Nancy Twine Says Premium Hair Care Doesn’t Need $60 Products. Her New Brand Starts at $18
The founder behind Briogeo is betting that today’s beauty shoppers want efficacy over excess and product quality over luxury price tags.
Nancy Twine. Illustration: Inc.; Photos: Courtesy Soulstice
Ever since she stepped down from her CEO role at Briogeo—the natural hair care brand she founded in 2013—Nancy Twine has kept a close eye on the category. After Briogeo’s nine-figure acquisition by Wella in 2022, Twine saw more consumers investing in hair health and interested in sophisticated formulas. Still, many struggled to access high-quality products, which often have luxury price tags. Twine saw a clear opportunity.
With her new brand, Soulstice—launching today—the second-time founder is delivering more affordable premium formulas intended to fill a gap in the market.
According to an industry report by Circana, hair
According to an industry report by Circana, hair care has officially beat fragrance and skin care as the fastest growing category in prestige beauty, generating 3 percent more sales in Q1 this year. Major premium beauty retailers are stocked with a variety of hair care options, but they often appear clinical or overindex on the brand experience with excessive packaging and expensive marketing efforts, driving up the price of their products. Soustice intends to deliver both carefully crafted formulas and luxury brand experience at a fraction of the average market price.
The brand launches with an inaugural lineup of five products: a $26 restorative mask, two $18 styling products, and a moisturizing shampoo and conditioner duo, priced at $20 each. That is a significant departure from the industry’s status quo as competitive haircare products currently sit firmly in the $30 to $60 price range.
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Twine backs the disruptive pricing strategy with another statistic from the Circana report: 94 percent of prestige beauty customers also shop mass products, and 35 percent of the mass beauty customers also shop prestige products. With Soulstice, she intends to speak directly to the selective, value-driven customers who shop both high and low, and further expand the number of these customers by removing the traditional price barriers in the prestige haircare market.
While that sounds like a simple vision
While that sounds like a simple vision on paper, bringing it to life requires ruthless optimization in every part of the business. Soulstice products come with minimal packaging and are concentrated to reduce the recommended application amount and extend the refill cycle.
To offer premium formulas at a lower than average price point, the team had to get granular about which ingredients deliver real value and which are merely marketing talking points. Every Soulstice formula starts with a patent-pending VitaMega Complex, powered by vitamin C-rich kakadu plum, inositol, and omega-dense sacha inchi oil. Twine describes it as a multivitamin designed to nurture scalp and hair health over time rather than provide quick fixes for complex issues, like dryness, thinning, and breakage.
Source: www.inc.com
