The RÉDUIT One has entered the beauty market as a high-tech, sustainable alternative to hair … [+]
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Though I’ve spent a couple of decades looking for ways to treat my frizzy, curl-tangled hair with love, I haven’t had much luck.
Even worse, the hundred-or-so brands I’ve put my faith in over the years have done more harm than good, packing weak formulations in non-recyclable plastics and loading their ‘treatments’ with so many fillers I might as well wash my hair with hand soap.
But now, there is the RÉDUIT One—a brand new mega-misting hair device that is not only 38 times more effective than traditional hair products, but 20 times more sustainable. Coming to save our hair and planet.
The device runs on ‘Hairpods’, which are just 5ml each, packed with active ingredients, and can be popped in or swapped out for other treatments as needed. The range currently consists of strength, shine, volume, colour maintenance, and conditioning treatment pods which—containing 20 applications each—compare to 100-200ml of ‘normal’ plastic-packed products each.
Only, again, without the fillers and delivered in just 30 seconds.
The magic sauce here is the technology inside the RÉDUIT One. With ultrasonic diffusion, the device creates particles 50 times smaller than a regular spray treatment, shoving the Hairpods’ active ingredients right into the hair shaft, and a revolutionary magnetic misting innovation that applies magnetic fields to reduce surface tension.
Those fields amplify the hair’s rate of product absorption (read: the do-or-die point of hair treatments), and utilise LED therapies to soothe the scalp, strengthen hair, boost collagen production and even help hair grow.
In layman’s terms, when most active ingredients in beauty products go to waste—whether that’s through inferior delivery systems or by being diluted with stabilizers, thickeners and fillers—RÉDUIT treatments actually treat, rather than coat, hair.
But, after years of development, these treatments aren’t coming cheap. At the moment, a RÉDUIT One costs $350 (£189), and Hairpods start at $40 (£22.90) each.
“Given the important novelty dimension and RÉDUIT’s core values, at this stage we are primarily connecting with progressives that care about both product performance and sustainability,” says RÉDUIT CEO Paul Peros. “Consumers that seek and engage with smart alternatives to traditional products.”
Peros has spent over 20 years in product innovation, across many consumer categories, but beauty tech has paid his bills for the past decade, leading the development of ultrasonic skincare brand FOREO. “I remain convinced that we are still only in the early stages of the evolution of beauty and personal care tech products,” he says.
“While other industries have been adopting new technology at a much faster pace, beauty is still anchored in product architectures that were established at the beginning of the 20th century. I am fascinated by the concept of bringing meaningful innovation to consumers in advanced, but user-friendly formats.”
Of course, that’s exactly what he’s done with both FOREO and RÉDUIT, devising a completely new, bottom-up concept from the applicator and pod system, to filler-free product formulations, to the very structures and integration of the Hairpods. “The core is probably our proprietary magnetic misting technology,” he notes, “a part of the enhanced delivery systems portfolio.
“With over 20 patents in the area, I’d think that we’re presently the most advanced company in the field globally.”
Each 5ml RÉDUIT Hairpod delivers the equivalent of up to 200ml of traditional hair product
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Aside from the obvious reduction of waste in product and packaging, Peros feels the products offer unparalleled convenience to the consumers who want to keep powerful products to hand with less effort.
“From work to gym, and for—soon to be—travel, RÉDUIT is travel-friendly like no other product in the category.”
As part of the brand’s commitment to sustainability, RÉDUIT also offers a trade-in program to recycle used Hairpods in exchange for a free product and has committed to cutting product waste by at least 20%, focusing on highly-concentrated product formulas with no unnecessary ingredients and less product waste, reducing water and energy usage
“After only a month from launching we are already matching the giants such as Shiseido, Estée Lauder EL , and L’Oréal in the sustainability efforts,” says Peros. “By the end of 2020, we will smash records and set a new industry standard concerning carbon footprint in the beauty realm.”
Even at this early stage, the company has already initiated work on the second generation of topical products that will encompass a ‘green line’, hoping to cater to the industry’s shift towards all-natural products.
“We ended up creating our own laboratory after we realized that traditional formulators didn’t have the needed knowledge to engage on such radically different product structures,” says Peros. “In hindsight, this was a good move as we’re now probably the most advanced lab for light chassis formulations.”
