I started out my career in body care as a soap maker. For years I made cold-process olive oil based soaps and I loved everything about them! But, I still had to buy shampoo and conditioner at the store because try as I might, the liquid soap that I made and tried as shampoo just didn’t work well in my hair-or any of my friends and family that were ‘testing’ for me.
Kirsten hand-crafting a batch of natural shampoo
I did lots of research online looking for recipes, reviews of ingredients through Environmental Working Group, and customer testimonials. It seemed that everyone wanted the same thing…a gentle cleanser that really cleaned your hair without a lot of harsh and unrecognizable ingredients. We finally narrowed our recipe down to three gentle cleansers. We picked three because none of them cleansed or lathered enough on their own to do a great job. Together they are great!
We also decided to investigate vitamins and proteins. Did they make a noticeable difference in your hair or are they just there to sound good? After trying our recipes with and without, we all noticed that Panthenol (vitamin B) made everyone’s hair shinier, and the proteins definitely added a softness and structure that we all loved. So these were all ingredients we decided to keep!
Next came the trickiest part; developing a method for thickening our shampoo that didn’t include PEG-polyethylene glycol. From everything we read about PEG, we wanted to stay away from it! One day we had a couple of batches of shampoo on the stove but decided to call it a day. We shut the pots off and left them to sit overnight and cool down. The next morning they were just as thin and watery as ever…but we had some ideas…and our ideas worked! Our cooled batches thickened up beautifully and we knew we were on to something! Thick, rich shampoo without the chemical thickeners…something that can really only be made in small batches!
So, our test group loved our final shampoo formula and we’re sure that you will, too. Our promise is that we’ll never add useless or harmful ingredients to our products, and that you’ll love the way your hair looks, feels, and smells after using Flourish.
Warmly,
Kirsten
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