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- [00:02]
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- [00:38]
Kirby
Hi, Kirby.
- [00:40]
Sarah
Hi, Sarah. Welcome to Los Angeles.
- [00:49]
Kirby
Okay, we are super excited because we have Chelsea Riggs here. She is the founding member and CEO of Amica, which is, if you listen to the podcast, one of our favorite hair care brands. It's very fun, accessible, affordable, it's luxurious, and it's rewriting the narrative of professional hair industry. So throughout Chelsea's tenure, you've done so much. You've built the brand's distribution from the ground up by focusing on supporting the hairstylist community, which I think we, you know, know is so, so important. You've expanded Amica's presence in Sephora over the past 10 years into all the doors. Huge. You have a robust DTC business that contributes over 25% of revenue. And under your leadership, you've seen 10 times the revenue growth for Amica, which is amazing. We could go on and on and on, but we're so, so happy to have you here at Los Angeles.
- [01:42]
Chelsea Riggs
I'm excited to do this.
- [01:44]
Sarah
So one of the reasons that I wanted Chelsea to come on is when she was pitched to us, it was like, she's young. Yeah, she's young.
- [01:53]
Chelsea Riggs
We're all young, aren't we? Yeah.
- [01:54]
Sarah
We're all in our 30s, right?
- [01:55]
Chelsea Riggs
Yeah. 36.
- [01:56]
Sarah
Yeah. It's rare to see someone at your level, CEO RH. So we tip our hat to you.
- [02:03]
Chelsea Riggs
Thank you.
- [02:03]
Sarah
An inspiration, very, very inspirational. And I had the opportunity to have breakfast with you a couple of months ago. And I loved our conversation because you were bringing up things that I think a lot of people listening to this podcast may not consider. When it comes to buying beauty products, when it comes to greenwashing, when it comes to why we may not be seeing certain innovations, why we may be seeing certain innovations. But we also have you on because you and the brand generously let our Glamgelinos test a brand new product. So this launched in December. It's the lightweight Hair Styling Oil, the Super Fruit Star Lightweight Hair Styling Oil. So Glams listening to this now, if you were in the testing group. You've already tested it. You've already left your reviews. You already love it. You've already talked about it in the slack. But for those of you that weren't in the testing group, you're gonna learn about this a lot more today. But we also like to tell the story about the brands and why we love the brand so much. So, Chelsea, thanks for coming on and being with us.
- [03:00]
Chelsea Riggs
Yeah, thanks for the invitation.
- [03:02]
Sarah
Of course. Okay, so before we get into the business side of things, let's talk about what's on your glowing, gorgeous face and hair and nails and all the things.
- [03:12]
Chelsea Riggs
Oh, my gosh. Well, we don't want to take the whole podcast doing this. And because I work in the industry, I get lots of products as you. You do as well. Lately, I've been loving this product, actually. I. I went back to Dr. Dennis Gross. I hadn't used this brand in a while. It was probably one of the OG skincare brands that I cut my teeth on. And then I went to a spa recently, and they put this product. I'm like, what is that? She's like, I'll show it to you when we go back outside. And it's called Dewy Deep. I have very dry skin. I live in New York, and I was in Arizona, so my. My skin was just so dry, and I'm obsessed, obsessed with it. I wear that at night. I also. Anything that says Dewy, I'm pretty much sold. That's the same. I have so many.
- [03:51]
Kirby
Yeah.
- [03:52]
Chelsea Riggs
So many moisturizers. The Tatcha Dewy one is also really great.
- [03:55]
Sarah
Wow.
- [03:55]
Kirby
Speaking my language.
- [03:57]
Sarah
Sister language over here.
- [03:59]
Chelsea Riggs
Love that one. I always go back to that. What else do we have? Glossier stretch concealer. My mom was actually in the bathroom with me getting ready recently, and she's like, what is that? Let me try. And then she went out and bought it. I'm like, it's unlike any concealer I found because it doesn't, like, sink into lines, and it's just, like, really, like, moisturizing. So I love that Charlotte Tilbury Hollywood filter. And there's this product from YSL that I think is discontinued. Luckily, it's lasted me a long time. But I love it. It's a powder. It's their, like, touche Eclat. I never know how to say that, you know, but it's there. It's a powder. Oh, interesting. Called 3D Glow or something. I looked at the back of it, and I love that because I just, like, dust that all over and it kind of just blurs and highlights and does all that stuff.
- [04:43]
Sarah
Yeah. Because your skin looks glowy, but you have a powder on. I love that.
- [04:46]
Chelsea Riggs
Yeah. Because it's so dry. So I gotta, like, layer all the things to like, make it fake the glow.
- [04:51]
Kirby
Lip glossy. Super pretty.
- [04:53]
Chelsea Riggs
Oh, love this. It's from Edam. Okay.
- [04:56]
Kirby
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [04:57]
Sarah
We love them.
