Formulate is a standout personalized haircare brand: review

At New York Post Shopping, we discover, work with and recommend a variety of brands and retailers — some popular, others start-ups, many too revolutionary to refrain from.

As a commerce journalist who has written a laundry list of product reviews and new launch stories, I can say with confidence that Formulate, a personalized haircare brand, is one of the best and acclaim-worthy names I’ve used.

For background, I’ve been, for the most part, a writer-turned-haircare tester this year. I rotated between 34 different shampoos (not to mention, more than a dozen dry shampoos), three of which have been personalized haircare brands.

However, with my own personal drugstore in my bathroom (seriously, thank the heavens for bathroom organization!), Formulate is the brand I consistently reach to for volumized, hydrated hair to nourish my has-been dry strands.

“There’s a huge disconnect between what we understand from a science standpoint and what consumers understand and use on a day-to-day basis,” Osmaan Shah, co-founder and CEO of Formulate, told us over a video call. “I would always hear from people that products stopped working after a while, so that’s why we started Formulate.”

Shah shared that “personalization has to be about evolution; the products have to evolve based on an intimate relationship with that customer who’s providing feedback to you.” Not to my surprise, I’ve seen that firsthand with the brand.

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How Formulate works

Sure, competitors like Function of Beauty and Prose also begin your catered-to-your haircare experience with a hair quiz, but what makes Formulate different?

“When someone signs up for Formulate, they enter some properties like their hair goals, the thickness of their hair, how often they wash it, things like that,” Tammy Lisi, formulation chemist at Formulate, shared with me over video. “After that, it gets assigned to a chemist and a formulation technician.”

So, how are formulations made? According to Lisi, Formulate has its own database connecting certain ingredients to certain hair goals, like increasing volume, boosting hydration or coaxing thickness.

“The most interesting thing behind the scenes is the way we process the formulations from actually building them,” Lisi continues. “If you go to a retail market and get your shampoo and conditioner off the shelf, those formulas are hot-processed — heated to a high temperature, held and take one to two months to get to the shelf and buy it — and these products tend to have a two to three-year shelf life.”

At Formulate, however, its shampoo, conditioner and hair serum are cold-processed, which means that everything is liquid until one ingredient is added that essentially sets what chemists call the ‘rheology’ — the viscosity, how thick it is, how it plays on your skin and how you interact with it by putting it in your hair. “This process enables us to use ingredients other brands can’t use,” she adds.

How Formulate customizes it’s personalized haircare

It’s no surprise Formulate has a different, effective approach. But, what’s truly amazing is how closely each member of the brand works with its clients.

“We have one client we work with closely because her husband has one set of allergies and is deathly allergic, and she has another [set of allergies],” Lisi explains. “They struggle as a couple to find things that they can use on their hair and on their skin, so I’ve given them two iterations and we’re on year three [of working with them], but they continue to give us feedback.”

What’s more, each member of Formulate has a supreme expert lens to the hair industry at large. Shah, who founded the brand after a decade-long struggle with acne and alopecia, turned to his own research and background as a computer scientist to create Formulate.

The benefits of Formulate

Over time, I’ve seen a huge difference in how my hair looks and feels with Formulate — but the process itself, even before the products are all bottled up and ready to be shipped, is remarkable.

Here are some benefits worth highlighting:

• Formulate uses KGF, EGF and MSR: These three ingredients that have a wealth of research as to how they can improve your hair’s quality. Other brands can’t use them, however, because they expire quickly when they’re hot pressed (luckily, Formulate uses a cold-pressed method).
• Formulate provides guidelines on hair routines and best practices: If you’re looking to shape up your weekly ritual, the brand will assist you by providing recommendations on how often to wash and how to maintain your hair.
• Formulate develops your requests with location in mind: With the brand’s database of regional humidity levels and other atmospheric numbers, your formula won’t resort to being tested in one region with a small pool of people, as shelved formulas do.
• Formulate arrives at your door quickly: You’ll receive custom formulas in less than two weeks, depending on the complexity of your request (i.e. a certain skincare condition), which is pretty exceptional considering the nature of the company.
• Formulate continues to evolve: Research chemists continue to sift through qualified studies and ingredients to add to their database and rigorously test for future requests.

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