Discover How Arey is Changing the Way We Approach Graying Hair

0:01Hey guys, welcome back to Skincare Anarchy. This is your host Ekta and I'm really excited about the brand I'm going to introduce you to today because when it comes to hair care. I think we've seen a lot of redundant options, you know, over the years. I know I have as a consumer. And one of my biggest questions for me personally has always been graying hair. I started graying very early, my own personal journey, just to let some of you guys know what I've been through. I started graying very early. And so for me, it was really about figuring out ways to cover it up or to just, you know, work with what I was getting, which was just a lot of grays.

0:36And so, you know, know this brand is really focused around that problem and really finding a solution so without me ranting too much I'd love to introduce you to the co-founder and CEO of Array Gray Allison Conrad welcome to the show Allison I'm excited to host you oh thank you so much for having me and thank you for saying it correctly Array Gray yeah no I'm excited about our conversation because this is a topic you know we never talk about like truly like graying and aging hair you know it's never discussed in the hair care industry and like I was saying in the intro you know there's a lot of stuff going on in hair care right now but a lot of it is kind of redundant you know I've seen it before as a consumer so I'm very excited about what you guys are doing maybe Allison you could start us off by telling us about yourself and how you got into the hair care industry and what really you know interested you and led you to creating Array Gray.

1:29Yeah well like you had said It's the same sort of situation where this came from my personal journey of seeing gray hair. And, you know, everybody knows and remembers their first gray hair moment, right? It's such a sort of like pinnacle moment in your life. But I just never forget it. I discovered it when I was in my parents' bathroom visiting them as a 30-year-old. And I was like, what is happening? This is happening. so through that journey it was me just trying to figure out what I could do to get on top of it and be proactive I was using all these skincare products I was using SPF all over my body I was you know looking into Botox proactively I was using wrinkle creams and retinols and hyaluronic acid and all these things for my skin and exercising and eating well for my body and there for hair there was really only hair loss products but I wasn't personally experiencing hair loss.

2:26So I was like, how, you know, why does this not exist? And there was sort of a few things like there was this supplement on Amazon that just kind of looked a little sketchy. I wasn't so sure of. And so we started doing the research ourselves. And I actually, the first person I went to was my hairstylist of 10 years. And he's now my co-founder, Jay. He's also a trichologist. And I, you know, I was like, okay, what do I do? And at the time, this was many years ago and he was like well what do you mean like you you wait for it to go gray enough and then you dye it and he's like but please wait as long as you can because it's going to be a process that starts at every six to eight weeks and then it's going to become every four weeks and then every two weeks and you know it's it's expensive and it's potentially toxic and I was like wait what what do you mean so that led us on this journey of trying to figure out solutions and alternatives that we could provide.

3:22And it really started with the supplement that was the first product we launched. My dad is an internal medicine doctor, a clinical pharmacologist, and my mom's a dietician. We brought in a chemical engineer from MIT, and it was really finding these science-backed ingredients as well as Eastern medicine ingredients sort of integrating East with West, starting from the inside out and using this supplement. And then while we were developing the supplement, we were also developing topical solutions to work with the supplement as well. So it really just came from kind of find a solution for myself and thinking, you know, there's probably other people out there who would like to get on top of this and not wait and only have die as the solution.

4:05Yeah, no, I mean, I think this is very novel. And I think that, you know, from, I'll tell you, you know, as somebody who did gray very early in my life, you know, thanks, sad. No, let me stop you if you don't mind me interrupting for a second. And that's actually a huge part of this, of why we're doing this. So genetics is not the only answer and it's a very small port. It's about 30 % is genetics. So there's one gene that scientists have identified as the IRF4 gene and it accounts for about 30 % of why we go gray. So the other bigger factors are oxidative stressors. So that could be, you know, UV.

4:41I mean, hello, it doesn't just hit your skin and affect and give you wrinkles. It's also affecting your hair and making it grayer hair dye can contribute to more oxidative stress and potentially more gray hair. Smoking is terrible for gray hair. The foods that we eat, right, are contributing. So there's the oxidative stressors in the world that are accelerating this process for us. And then of course there's, you know, lifestyle factors. There's aging too, right? Aging is a factor. We are all aging, but there's things you can do to slow the process and repigment these gray hairs before they turn white.