- [04:58]
Chelsea Riggs
It's so good. They have a couple of different colors. This was like, kind of like a berry color. I can't remember exactly what it's called, but really berry, like choo Choo lip balm. It's amazing because it actually hydrates your lips. I find so many of them, they. They're like, pretty for a while and then you're like, oh, my gosh, I need to reapply. Reapply. And this actually stays on for a long time.
- [05:15]
Sarah
One of these days, I'm gonna get on my soapbox and talk about how I feel. Like a lot of the lip products either slip on the lips or they're so gooey and so sticky. People are lying to us when they say, this is so slick. This is so moisturizing. I'm like, I feel like I have glue on my lips. 90%.
- [05:30]
Chelsea Riggs
Yeah.
- [05:31]
Kirby
It's almost like they just make it for the Instagram video. Cause it looks really pretty or pretty coming out of the tube and then that's it.
- [05:36]
Sarah
Yeah, it's like.
- [05:37]
Chelsea Riggs
No, I don't think this actually looks pretty coming out of the. Like, the packaging is beautiful. It's really thick. So when you, like, squeeze it out, it's not like this, like, beautiful, like, flowy, but it actually does. It doesn't feel, like, super sticky.
- [05:49]
Sarah
No, it doesn't look pretty sticky. It looks very, very glossy.
- [05:51]
Kirby
Pigmented, too.
- [05:52]
Sarah
Yeah.
- [05:52]
Kirby
This is something that, you know, I think sets Amika apart from other brands is that you guys don't have, like, a founder story on the site. And we know that, like, especially now, like, we.
- [06:03]
Chelsea Riggs
We.
- [06:04]
Kirby
We did beautycon. And, you know, the founder story was, like, so prevalent. Right. But you guys are so successful without that. The reason being is that it's very focused on product. Right. Amica is the number one hair care brand on Sephora and the number five prestige brand in America, but don't have a founder story. So why do you think Amica continues to flourish without a face?
- [06:24]
Chelsea Riggs
It's a good question. No one's actually asked me that before. So there's a few reasons. One, one, I think all the top hair brands in the US if we're looking at, you know, Data in terms of top selling brands, the majority of them, if any of them have a, don't have a founder.
- [06:39]
Sarah
So you're right.
- [06:40]
Chelsea Riggs
I think that's interesting with hair and that could be because hair is so diverse, right? It's not even just diverse when you think about texture. We think about how much hair you have, like density and then the thickness of each strand where you live. Do you color it, do you heat set? There's just so much that really dictates the products that you should be using. And I think it's a little hard to relate one person with every single hair need as opposed to skincare, like she's got amazing skin, I want that skin, or even makeup, I think is also a little bit more expert driven. When we started the brand, this was over 15 years ago. The landscape looked very different in beauty in general, but definitely hair care. So most of the brands were started by or headed by a celebrity, mostly like male hairdresser. Right. And as consumers, it just didn't really relate to us. Especially the hair care area feeling so different from other premium beauty categories. Like makeup was really fun. Like benefit was, you know, this like super cool, cheeky brand. You just didn't really have that in hair care. So we wanted to create a brand that really resonated with us as consumers of hair products. And that's how it was kind of born. And then as the brand evolves, you know, the ethos of it is really driven by amica means friend. I don't know if you know that you're nodding your head yes. So it actually comes from this language called Esperanto, which was the constructed language like at the turn of the 20th century, to unite the world under one language. Like the premise of it, we loved that. And this element of being friend is really more around community, which we. Nobody was using that word. We weren't even using that word to describe ourselves. We wanted a brand that reflected who we were and so we kind of created it that way. And something we say internally, not so much externally is we think of Amica as like a social experiment. Right. Like every person who's come into the brand, whether it be an employee or stylist. I've worked with so many different stylists over the years, of course, the ones that carry and use our brand every day, but different celebrity stylists, influencers, they all have put like their thumbprint in this brand. And I think that's why it resonates with so many people, because it's, it's a relatable brand that's not around one person's vision for how things should be in the marketplace. And that's allowed us to kind of have this longevity. And of course the products have to be amazing if you're going to stick around for 15 years. Like you got to have really good products. And that's something that we're focused on.
- [09:07]
Sarah
I feel like the salon aspect of Amica is a part of that too. That was one of the things that you told me that I was surprised by because I think of, you know, Amica is this bright, colorful brand. Right. I. I've known for a decade at this point in a Sephora. I didn't realize that you had such a huge, huge salon presence. And when we do Los Angeles Confidential, we send out these surveys and we ask people like, how are you finding hair products? Where are you buying them from? And a large contingent are saying, I go to my hair salon or I go to my hair stylist and I use what they recommend to me. So I think that's also probably a big part of it, right?
