HuffPost’s Small Business Spotlight is a series aimed at highlighting the small businesses that are making a positive difference while forging new and significant futures in commerce.
Your scalp is really just an extension of the skin on your face, so why don’t we care for it in the same way? Studies have shown that there’s a direct correlation between scalp health and hair health and retention.
Helen Reavey, a hair stylist and trichologist, set out to solve that problem and found a solution in creating Act+Acre, a sustainable hair care line that focuses on improving the condition of the scalp first so that healthy hair can follow.
Throughout her 20-year career in the hair industry, Reavey worked in salons and at fashion weeks across the globe, and began to notice a pattern in the hair she saw and styled. Scalps were red and raw from overstyling and product buildup on the scalp, accompanied by dead and damaged hair.
“I said to myself that I wished I had something to send these girls home with
to dissolve the product, calm down inflammation and just really deliver nutrients to the scalp, the skin and the hair follicle,” Reavey told HuffPost.
Now, products like Act+Acre’s Scalp Detox and Scalp Renew do just that by breaking down excess sebum, dead skin cells and product buildup, making the way for more abundant and healthier hair growth. Among other treatments, there’s also a Stem Cell Serum that nourishes the hair follicle and helps to extend the growth phase.
Reavey said that the connection between scalp health and hair health seemed to be widely overlooked within the beauty industry, noting that caring for the scalp really goes beyond just the immediate improvements you may see once you start to address some of the most common concerns like itching, flaking and lack of hair volume.
“It’s really about from five to seven years from now that the hair in that cycle will really start to show what you were doing to it five, seven years ago. It’s like when we work to prevent lines, wrinkles or sun damage now because we don’t want them to appear in another five to 10 years,” she said.
For Reavey, the conception and subsequent launch of Act+Acre in 2019 was also about challenging the norms and processes of the larger corporations that came before her ― their systems of transparency (or lack thereof) with their consumers, their wasteful approach to production and product development, and the kinds of ingredients being used.
Act+Acre uses a cold process method to create all of their products, a patented system that involves a hyperbaric chamber, cold air and pressure to extract the most from ingredients at their highest concentrations, which is possible because they aren’t evaporated off in the process. It also uses 90% less energy than traditional and cheaper methods with heat.