The clean hair trend has been around for some time, but a pandemic-driven rise in at-home coloring led more consumers to go looking for clean hair dyes.

Cue Hally Hair — an ammonia-free, cloud foaming hair color line launched by former marketing executive Kathryn Winokur last 12 months that’s now available at Ulta, Revolve and Urban Outfitters.

She got here up with the thought when her summer intern asked for some time without work to go to the hair salon to repair a nasty at-home hair dye experience.

“I just couldn’t consider that this was still happening. I’m 35 and I had a nasty run-in with Sun In once I was in eighth grade,” said Winokur. “I just kept researching the category and the more I came upon, the more interesting I assumed it was. There’s a handful of CPG players which have the lion’s share on this category and there’s little or no innovation within the space. So I felt like there was this chance for a brand to return and inject quite a lot of fun into it, but additionally really deal with the formulation side of things.”

With the assistance of $4 million she raised from a handful of enterprise firms and family offices, Winokur teamed up with a Brooklyn-based lab to develop two products infused with natural extracts: Color Cloud — a demi-permanent dye priced at $25; and Fluffy G — an element toning glaze, part hydrating gloss priced at $15. In addition to being ammonia-free, the products are free from parabens and sulfates.

“I used to be very keen on Japan and South Korea in all my research, and so they’ve had this huge influx of the younger demographic coloring their hair this last decade with the K-pop craze. All of them use a product called bubble dye, which is foam-based hair dye,” added Winokur.

She’ll soon be tapping further into the Gen Z market when she launches the Gamer Girl set, consisting of three small 30 ml bottles of various colours in a reusable heart-shaped pouch.

To coincide with the launch, gamer MeganPlays will probably be using Hally’s avatar hairstyles on Roblox.

“To the most effective of my knowledge, we’re going to be the primary hair brand to do something on Roblox,” said Winokur. “We’re bringing some very recent trending hairstyles into the metaverse — some looks from Coachella, the Met Gala, Euphoria. Every gamer has an avatar so she’s going to change her hairstyle and play with these for the primary week of the campaign. We’ve seen a very good return on our investment and getting recent customers from in-app mobile gaming promoting.”

In keeping with Muffy Clince, director of emerging brands at Ulta Beauty, the clean hair dye category is gaining momentum on the retailer nationwide.

“A part of it began back within the pandemic when people were doing a little of this coloring at home and so they definitely want to take care of that even after,” she told Beauty Inc. “We’ve also seen quite a lot of it in the entire evolution of self-expression and the guest really having fun with bringing their newest mood to life through their hair. Now they’re prioritizing doing it safely. When you possibly can have a look at a few of these formulas and the evolution of the formulas, the guest is searching for more of those clean and conscious options. So once we have a look at Hally they really checked quite a lot of these boxes. We thought that the Gen Z guest would adore it.”

Overall, Ulta stocks around seven clean hair dye brands, including Madison Reed and Arctic Fox.

 

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