- [09:45]
Chelsea Riggs
Oh yeah. So Amika is a salon raised brand. We started actually selling hair tools. So we before we even had hair care products. So we were one of the first to put prints on hair tools and stylists, they just like really resonate with it. Loved it. It's basically art on product. Right. And what are hairstylists at the end of the day? Like, they're artists. They're also multi hyphenate sometimes they're therapists as well. Right.
- [10:09]
Kirby
100% wear a lot of hair Content.
- [10:11]
Chelsea Riggs
Creators at their core. Like they're creatives, they're artists. And that was really a way for them to have this element of sel self expression was through tools. And then once we created hair products, it just really kind of connected to the approachability that they wanted to have in their salon. This element of inclusivity, which has become a buzzword of course, but was something that we were doing. We didn't even realize, honestly that we were doing it because we had so many people from so many varied backgrounds. And then we like picked up our heads one day and looked around at the industry and we're like, this is kind of weird, right? Like nobody else looks like we look. Right. We don't have the same breadth of people and models on stage. I think stylists really saw that in our brand when you'd go to trade shows and see us there. So we've had a long history in the professional industry. We're the number four salon brand in the US Market, which is pretty crazy.
- [11:01]
Sarah
That is crazy, because you guys aren't owned by anybody. Are you amica?
- [11:05]
Chelsea Riggs
We. So we have a private equity back.
- [11:06]
Sarah
Okay, okay, okay. That's what I was asking. It's not like a L'Oreal brand or. Wow, that's really impressive.
- [11:12]
Chelsea Riggs
Yes.
- [11:12]
Sarah
I think, too, one of the reasons why Amika is so different from other hair care brands is you do have that salon component. But then people, consumers at Sephora are also like, I like this, and it works for me. But then you have kind of like this professional backing as well to support, you know, saying, like, whatever claims you may have with the product.
- [11:32]
Chelsea Riggs
That's a good point. Because when we were thinking of when we had hair tools and we were creating products, we felt products in the professional space were really confusing. You could easily overuse something, and they're like, oh, my God, I gotta wash my hair. So we wanted something that stylists would love, that really met. Because you think about it, they try so many products. They're professionals, so it has to have meet a really high bar to be professional quality for them to use it on clients, because not even just on themselves. It's like, you know, that's their business. So that was table stakes. We also wanted consumers to really relate and, like, feel like they understood it. So we've always tried to keep even our assortment under 50 products, which is pretty challenging to do because.
- [12:14]
Sarah
Well, especially after 15 years.
- [12:16]
Chelsea Riggs
Yeah, exactly. And also, we're a brand that really wants to make sure we cater to all hair types, textures, and styles. So you have to have a certain breadth of product to do that. But I find, you know, it's confusing for me as someone in the industry. There's 30 types of shampoos and conditioners. Why? And where do I even begin to start? So we really wanted to make sure that it was approachable and friendly to professionals as well as consumers.
- [12:39]
Kirby
Can we talk a little bit about the design? Just because it's like Kirby was saying, like, it's something that just stands out. Right? Like, even, like on. On the shelves in the salon. Was that a priority from day one to have, like, these beautiful designs on the tools on the bottle? Cause that really does set Amika apart from, like, its competitors.
- [13:00]
Chelsea Riggs
So when we started in the tool category, most tools were sold in, like, the appliance section, and most of the packaging looked like a toaster. Right. It had feature benefit, feature benefit. And we wanted to break the mold with that. So that pattern was part of it as well. It was also starting to be something that you could actually achieve on plastic. It was. It's actually water printing. If you remember back in the day, you could get all these cool phone cases at the mall. That really showed and expressed who you were. Right. So it was kind of based on the same premise. And then when we went to build the hair care line, we couldn't come out with standard black and white or even just like a singular color. And we wanted something. We didn't have a lot of money, and we didn't have a lot of money for a long time because we've never had any sort of financial backing or VC money. And so this had to be almost like guerrilla marketing, like, cut through where people go, oh, my gosh, what is that?
- [13:55]
Sarah
Right?
- [13:56]
Chelsea Riggs
So that was also a goal. And we wanted it to evoke joy and, you know, when you look at it, just like make you happy. And it's actually a copyright design. So it's. It's little art on packaging, I would say.
- [14:10]
Sarah
How did. I mean, we don't have this question, but how did you guys even come up with. Is it this version of this design, like, in variance on every different product?
- [14:19]
Chelsea Riggs
So it's the same kind of pattern that. That is like the singular pattern, which wasn't always that way. That kind of. We got to that point around 2018, when we relaunched the packaging to really elevate it and bring it up to the quality of the products we were using. We were using stock bottles. Cause that's what we could afford to do in the early days.
- [14:37]
Sarah
Right.
