Unexpectedly strong demand for hair nutrition among young women post-COVID – Haircarebear
Haircarebear is a brand that specialises in functional gummies and is a brand under Australian Health Vitality, the company which also owns the brands IsoWhey, Celebrity Slim for weight loss, Life Botanics, and Wheyless.
The brand started selling hair care supplements about four years ago and saw that the demand has become more apparent post-COVID.
According to Jimmy Seervai, director at Australian Health Vitality, sales of Hair Gummies, also the brand’s bestseller, shot up by 300 per cent in the year of its debut.
In the past four years, annual sales growth remained in double digits, rising at an average of 60 per cent.
The brand also carries products such as collagen, hyaluronic acid, and apple cider vinegar gummies.
Its sleep and tummy gummies are its second and third best-selling products after hair care.
In Australia, the products are sold mainly in grocery chains such as Coles and Woolworths. The brand has also expanded into various parts of Asia, including Singapore via Watsons, Malaysia via Watsons and Caring Pharmacy, China, and Indonesia.
It is even present in Cambodia through about 300 mum-and-pop stores.
Speaking to NutraIngredients-Asia, Seervai, a food ingredient researcher, said the main consumers of Hair Gummies were women 18 to 45 years old.
“We found that for girls around 18 to 23 years old, they were taking the product for their hair to be shinier.
“As we were getting into the stages where they start having children and childbirth, they also found that they were having some hair issues as well. These are the consumer segments that we found were buying the product the most.”
The idea in developing a hair care supplement came during conversations with its retail customers, which noticed that young women were concerned with thinning hair.
“We were discussing with a lot of our retail customers on what they found were some of the shortfalls in the market in terms of what people were looking for – which is thicker and fuller hair.”
It was this conversation that sparked the development of Hair Gummies, also the first or original product under the Haircarebear.
The brand name “Haircarebear” also came about because Seervai’s daughter, who was four years old then, thought that a care bear could help people with hair loss.
The trend for hair care products became even more apparent after COVID-19, which he said could be due to lifestyle changes.
“A lot of consumers weren't getting out and wouldn’t getting enough vitamin D during COVID-19. Their diets had changed and what they found was that their hair was starting to thin out, and it was predominantly the younger females.”
Still, the market demand was greater than what was expected, said Seervai, who is also known for being a contestant in season two of MasterChef Australia.
“We underestimated, I guess, the condition that was there between people at that age where they were finding that they were lacking in certain minerals.
“We were pleasantly shocked when the orders kept rolling in. We first developed the product with our own labelling here at our office and our lab, and before we knew, we were having to make thousands of labels.”
Its bestseller, Hair Gummies, provides 50mg of biotin per serve of two gummies. This is equivalent to 167 per cent of Estimated Safe and Adequate Daily Dietary Intakes (ESADDI).
Other key ingredients used include vitamin A, B5, B6, C, D, E, folic acid, zinc, iodine, choline, and inositol.
In Australia, the product is sold as a Formulated Supplementary Sports Foods.
According to the regulator Food Standards Australia New Zealand (FSANZ), these products “may contain specified ingredients which are either not permitted to be added to 'general purpose' foods and drinks or are added at a higher level.”
Seervai explained that the product formulation, including the higher amounts of vitamins and minerals was one of the factors that differentiated Hair Gummies from other hair, skin, nail gummies in the market.
“Our actual specific formulation is targeted at thicker, longer, shinier hair. Hair, skin and nails products have silica and a few other different ingredients in there, which do work too, but they don't specifically target hair growth, hair strength, hair shininess,” he said, adding that product taste was another area that the brand has focused on.
The use of pectin instead of bovine gelatin also makes the product suitable for vegans.
The brand has also secured halal certification to help it introduce the product in regions such as Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Middle East.
Pipeline: Sugar-free, personal care
Haircarebear’s upcoming pipeline include sugar-free gummies and personal care products that also target hair health.
These personal care products could range from hair spray, hair tonic, hair conditioner, and hair oil. They are expected to be launched in Q2 next year.
The sugar-free options will also meet the demand for gummy supplements, especially among young people.
“There are plenty of supplements out there that probably do target things like hair, skin, nails, but we had just put in the equipment to manufacture gummies at our site down in Nowra.
“And we saw the momentum of how younger people with the uptake of gummies has increased over tablets,” he said.
“We didn't want to confuse our product with something that people needed to take for treating flu symptoms or immune symptoms, so we made it into a gummy, and also because the target market was a little bit younger,” he added.
Market footprint
The brand is actively expanding across the globe. Vietnam, the US, and Canada are some of the latest markets that it has entered.
The next destinations will include the Middle East.
“We're not far from launching in the Middle East as well, which will be in pharmacies across Dubai, and also in Saudi as well,” said Seervai.
