Zahir Dossa, Function of Beauty: Perfecting Personalization – Well Made E87

“It's not one solution. It wasn't this 'aha' moment. We are probably on our hundredth iteration of how to put things in a bottle in an automatic way.”

Function of Beauty never makes the same products twice. Each bottle of shampoo, conditioner, or leave-in is individually mixed, colored, and filled into personalized bottles for your unique hair type and goals. Every step of the process is rooted in technology. Founder, Zahir Dossa believes that lack of personalization is the biggest problem in haircare, so he rounded up the best team to tackle the problem.

On this episode, Zahir talks about creating the hair quiz behind Function of Beauty's 54 trillion product combinations (6:36). Function of Beauty is on their 100th bottling iteration. Zahir explains how they automated their hand-filled process and improved their manufacturing methods (12:27). He gives the fundamental questions that successful startups should think about (19:50) and talks about how he applies personalization to the rest of his life (23:32). He shares how individualized haircare can be limiting (28:27) and creative ways to reach new customers (29:59). He talks about his previous business, Argan Tree, and how he’s building a sustainable enterprise today (31:30). Finally, Zahir talks about perfecting their product and focusing on creating a tailored and complete haircare system (45:26).

Also mentioned on the show:

Header image via Function of Beauty. Thumbnail by Laurel Golio for Inc.

You can find this and all future episodes on iTunes, Google Play, and here on the Lumi blog. This episode was edited by Evan Goodchild.