- [14:38]
Chelsea Riggs
So Vita, who is our co founder and creative director, amazing, brilliant graphic designer, creative. And in every regard, she came up with the name Amika, the packaging, and she was really inspired to have something that really also reflected the story of the hero ingredient in the packaging as well, which is called sea buckthornberry. Some people call it seaberry and has a beautiful story. But she grew up in Eastern Europe, and it's something that she kept in, like her parents always had in the medicine cabinet. Just like we think, oh, we have a sunburn, put aloe vera on it. If you had a cut. It was like the Neosporin of like, of nature. Right. So it has 40% of the berry, which is really small, is made up of omega 7.
- [15:21]
Sarah
Okay.
- [15:21]
Chelsea Riggs
Which is rarely found in nature. You find it like fish oil, animal fat. And that's really great for rebuilding collagen, which makes sense. Right. It's just like, you know, Sporin for hair. So when you think about where it grows. It thrives literally anywhere. You could plant this anywhere, and it will grow. But it comes from the Himalayas, and I don't know, maybe it doesn't grow exactly like this, but she always imagined, you know, snow and then this bright orange, like, burst of color. And so that was an influence for kind of the packaging and the organic shapes.
- [15:54]
Sarah
Oh, that is so cool. I love hearing about packaging. That's really intense.
- [15:57]
Chelsea Riggs
And it's kind of like a cereal box as well. Like, if you look at it hard enough, you'll find an I love. And a rabbit, which is hair. Like, I love hair. And we have who we call curly skull in here as well, which is, like, the products are so good. Like, even your hair will grow out of the skull.
- [16:14]
Kirby
Oh, cute.
- [16:15]
Sarah
Oh, my gosh. The hair is so smart. I love that. It's kind of like Hidden Mickey's at Disneyland.
- [16:20]
Kirby
Yeah.
- [16:20]
Chelsea Riggs
Or when you're a kid and you, like, turn around the cereal box.
- [16:23]
Sarah
Yeah. You're, like, trying to find Where's Waldo?
- [16:24]
Chelsea Riggs
Where's Waldo? Yeah.
- [16:25]
Sarah
Okay, so you touched on the Sea Buckthornberry. So would you say that outside of the designs and outside of, like, the salon presence, that the star ingredient is something that separates Amika? I feel like we have started to see a little bit more in recent years, see buckthorn oil, but you guys have been utilizing this from the jump.
- [16:46]
Chelsea Riggs
So it's been in every single product since the very beginning. You know, we also talk about other ingredients depending on the goal of the product. Right. When it comes to our strength repair or our hydration, we also think about other ingredients. So it's not just everything's based on seabockthornberry. Every. Every product has it in there because it's such an amazing story, but we also have to. It's like building blocks. Right. We also want to make sure we have ingredients in there that are going to provide strength, because Sea Buckthornberry is not going to do that.
- [17:15]
Sarah
Okay. How do you feel about greenwashing? And what are other brands currently doing that riles you up in terms of green washing? And I bring this up because of, you know, B Corp and sustainability and how that relates to Amica. So maybe I guess start with, like, how are you guys doing your part as a brand in terms of sustainability? And then what are other brands maybe doing that people think is great, but in the long term, it's not making much sense.
- [17:41]
Chelsea Riggs
Yeah. Well, I'll start with Amica and what we're doing. So we are a B Corp Company, which is definitely comes to environment, but it has five different factors along with it. So governance, you know, how we also treat our employees, the workers within the pipeline of our raw materials, et cetera. So it's very, very deep. When I think about responsibility overall, it incorporates transparency, making sure people are paid a fair wage. We also think about the responsibility when it comes to emissions. So when we have conversations about what packaging we should use or what ingredients we should use, it always centers around how do we lower our carbon emissions, because we want to be Net Zero by 2035. And that's a really ambitious target. And the only way we're going to do that is to be more efficient. So we've been moving all of our components from overseas to being stateside.
- [18:37]
Sarah
Wow.
- [18:37]
Chelsea Riggs
Which is a huge project for a couple of years. So that's finally started to take place. We produce all of our products now in the US or in Canada. So that has allowed us to cut way down on. I mean, we were shipping empty bottles from China and from Europe to the States to produce the or to fill the product. So that's a huge savings as well. So we think about everything through that lens. We do what's called an lca where it's like a life cycle analysis where you put, okay, we want to put a product in this type of packaging or source it from this area versus this, and you pit the two things against each other. Which is the most sustainable option when it comes to total environmental impact. And it does include the final recyclability of the product as well. And it like weighs everything pretty equally. So we take that lens first and foremost. What annoys me in the industry. There's a lot. There's a lot, yes. Tell us, how many hours do we have? Well, first, I'd say, I think conflating natural with safe and also natural with sustainability, because there are ingredients that are. You cannot sustainably source and. Or there are synthetic ingredients that are perfectly safe. There's plenty of vitamin C alternatives out there that also have shown to be better and more sustainable to create. So why do we need to get it from nature if we have the solution to do it in a, in a lab? Of course, safety has to be a part of that as well and how you're extracting those ingredients. But overall, I think people get really confused or look for natural as something of, okay, that's a seal of it being safe. And there's a lot of things in nature that are just not safe and also things that you shouldn't be putting on your scalp or on your skin in, in general, just because it's natural. So that's one thing.
