The Hair Lab by Strands enters CVS IRL specialty doors
The Hair Lab by Strands, led by founder and CEO Eric Delapenha, is expanding its retail footprint.
Now available at CVS’ Beauty IRL specialty doors nationwide, the brand is looking to bring its diagnostic tool and solutions to a wider range of consumers.
To learn more about the brand and what expansion means for the company, Inside Beauty spoke to Delapenha.
Inside Beauty: Can you share a little background on the brand and how it came to be?
Delapenha: After graduating USC in 2017, I started working at a biotechnology company in Los Angeles, helping to bring a consumer genetic testing platform to market. During my time there, I learned that people didn’t just want information, they wanted a personalized solution and began exploring opportunities in the beauty market.
I started to look at haircare and the approach to customization that brands were taking in 2018. They created quizzes that only used subjective, self-reported data to customize products like shampoo and conditioner. After taking these quizzes and not knowing how to accurately answer many of the questions myself, I saw an opportunity to build a better product and experience for the consumer using biological data. The entire industry was built on the assumption that the average consumer knows their hair and understands all of the factors that impact their strands. Instead we use the only tools we have, our sight and touch to inaccurately assess our hair and guess what it needs to look its best every day. This guessing game results in wasting money and time on buying products that don’t fit our individual hair needs…so many of us have a graveyard of untouched hair products sitting in our showers and cabinets.
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Strands Hair Care was built in 2018 with the goal to provide hair care shoppers with a better way to shop and think about their hair, all starting with a new precision hair test. As scientists, we set out to design the perfect hair care experience beginning with a consumer-friendly, proprietary test that provides a true understanding of hair. Equipped with objective, biological data, we have ushered in a new era of effective, customized products for every hair type, ethnicity and lifestyle.
In 2020, after two years of development, we launched the Strands brand online, during the peak of the Covid-19 pandemic. With so many of us stuck at home, the timing of the launch combined with its unique approach made it an instant success. The test is done at home and then products are delivered to your door. It gives customers the ability to test their scalp oil levels at home, see their hair cuticle under the microscope for the first time, and ultimately co-create their hair care products that are individually filled at our lab in Los Angeles.
A few months after Strands launched, Walmart DM’ed us on social media asking to sell the Strands kits in their aisles. I honestly thought it was a joke at first! In our initial discussions with Walmart, I recognized that the Strands model didn’t meet the mass retail shopper’s needs - to have a customizable and accessible line of products that they can take home with them and use immediately after their shopping trip. That’s when we decided to partner together to create The Hair Lab by Strands. The Hair Lab was considered one of Walmart Beauty’s 'Big Bets' and launched in August 2022 under their first cohort of the Walmart Start Beauty Accelerator in 2,500 doors.
IB: Why was it important to create a tool and product that can give users background on their hair type?
Delapenha: It was important to create a comprehensive diagnostic tool to empower our shoppers with their hair data to make better product choices and simplify our customization process. Unlike Strands where you need to test at home, send in your samples and then wait for your products to arrive in the mail, shoppers in the aisle can scan The Hair Lab QR code which takes them to our 2-minute AI diagnostic. Our AI diagnostic is equipped with the biological data and insights from the Strands database. Our customers’ physical hair and scalp test results is what powers The Hair Lab diagnostic and makes it truly customized. With The Hair Lab, shoppers can design their own customized routine from over 1,000 possible combinations of products. This can be very intimidating so our diagnostic simplifies the experience by referencing our proprietary biological hair database to come up with the perfect regimen. Upon completion, they select their personalized bases (shampoo, conditioner, leave-in conditioner and now scalp!) and up to three dose sets per base on the shelves to take home to mix themselves.
IB: How did the partnership with CVS happen
Delapenha: The CVS beauty partnership began when they reached out to our team shortly after our Hair Lab launch in Walmart. Similar to Walmart shoppers, their consumers were looking for less generic solutions and for products customized to their unique hair and scalp needs. After seeing the traction we were receiving, especially amongst Gen Z and Gen Alpha consumers, the partnership felt like the right fit to expand our footprint and bring customization to CVS.
IB: Why was the Beauty IRL store a right fit for the brand?
Delapenha: Despite our success in big box retail, our team has always known that our brand would find the most success in stores dedicated to beauty and new product discovery. The Beauty IRL store within CVS has curated this environment to prioritize the beauty shopping experience with expert beauty consultants educating shoppers on new and innovative products like ours. Our brands introduce a new method of shopping for hair care, which means more education is required to drive a shopper to purchase. Having beauty consultants and the space on shelf in these BIRL stores to educate shoppers on our value proposition is key.
IB: What’s next for the company?
Delapenha: To expand our personalized hair and body care product lines and retail points of distribution. We recently launched an amazing line of personalized body care products under The Body Lab in Walmart nationwide and the reviews have been incredible. 1,500 of our 2,000+ reviews are five stars! We’re going to continue to push the boundaries on innovation within self care. We don’t believe innovation in beauty should just be about using the same formulas in pretty new packaging, but rather should be focused on delivering better formulas, high efficacy and removing points of compromise in the product experience.
