Take a look at the ingredient list on most shampoos and you’ll find one ingredient sitting at the very top: water. In fact, many traditional haircare formulas are made up largely of water, something most consumers never think twice about. But as conversations around formulation, ingredient quality, sustainability, and scalp health continue to evolve, more people are starting to ask an interesting question: does haircare really need that much water in the first place?
The answer is more nuanced than you might think. While water has long played an important role in traditional formulas, a growing number of brands are exploring concentrated alternatives that challenge conventional thinking about what effective haircare should look like.
To better understand the science behind water based formulas, concentrated haircare, and the growing connection between scalp and hair health, we spoke with Everist founders Jayme Jenkins and Jessica Stevenson, two beauty industry veterans helping push the conversation forward.
In Conversation with Jayme and Jessica
Many traditional liquid shampoos are made up largely of water, often somewhere between 70% and 90% depending on the formula. From a formulation standpoint, why has water historically been used so heavily in traditional shampoo products? Well, it’s inexpensive. But beyond that it does act as a solvent to help dissolve actives, making the products easier to manufacture, and it also helps create the liquid texture that people expect. It’s not inherently bad, of course, but we believe that you can have a bigger impact on hair and scalp health + avoid shipping water around the world with concentrates.
One of the most interesting things about Everist is that removing water wasn’t just about sustainability. It also changed the entire formulation philosophy. Can you talk about how concentrating the formulas allowed you to rethink performance, ingredients, and scalp health? Yes – we went through a long innovation journey with Everist. We wanted to do concentrated products with less impact on people and planet, but we also knew they needed to be easy to use, gentle and high performance. After much exploration, what we ended up doing was taking the concentrated actives – cleansers, bond-builders, etc – and instead of leaving them in a solid form (like a shampoo bar) or dissolving them in a big bottle of water, we mixed them into humectants (natural moisturizers like glycerin and aloe vera) to make the formula a cream. This allowed us to create this unique delivery system that ‘buffered’ the cleansers, making them ultra gentle while also bringing extra hydration to hair and scalp. SHOP EVERIST HERE
Waterless beauty has become a much larger conversation in recent years, but Everist entered the category very early. When you were first introducing concentrated haircare to consumers, what did you realize people fundamentally misunderstood about traditional shampoo formulas, sustainability, or even what “performance” in haircare actually means? I don’t think there was a lot of awareness when we started of how much water is in traditional beauty products. I still don’t think there is. And often what customers think is ‘performance’ in traditional haircare is more of a cosmetic approach – silicones coating the hair and giving the appearance of shine, etc, but these can build up over time. At Everist, we take more of a skincare or wellness approach to hair and scalp care – hybrid formulas that are focused on hair and scalp hydration and improving the look, feel and health over time.
Did removing water from the formulas actually unlock opportunities to create products that performed differently or better compared to more traditional shampoos? Were there certain ingredients, technologies, or formulation approaches that became more effective specifically because the formulas were waterless and concentrated? Yes, absolutely – our formulas are 50% moisturizers. Glycerin, which is the most powerful humectant and the workhorse in most skincare formulas – is what makes them ‘wet’ instead of water. This allows our cream concentrates to manage moisture differently in the hair and scalp vs traditional water-based haircare where the feeling of ‘hydration’ is often just a coating on the hair. One of our most interesting clinical studies showed that Everist concentrates helped hold most moisture in the scalp vs traditional water-based shampoo and conditioner, resulting in less transepidermal water loss and less disruption to the scalp microbiome.
Everist products are often described as “haircare meets skincare.” What are some of the hero ingredients or actives inside the formulas that really define that philosophy?It’s our ‘skincare base’ – more than 50% of our cream concentrate formula is glycerin and organic aloe vera (natural humectants that help hold moisture). Compare that with a traditional water-based shampoo ‘with glycerin’ that has maybe 1% glycerin in the formulation vs our 35%.
The new serum, EverBoost™ combines a patented tri-peptide complex with postbiotics and caffeine. What role does each of those ingredients play within the formula, and why did you feel that combination was important specifically for scalp health and hair density? Peptides are very trendy right now, but our Biotinoyl Tripeptide-1, has significant data behind it to support healthy hair growth in addition to caffeine which is a well-known DHT-blocker. The most interesting thing about EverBoost is that it’s also a concentrate, made in a fragrance-free aloe vera base to soothe, hydrate and reduce inflammation of the scalp in addition to delivering these concentrated active ingredients. The health of the scalp has a major role to play in hair quality. SHOP EVERBOOST HERE
Sustainability conversations in beauty often focus heavily on packaging because it’s easy to see and understand. What do you think consumers still aren’t fully seeing or understanding when it comes to the relationship between formulation, manufacturing, shipping, and environmental impact? Sustainability is so complex and has so many different layers. In addition to packaging, reducing the carbon impact of shipping heavy, water-filled formulas was part of the genesis of Everist. Our concentrates have a 77% smaller carbon impact and 64% smaller waste-impact than traditional water-based haircare in a plastic bottle. But beyond that, there’s ingredients (both sourcing and biodegradability), there’s manufacturing (the human impact and the waste impact) there’s lifecycle… We try to really think about these things 360 and it’s much easier to do in a company that was built with these values vs. trying to layer them on later.
You both worked inside traditional beauty before building Everist. Were there industry norms or product conventions that started feeling increasingly outdated to you both personally? I think what really led to the creation of Everist was just the speed of change in these large organizations. It’s hard to really be experimental and think outside the box in those types of environments. We saw the world changing and the needs of the customer changing and we wanted to action it. We were ahead of the curve – and still are – but the world is catching up.
Looking ahead, what conversations around formulation, sustainability, or scalp health do you hope become much more mainstream in beauty over the next few years? I think the connection between beauty and wellness (both for people and planet) will only grow stronger. What’s better for the planet is very often better for us as well. And what’s better for us leads to longevity, vitality and most importantly, results that get even better over time.
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