- [20:30]
Kirby
I've seen all those tick tocks.
- [20:31]
Sarah
Yes. Natural does not mean non toxic. There's plenty of natural ingredients.
- [20:34]
Chelsea Riggs
Oh my God, that word drives me.
- [20:35]
Kirby
What are you talking about?
- [20:36]
Chelsea Riggs
Non toxic? It's like, what is, what does that mean?
- [20:39]
Sarah
And then those same people get chemical free.
- [20:41]
Kirby
You're like, what? Everything has chemical.
- [20:42]
Sarah
Water's a chemical base.
- [20:44]
Chelsea Riggs
Oh yeah, I know. Chemical free. It's like, why do we care so much about that?
- [20:47]
Sarah
Yeah.
- [20:48]
Chelsea Riggs
And then packaging wise, look, I think it comes back to everything is a choice and there's nothing that's truly black and white out there. I think if brands can just be straightforward about why this is the right choice for us, for the product we're making, the brand that we are, etc. These are the downsides of the choice we're making. But there's downsides to everything because I think people approach it and other brands approach it as like, this is the gold standard. It comes almost from like a scare tactic point of view. And that bothers me because there are two sides to each thing. So if I give you an example of that. We produce packaging from post consumer recycled materials, aluminum as well as plastic. Plastic. We use a lot of post consumer plastic in our shampoo bottles, most of our hair care products. When we look at that, compared to glass or aluminum, primarily aluminum, there's just not enough recycled aluminum for us to actually at scale, source enough for it to be better environmentally than choosing PCR plastic. Virgin aluminum is 80 times worse than plastic. And you can't, it's not a renewable source. So once you mine it, you're doing a lot of damage to the ecosystem. And it's really just competitive for us to try and find enough recycled aluminum for the types of bottles that we're making. It really depends on, you know, certain sachets or even tubes and things can be a little bit easier. But for bottles that you would want to make sure you could keep in the shower that didn't, you know, cause additional issues or you can't squeeze aluminum. Right. So how are you gonna get all the product out, stuff like that? So, yeah, we think about it as overall carbon emissions.
- [22:32]
Kirby
Yeah, it's just like so admirable that you guys are such a huge company and that you are a B corporation. And I feel like for a lot of brands, like maybe it's something that they strive to also be. But is it more, do you think, like the cost of what it takes to get to that point or do you think it's more of like it's just too much work for brands?
- [22:55]
Chelsea Riggs
I think it depends on because. For the size of brand. Okay.
- [22:58]
Kirby
Because like, for example, like, like you know, the fact that you're bringing things stateside to some people that might be like, okay, is that going to affect the cost of like how much, you know, this, this hair oil is going to be if you know, is that like is it going to be exponentially more expensive or what, you know, or will be less?
- [23:13]
Sarah
I was actually going to bring up the tariffs thing because it's like tariffs is like the buzzword of the past several months. Right. And we're talking about how we're going to see price hikes in a lot of the beauty industry based off of where people are getting their packaging and things like that. When you were saying that, I almost.
- [23:28]
Kirby
Felt like it was you're saving money.
- [23:30]
Sarah
You'Re saving more money because you're bringing everything in versus so we've already shown.
- [23:35]
Chelsea Riggs
That it will save money today based on the tariffs that were already put in place during the last administration. Right. So there have been really high tariffs on things that have been coming from overseas, especially China. And I think there's conversation about it going even higher. So yeah, that, that is a big element of it as well.
- [23:54]
Kirby
So what do you think is the challenge for people? Like why, why is. Why aren't all beauty brands big corporations when we should be? Because we are contributing so much waste as an industry.
- [24:04]
Chelsea Riggs
I don't work at those brands, so it's hard for me to say why. I think, yeah, resource wise and you have to make a lot of hard decisions. There are things that you want to do because it like looks better. But I mean we don't use acrylic anymore. We were using a lot of acrylic PVC so bad, like horrible for the people who are producing it in the factory, etc. I still see brands doing PVC gift with purchase bags and things like that because they're cooler looking, they're a little bit see through. And acrylic, yeah, it's cooler. But there are other materials that we choose to use and I think people really get stuck on the aesthetic. Aesthetic cost, resources overwhelm. They don't know where to start. I think it does come down a lot to cost though when I think about. Yeah, and, and that, that does come down to a business choice. Right. Like what is the, the profit and the margin that you want to make on your brand. And some companies have higher goals than others. Let's just say that, like, we're trying to find, always find a balance of creating, we call affordable luxury products. So luxury formulations, we go through a lot when it comes to vetting the exact ingredients that go into it, which at times can be more expensive because they're the more sustainable or the safer option on the market. So that can be, you know, a cost point of view, a big challenge.
