After a year of meteoric growth, K18 will enter more than 500 Sephora doors in the United States and launch on the retailer’s website later this month, marking the haircare brand’s biggest retail partnership yet.
Founded by technology veteran Suveen Sahib, who co-founded hair towel and wrap brand Aquis with his wife Britta Cox as well, K18’s sales have jumped 3,000% since its launch a year ago, fueled mainly by a single product, Leave-in Molecular Hair Mask. Sahib spent a decade developing the patented K18Peptide, the engine behind Leave-in Molecular Hair Mask’s impact. The brand reports it’s clinically proven to reverse hair damage in a little as four minutes.
K18’s direct-to-consumer sales have registered a 327% leap from the launch, but the bulk of its sales traction has happened in the professional channel. The brand’s salon network extends to 20,000 salons across around 100 countries. For haircare professionals, K18’s product range includes Professional Molecular Repair Mist. The brand is sold by select e-tailers, too. To date, it’s raised $24 million in funding over several rounds from early stage investors including True Beauty Ventures and Odile Roujol’s FAB Ventures.
Sephora will carry K18’s Leave-in Molecular Hair Mask priced at $75 for a full 50-ml. size. A mini version will be available in the retailer’s grab-and-go Beauty on the Fly section near checkouts. K18 will also be participating in Sephora’s Beauty Insider rewards program with a 5-ml. sample size.
Sahib, who has partnered with Sephora since 2016 through Aquis, is confident the specialty retailer will drive consumer familiarity with K18 outside of the salon environment. “Sephora is the gold standard when it comes to beauty as a destination, but also in terms of discovery,” he says. “Their community is very informed, all looking out for the absolute best product. Also, Sephora is all about expression, and that’s a core of K18 in terms of how do you express yourself, and [in that self expression is] possible only when you have an optimal health canvas to work with.”
Both parties are embarking on extensive digital and IRL initiatives to promote the launch. Sephora has assembled the K18 Stylist Squad, a collective of celebrity hairstylists, including Yusef, Priscilla Valles, Kellon Deryck, Eric Vaughn, Linh Pham and Brad Mondo, to fuel awareness of the partnership, and educate consumers on hair health and how K18 works, duties usually carried out by hairstylists consumers patronize for hair services.
The Stylist Squad breaks down the divide that historically exists between the professional and retail universes in haircare, according to Sahib. “Hair artists play such a key role in consumers’ self expression. Stylists happen to be the key architects and key advocates of hair health,” he says. “It’s also important for their clients to have the most optimal hair health so that they can continue to maintain that expression at home. We believe that no one should have to choose between healthy hair and hair that looks the way you want.”
In addition to creating content for their audiences, the K18 Stylist Squad members will participate in a global TikTok hashtag challenge with the hashtag #k18hairflip kicking off on Dec. 27 and featuring an original song called #k18hairflip by Tamara Jade. The challenge encourages TikTok users to show off their best hair flip to the song for a chance to win a Sephora shopping spree and K18 salon treatment.
K18’s closest competitor, hair bond-building specialist Olaplex, is an anchor brand in Sephora’s haircare offering. Olaplex, which had a $15 billion IPO in September, revealed last month it will launch at Ulta Beauty’s 1,250 locations nationwide in January. Olaplex’s assortment spans nine products—it has shampoos, treatments and restorative styling products—but K18 isn’t churning out products to keep up. Sahib asserts hair shouldn’t be overloaded with products.
“I have a huge respect for Olaplex and what they built in the last five years,” he says, “At the same time, our mission is driven by less is more. Everything has been about more, more routines, and that resulted in more needy hair. Your hair is needy for products, for your attention, and what we believe is that less actually works better for hair. So, to us, it’s not about how do we launch multiple products. It’s about being thoughtful, more intentional. The less you do with the hair, the more you liberate your hair, your hair routine and your hair expression. Sephora has been super supportive of that philosophy.”
“What we believe is that less actually works better for hair. So, to us, it’s not about how do we launch multiple products. The less you do with the hair, the more you liberate your hair, your hair routine, and your hair expression.”
Sahib emphasizes K18 isn’t a haircare company. Instead, he describes it as a biotech company that happens to have an application in hair and says biology will “increasingly play a critical role in all of beauty, including hair. That’s where we are looking at innovation in hair. This is not about launching products like normally in haircare.”
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