those doing it at home, working out to an industry worth $20 billion
annually.As with other direct-to-consumer brands, tech is playing a role on multiple levels at Josh Wood, from how the product is developed
through to how it will match with consumers, as well as how it is marketed.But unlike other direct-to-consumer startups, Josh Wood actually
put down roots (heh) first in a very non-tech environment.If you live in London, you might already recognise the name and logo of Josh Wood
Apart from his star list of clients (and the name check he gets in the media for that work), he has already been running his hair coloring
business at some scale.Wood’s products have been adorning a selection of London buses, in part to promote a partnership he’s had for the
last year with Boots, a big UK chain of drugstores, where his coloring kits and other products are sold alongside big names like Revlon and
L’Oreal.That partnership has been a big boost for both Wood and Boots so far
Some 240,000 products were sold in the first year, contributing to the first growth spike that Boots has seen in the hair coloring category
(One reason also that the startup attracted the likes of Index, which has been behind other companies that have straddled the worlds of
women’s consumer goods and tech, such as Farfetch and Glossier.)The range of products — which includes hair coloring kits, root
concealer products, and color-specific shampoo and conditioners — has been marketed from the start as a new take on hair coloring.Wood has
been working as a colorist himself for some 30 years, and while he has worked with some of the biggest names in women’s hair care in that
time — he’d once been a global ambassador for Wella and he is currently global color creative director for Redken — he believes that
there is a lot of room for improvement in home coloring.“You get thousands of boxes of hair colors, and women are usually terrified of
making the wrong choice,” he said in an interview
And that’s before you consider how prolonged dying at home can fry your hair if you don’t know what you’re doing, or using the
products incorrectly.Wood’s focus up to this point has been mainly on the product itself
Using his learnings from being a leading colorist, and knowing some of the pros and cons of working with brands that already sell
mass-produced consumer goods, he has worked with chemists and other product designers on developing new ranges of shades an add-in product,
called “Shade Shot Plus,” that extend the range even further and bring in highlights that are unique to each person’s hair; as well as
aftercare products.Shade Shot Plus has been a particularly notable development
Wood said that up to now the main endgame for producers of at-home hair coloring products has been to create standardised colors that will
always look the same on each woman, so that it can be sold more consistently and predictably (think of those slightly macabre locks of hair
that you sometimes see hanging in the aisles at drug stores showing “the color”)
But the product developers couldn’t standardise how the highlights product would look
That roadblock, Wood said, turned out “to be a gift.”In fact, standardised color runs counter to how professionals work, and what those
who go to professionals want
“No two colors are the same,” he said of Shade Shot Plus “One of the big barriers at home is that women feel they have obvious ‘box
color’, cookie-cutter lego hair, but this unlocks that, because the tones deposit differently on everyone’s hair.”That product
development is set to continue
With an approach reminiscent of Third Love how it has redefined shopping for bras by vastly extending the range of bra sizes, the idea will
be to extend that color range even further down the line.“This is the tip of the iceberg in terms of the ideas I’ve got,” he said
“There is a lot to learn from base color and foundation matching
This is a category that has had no innovation for decades and this is just the first iteration.”But now, with the funding, the plan is to
complement that product development with technology to help people find colors that best suit their own preferences — whether it’s for a
new color that will go with a specific complexion, or to find the tint that most closely matches the color their hair used to be before it
At the same time, the aim is to deliver at-home dying in an experience that is more reminiscent of what you get if you pay much more (and
spend more time) going to a trusted, professional hair colorist.“We are pressing heavy on being able to deliver an amazing consultation
online that will deliver a bespoke hair color that is very natural and covers grey,” he said
“But at our heart, I’d like to think of us as a brand that cares for the condition of your hair.”Wood said that he is currently hiring
and working with technologists to develop color-finding tools, akin to the kind you might come across in online makeup storefronts, to
explore both how a woman (or man) looks, and what she or he is looking for.This is in progress but the idea, it sounds like, will not only
involve computer vision but also machine learning to tap into a bigger database of what “lookalike” complexions and people choose for
colors, as well as a database created by Josh Wood itself to match those colors, based on the tinting choices that many professionals would
make for those people were they sitting in a chair in a salon.Wood said that he wanted to raise this money and expand the product as a
direct-to-consumer offering because he didn’t think he’d be able to achieve this with something that is sold on a shelf — although the
idea will be to complement that, too.“The reason we are approaching this growth phase from a digital perspective is because we want to
develop our business” — the market for at-home coloring is much bigger than professional, in-salon coloring — “but also have a
best-in-class consultation tool
I’ve been coloring for nearly 30 years and this is the moment for me to democratize my learnings, and I couldn’t do that without digital
There is no other way to connect with so many consumers, and it’s very difficult to get that element right in a brick-and-mortar point of
sale.”I asked Wood if he would also explore the idea of subscriptions, a la Dollar Shave Club, as part of the mix as well, and his answer
was actually a little refreshing and I think is a good sign for how this might develop over time.“We are less keen on subscriptions and
more keen that women feel we’re in the bathroom with them every time, monitoring how their hair color changes over time
We want something much deeper than just selling the same thing to them once a month.”