- [25:23]
Sarah
Sarah's. I just want to clarify for listeners that Sarah's obviously asking about these larger companies that it would make sense for them because they do perhaps have the financial means to maybe about face and like change things up. Clearly, smaller brands, they have a lot against them already. So do you disagree?
- [25:42]
Chelsea Riggs
I think smaller brands, if you can start from the beginning.
- [25:44]
Sarah
Right.
- [25:45]
Chelsea Riggs
It's actually easier because you're doing it on a smaller scale. You're setting things up that way from the beginning. You're setting your price point that way. Yeah, I just think it comes down to maybe the profits that they are trying to have on the brands and the products and the resources that it takes to switch it over. They might have loyalty to certain, you know, suppliers, which is why they don't make some of those changes. And if people are still buying it at large scale, because they are, those brands are doing very well and continuing to grow, why change?
- [26:17]
Sarah
Right, Right.
- [26:19]
Kirby
Okay. Thank you for answering that.
- [26:20]
Sarah
That was, I, I loved that conversation.
- [26:22]
Kirby
That was a little bit of a curveball. Okay, so you had mentioned limitations to innovation, probably in your conversation with crime Kirby, when it comes to the clean space, can you share what struggles amiek has had when certain ingredients have to be avoided A lot?
- [26:39]
Chelsea Riggs
It would be so much faster and so much easier if we could just choose the readily available products or I mean, sometimes we'll choose 10, 15 ingredients when we're thinking about, you know, a new product launch. And we get down to like one or two that are actually gonna fit the profile that we. We vet all of our ingredients through. So, and you think about the time of regulatory looking into that. We're a global brand, so we're also looking at regulatory in other countries which Australia, Europe, Asia. They're just also different regulations. You know, I think we're all familiar especially, I'd imagine most of your listeners know that we don't ban a lot of ingredients in the US So it's a lot easier to just kind of create products. You can kind of say whatever you want about products in this country as well until you get big enough where People want to get a piece of that and sue you for what you're saying. But for the most part, small brands can definitely get away with even saying whatever they want about their products.
- [27:39]
Sarah
Do you feel retailers adding into that have caused issue and innovation at all? You know, obviously, like, there's regulations in the EU, that there's some regulation here in the U.S. but then we have these large retailers also going, okay, you can't make products with this, this, or this. But then I have, in my experience, seen that a lot of those decisions are made based off of consumer outcry versus actual fact. And this is where a lot of cosmetic chemists get riled up because they're like, this ingredient is perfectly fine, safe. It's actually great for you.
- [28:14]
Kirby
And without it, you're ruining all the products.
- [28:16]
Sarah
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [28:17]
Chelsea Riggs
And now you're ruining what you love about the product.
- [28:19]
Sarah
And now we can't utilize it, so the quality goes down.
- [28:23]
Chelsea Riggs
Yeah. I mean, we look at things twofold. There's safety, which can, you know, mean a lot of different things, but safety when it comes to the way that ingredients are created. But then we're also looking at it once this gets into the waterways, like, what is that doing to wildlife? And there have been, and we do everything based on scientific, factual information. There have been a number of things that have gone viral. Dimethicone, I think went viral last year for causing hair loss. And like, this is literally in every single hair product on them. Like not every single one, but majority of hair products in the market. And at the end of the day, your hair is dead. And so you need something for it to. To feel nice because it's not like your skin where you're gonna actually regenerate the cells, et cetera. So you need something like that. And it's a safe ingredient. It's been proven to be safe to the environment as well. And stuff like that does. I mean, look at sulfates. Sulfates aren't gonna harm you.
- [29:24]
Sarah
Right.
- [29:25]
Chelsea Riggs
But I mean, who uses sulfates anymore?
- [29:27]
Sarah
I know. Yeah, it really is. At first I was like, is it the chicken or the egg? I really feel like it's the. In this case, would this be the egg? The egg is. The consumer is telling the chicken what to be doing. I don't know.
- [29:41]
Chelsea Riggs
Well, I think it's like two fold. You want people to push. Right. Because then to the point of, you know, these big companies not really changing, people are buying it anyway, so what does it matter? You need that push. But also you can't just like, believe Anything you hear on the Internet and.
- [29:56]
Sarah
Say it again for the people, say it again loud and proud. I am so over people literally on TikTok going, so and so did this, and then everybody goes crazy. And then you go look at that person's profile, and that person's like, I own a dog. That's my qualification. I have a dog. And I got on the Internet and I started saying something, and that's it. I'm sorry. I'm really.
- [30:16]
Kirby
It's actually so wild.
- [30:18]
Chelsea Riggs
Sometimes I. Sometimes. You know, you're on social media too, right? You're on. You're like, wow. And you start to believe it yourself, and you're like, wait a minute. Let me, like, stop research this.
