Function of Beauty’s chief executive officer Alexandra Papazian addressed the evolution of customization, sharing how the brand is using personalization to create efficacious products and a sustainable business model. She also discussed the corporate’s expansion into retail.  

The hair care brand, which was founded by two MIT grads and a cosmetic chemist in 2015, “creates a completely customized regimen and a completely customized formula” based on a proprietary algorithm customer quiz, explained Papazian. To this point, Function of Beauty has developed 3 million unique formulations and Papazian said it’s capable of manufacturing upward of 27 trillion. 

The brand’s business model goals to satisfy consumer demand for targeted hair products, as NPD reports nearly 50 percent of consumers are willing to pay more for something that works for them and their specific needs. 

“Since its founding, the brand has harnessed its unparalleled level of information and really deep consumer understanding…to discover whitespace opportunities,” Papazian said. For instance, one discovery was that when consumers are given several days to update their subscription-based formula (relatively than triggering an automatic reorder straight away), they usually tend to update their product and remain loyal members. By delaying replenishment production by just a few days, Papazian said the corporate can also be more sustainable overall. 

Papazian said while Function of Beauty can attribute much of its success to personalized formulas and data usage, the corporate has also customized every a part of the experience for the buyer. Purchasers can add their name to the bottle, for instance, select the colour and fragrance of their formula (and its intensity) and go for sulfate-free formulas. And all of this personalization takes 45 minutes from the initial order to being ready for shipment. 

While the brand relies heavily on its direct-to-consumer subscriber model, it expanded into retail in 2020 with Goal and recently launched customizable styling products in an effort to bring personalization to brick-and-mortar. In retail, consumers should purchase goal-focused booster shots so as to add to shampoo, conditioner and styling products in an effort to customize them. Papazian said that with 18 stock keeping units at retail, there are upward of three,000 custom formulas the buyer can create. 

Papazian explained personalization is a consumer demand across the board, each online and in retail. Lately, the buyer has change into more educated than ever, researching ingredients, exploring sustainable options and searching for brand transparency. 

“Only customization can offer you so many data points you can actually repeatedly improve your products and your process,” she said.

This data and population research is driving the long run of the brand. Papazian explained the growing need for customized products is reflected by the proven fact that “in lower than 10 years, nearly half of the population shall be non-Caucasian….There definitely must be an answer on the market to deal with all this variety that keeps increasing and becoming increasingly complex,” she said.