Incubator Underlining Beauty’s Latest Launch Is A Hair Cycling-Focused Brand Created With Sally Beauty

Incubator Underlining Beauty is taking the concept of hair cycling—rotating your hair care products depending on your hair and scalp’s needs—and turning it into a 32-product brand.

The decision to do so wasn’t just based on riding the wave of one of the fastest growing hair trends, says co-founder and CEO Razvan Romanescu, but rather observing and responding to consumer behavior. “Everything we did was systematic, data-driven,” he says. “We didn’t just guess and all gather around thinking this sounds like something cool. We let the audience and existing customers and data lead us to this decision.”

Launching today, Freewill was created in partnership with the Sally Beauty team, which Romanescu notes gives the brand a leg up from its competition. “A lot of beauty companies or new haircare companies out there can’t say they have a strategic partner like Sally Beauty and all their infrastructure, data manufacturing and effort behind it,” he says. “I feel like in terms of their distribution, their expertise and the quality of a partner they are, it’s huge.” Underlining’s nail brand Nailboo is stocked at the retailer. Freewill will be carried in 2,700 Sally Beauty doors as well as on Amazon and TikTok Shop.

“As the leader in professional hair color and care, it is our mission to ensure we address consumers’ ever-evolving hair care needs,” says Maryann Herskowitz, group vice president of merchandising for Sally Beauty. “Co-developed between Sally Beauty and Underlining, Freewill is revolutionizing hair cycling for all hair types and textures. We are proud to provide access to this innovative product line as the exclusive retailer.”

The debut collection ranges from $16.99 to $29 and includes eight product lines covering categories like Curls and Coils, Blonde Care, Volume Boost and Restorative Repair. Anticipated heroes include viral products like the apple cider vinegar rinse, dry shampoo and leave in hair mask. Hair color is potentially coming down the line. “We have a big vision and pretty aggressive plans with how we want to approach the category,” says Romanescu, while adding, “We’re keeping an eye on what’s happening in the market and trying not to reinvent the wheel too much, but get in there and take some market share.”

Shoppers can take a quiz on Freewill’s website beforehand to determine which products are best. A QR code will be included on the displays in Sally Beauty locations which will direct customers to the quiz. The brand will also pre-build hair cycling bundles to help guide customers. Freewill’s marketing will lean heavily on informing customers how to hair cycle and how and when to use its products. The brand is partnering with dermatologists and trichologists such as Melissa Mallam and Aoife McCarthy to lead its educational content.

Romanescu adds that organic and paid content from “heavy hitting celebrities” will be rolled out in the weeks following the launch. He also plans on tapping into Nailboo’s existing community, which includes nearly a million email subscribers and about 700,000 followers across social media platforms. “We definitely think they can piggyback off of each other and our loyal Nailboo customers will very likely turn into loyal Freewill customers,” he says. In addition to that, the brand owns the handles @haircare and @haircycling across all social platforms, according to Romanescu. “We’re going to build the largest haircare communities powered by Freewill,” he says.

Underlining will be laser focused on its sister brands Nailboo and now Freewill moving forward. Its cosmetics and skincare brand Hide and brow brand TatBrow are less of a priority. Romanescu shares that Nailboo currently accounts for 90% of Underlining’s revenue. He adds that the incubator’s initial plan to launch a brand in every major category has slowed down, “so we can do right by the brands that are really scaling right now.” He notes, “The mission with Nailboo and Freewill is very large and, if you want to break $100 million, $200 million in revenue marks and go global, we’re going to have to focus for the foreseeable future. And at that point the world is our oyster in terms of what category we want to enter, and could even look at M&A instead of starting all brands from scratch.”

Underlining will surpass $30 million in revenue in 2024 and has a projected growth of more than $60 million in 2025, Romanescu shares. Industry sources told WWD in 2022 that Underlining would bring in around $60 million in sales for 2022, and with major growth plans, could expand to around $500 million in sales for 2025.

Beauty incubators aren’t exactly thriving right now. Forma Brands and Amyris both filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the past year, Unilever and Beauty For All Industries folded its in-house incubator in 2023 and CAA incubator Creative Beauty dissolved in 2022 leaving contractors unpaid in the process. Romanescu says the key to Underlining’s success has been being realistic and reprioritizing when necessary.

“Pre-2021, everything in consumer packaged goods or beauty was grow by any means necessary without much thought of profit or are you a sustainable company, and I think everybody’s gotten a bit more of that operational and financial discipline now and everybody’s striving to grow steadily but profitably so you can live to see another day and be a long-term player in the game,” he says. “Times have changed in the DTC space and being a sustainable, profitable business is rewarded much more than pure top line growth. Our goals have changed from hyper growth mode to sustainable, profitable growth mode over a longer period of time.”