- [30:28]
Sarah
Yes.
- [30:28]
Chelsea Riggs
Is this real?
- [30:29]
Sarah
Now we have to get into the happy place, because we're gonna talk about the new Superfruit Star lightweight hair styling oil, Flamgellinos.
- [30:38]
Kirby
Such a gorgeous product.
- [30:40]
Sarah
I'm testing this. It's so beautiful. If you're watching, it's so gorgeous, the packaging.
- [30:46]
Kirby
This is, like, a large bottle. No, it's huge.
- [30:49]
Chelsea Riggs
Yeah.
- [30:49]
Sarah
And it's huge.
- [30:51]
Kirby
That's gonna last me a really long time.
- [30:53]
Sarah
And it smells so good.
- [30:54]
Kirby
I might not.
- [30:54]
Chelsea Riggs
I don't know. So we've had it internally for quite some time right before. Before the launch, and I had someone tell me they're on their third bottle.
- [31:03]
Kirby
Oh, it's, like, addictive to you.
- [31:05]
Chelsea Riggs
I know. Well, I think, because it doesn't build up in the hair. So you can use it when your hair is wet, you can use it when you're dry, when you're about to style it before you go to bed. It's like a face oil, Right. It, like, really replenishes the lipids that are missing in the hair, which causes dryness. So, yeah, you. You could overuse it, I think, to an extent. It really depends on the hair type you have. But, yeah, you can use it in multiple parts of your routine. It's like a three in one product. So it should have, you know, protecting also the nourishment that it's adding, preventing breakage. I love to use it before bed. So I'll do dry shampoo on my roots and then this on the ends. Wrap it up in, like, kind of a loose little bun. Because my. For some reason, maybe it's because my hair is bleached and I should probably stop doing that, but my roots get really greasy, and then my ends are, like, puffy in the morning. I'm like. But I didn't go anywhere. I just was in my bed. So I have to use something. So I either use like an overnight treatment product, like we have one called Dream Routine, or I use the oil.
- [32:02]
Sarah
Is superfruit a common term in amika? Like, is that something you use on a bunch of different products, or is this, like, the first product that you're using that?
- [32:10]
Chelsea Riggs
This is the first product that we're using it for. Okay. The goal being people don't know about the sea buckthorn berry. And it's because it's such a beautiful story, we wanted an opportunity to really have a moment to showcase it. And you know what better than the oil, which is such a beautiful part of the plant and of the berry? It's part of our signature line, which everything in our signature line is pink and orange. So those are our signature colors. And they're really universal. So that's why they're in our signature line. They can. They're good for a variety of hair types and textures and needs.
- [32:43]
Sarah
Got it.
- [32:44]
Kirby
I love how quickly it dries down. Like you said.
- [32:46]
Chelsea Riggs
Like, you know, it was really hard to do this clean, I will tell you that. Because most hair oils have what's called, like, D4, D5. So they're like cyclopentyloxane. I can never say that.
- [32:58]
Sarah
Wow.
- [32:59]
Chelsea Riggs
Really hard. It's hard money. It's a mouthful. But that's been banned in Europe, and not because of a safety to humans, but more to the environment. And what people love about that ingredient, which you probably don't realize, that's in a lot of products, it has this great flash off, so it leaves that really, like, silky feeling. You don't feel a lot of the oil that's there. So it was really challenging to get a good oil without using those ingredients.
- [33:25]
Kirby
You did that. What differentiates a styling oil from another oil?
- [33:29]
Chelsea Riggs
A styling oil, to me is something you can use at multiple steps of your styling routine. So it's not like a treatment like you think of, like a leave in conditioner. Yes. Depending on your hair type, you can use a leave in conditioner as part of your styling routine. But this can you can use on wet hair, on dry hair, you can use it as a. Like a shine enhancement at the very end.
- [33:49]
Sarah
Are there any other ingredients you want to call out in this particular hair oil?
- [33:53]
Chelsea Riggs
I mean, really, the star of the show is sea buckthorn. Yeah. So. And I'm gonna forget the stats. My team is gonna kill me. But I believe it's 86% less breakage, which is a clinical study. We do Clinical studies on all of our products, which is also really challenging to find ingredients that are gonna be clinically proven that are good for the environment, good for people. Oh my God. It's like such an effort. And then I think it's seven times stronger when you use this product. So it is. You need to be keeping your hair moisturized. It's not all about protein and repair. Like, you need to have a good balance of moisture and strength.
- [34:29]
Kirby
This is something that every hairstylist tells me they're like, you don't need to always be using those specific products that'll help build protein and keratin.
- [34:39]
Sarah
Like you actually too much protein can be bad.
- [34:41]
Kirby
Yeah. They're like, you actually need moisture in your hair. So stop using that one product like several times a week. I'm like, okay, okay, okay.
- [34:48]
Chelsea Riggs
Yeah. I mean lipids are. And it really varies in terms of like the hair type that you have, like how many natural lipids you have in your hair. So if you're somebody who's like, I don't bleach my hair. I don't even use hair tools. I air dry. My hair is so dry. It's probably because you don't have great lipid structure in the hair and you need something that's going to also penetrate because you could have low porosity hair. So means all the cuticles are laying super flat and everything's like knocking like trying to get in. So you need something with a low molecular weight that's going to actually get into the hair and give you the moisture. And oils are really good for that.
- [35:21]
Kirby
Okay, can we talk about the scent? Because that's like one of the reasons why I love Amica. What is that? What makes it smell so good?
- [35:27]
Chelsea Riggs
It's a secret.
- [35:28]
Kirby
Okay.
- [35:30]
Sarah
That's Yalls prerogative. We respect it. But it does smell incredible.
- [35:34]
Chelsea Riggs
Well, it's grapefruit. You smell a little bit of the vanilla that's there, like that warm vanilla. So it's got a little bit of floral, a little bit of citrus, a little bit of warm vanilla. It's a nice. People have been dying for a fragrance from us. Like a hair fragrance about any fragrance.
- [35:50]
Kirby
Yeah.
- [35:50]
Chelsea Riggs
I started seeing like this tick tock video of people found this random Amazon fragrance brand saying it smelled just like Amica. I was like, okay, team. I think, I think it's time. Yes, I think it's time.
- [36:02]
Sarah
Hair perfumes are very popular.
- [36:05]
Kirby
Amazing.
- [36:06]
Sarah
We're excited. So if you are interested in trying the Super Fruitstar lightweight hair styling oil for yourself, you can go onto sephora.com and you can look up Gloss Angeles Confidential and you will see Glamgellino approved reviews, the best reviews from actual people in the Slack group that you probably communicate with on a daily basis. You can get their full review. And these, of course, are very thorough reviews.
- [36:35]
Kirby
We've been testing it for a while now.
- [36:36]
Sarah
We teach everybody how to properly test these items. We teach them the proper way to review. You're not going to get this is amazing and that's it. Or this sucks and that's it. You're going to get a very thoughtful review and a lot of variety in terms of the hair types that tried this particular product. So go to sephora.com, look up Amika, look up the Superfruit Star, and then look up, just in the search bar, Gloss Angelus Confidential or Glam Giuliano. I'm sure people put Glam Gilo.
- [37:05]
Chelsea Riggs
You'll see that that's all public service, though. Like, actually like being a good reviewer.
- [37:09]
Sarah
No, truly, that's how we did it. We want people to be good reviewers.
- [37:13]
Kirby
Yeah.
- [37:14]
Sarah
A little star students, little super fruit.
- [37:17]
Kirby
Star students can do in this world.
- [37:19]
Sarah
Of misinformation and shenanigans.
- [37:23]
Kirby
Shenanery.
- [37:24]
Sarah
Yes. Chelsea, thank you so much. It was a pleasure. I loved this conversation. This was so fun, so informative, so useful to everybody listening.
- [37:33]
Kirby
You are brilliant. Thank you so much.
- [37:34]
Chelsea Riggs
Yeah.
- [37:34]
Sarah
So brilliant. Congratulations on the CEO role. Like, awesome.
- [37:39]
Chelsea Riggs
I know. Sometimes I pinch myself. My daughter, who's five, she's like, I don't know how we got in some conversation. And I said, you know, mommy's the boss of like 200 people. She goes, daddy, did you know that Mommy is the boss of 200 people? He's like, 201.
- [37:54]
Sarah
No, literally. I love that.
- [37:57]
Kirby
That's amazing.
- [37:58]
Sarah
Where can people find you if they want to keep up with you and see what you're up to?
- [38:02]
Chelsea Riggs
I'm not a huge social media. I'm like, kind of camera shy, but I'm Chelsea M. Riggs on Instagram.
- [38:08]
Sarah
Okay.
- [38:09]
Chelsea Riggs
And on TikTok. I haven't made a TikTok video. Maybe you're gonna teach me how to make a TikTok video.
- [38:14]
Sarah
I think you should. I was, when we went to brunch, I was like, you should be getting on TikTok and expectations, explaining these things to people because there's just so much misinformation. I think the way you deliver it is so smart and so savvy. So you should definitely.
- [38:25]
Kirby
This could be your. This could be your start. We'll clip it. Clip it? Yeah, we'll clip it for you.
- [38:28]
Chelsea Riggs
Thank you to Kirby and Sarah, who got me started on my influencer journey.
- [38:33]
Kirby
Amazing. And then where can people find Amica.
- [38:36]
Chelsea Riggs
If they want to add amica on Instagram, TikTok, all the socials and our website is loveamica.com.
- [38:54]
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