5:18So, and my parents, by the way, are also, you know, completely white at this point. And I blamed my mom for a very long time. Now I feel bad about it, but she actually, when I was in preschool, came to pick me up and I said to her, why are you the only mom with gray hair? I was four years old and she went the next day and dyed her hair. And so it's, it's actually almost like feels like kismet like my my whole life's journey started when I was a four-year-old to take me to this this point oh my poor mom I feel so bad for saying that but you know our whole goal actually as a brand is we're not anti-aging we're not anti-grey we we hope that people will start to accept gray hair a little bit more but we hope that it's we just want to give consumers some confidence and some control and feeling like they can do something about it yeah no it makes sense I'm glad you mention that though the genetic component because yeah I mean you're like the you know initial response I think is just to blame your parents or genetics or you know just hey this is the cards I was dealt you know when it comes to my hair genetics I mean at the end of the day I think what's interesting to me is that growing up I always heard and maybe you can kind of maybe shine some light on this you know myth or if it's a myth or true is that the more stressed out you are, the more likely you are to get grays.

6:38And, you know, is that true? I mean, have you guys found in your research that stress is a big component of why we gray, you know, at all or even earlier than usual? So, yes, a very good question. And we all know sort of anecdotally, right, and you will see the pictures of Obama. And then four or eight years later, he's so much grayer. And we all have our own sort of personal stories around this. I have my own too. But no, there has never been a clinical study definitively showing that stress causes gray hair, but that's also because it's a very hard thing to study and have a study design around, right?

7:15Because how do you exactly measure stress? I mean, you can do, you know, heart rate monitoring and like cortisol levels, but it's typically like self-reporting. And so my level of stress of three might be your level of stress of seven, right? And it's just a really hard thing to measure. They've measured it in mice. And so it has been shown to clog gray hair in mice, but we all know it's probably, it's just, it's probably a factor in so many diseases and issues that we have as human beings. It's only getting worse, right? So yeah, I think likely it is a problem. There's also a condition called pileiosis, which is from a very traumatic event or very acute stress.

7:54And that does cause these sort of white streaks, you know, the Bride of Frankenstein you hear of and Marie Antoinette and all these stories you hear about. And that seems to be very much linked to acute stress causing this issue. So I think what's really fascinating for us in this space is that so little research has been done on gray hair. And this is really, by the scientific community, been seen more of it as a vanity project and not really a condition. Because it's not a disease. It's aging and it's related to many things. So we think there's so much more to be discovered and realized in this space, which is really exciting as a brand.

8:36Yeah, absolutely. No, it's really fascinating. And you made such a great point, you know, with the stress thing, because I think that we as consumers, we want to believe that everything has one, you know, thing behind it, you know, one factor. And it's really hard sometimes when we don't have that one, you know, just one answer to that one problem, you know, that we think is at the root cause of everything. And I think that's also, you know, there's so many other myths around like why, you know, you get gray hair. Like if you pull out a gray hair, it's going to cause like five more to grow in its place.

9:10Like all these things. And I just, I find it to be really interesting the way that we kind of process the concept of graying and really what that means for us in terms of like our relationship to like aging and, you know, how that makes us feel. It's just a very complicated problem, you know. So I really applaud you guys for kind of tackling it from this perspective of providing solutions for consumers because it's important. Yeah, I know. I think that's right. And everybody has different genetic makeups and lifestyles. And I mean, it's not everybody is, no one person is the same to the next. And so there's probably not one just solution, right, that works for everything, solves everything.

9:55I think that's part of the challenge as a brand where we try to not over promise and under deliver. We try to be very clear about expectations and what you could potentially see and how to manage this. This is, you know, we always say like, this is not for somebody with a whole head of white or gray hair, expecting their hair to be black the next month. Right. That's not realistic. And I liken the analogy to, you know, if you're looking to not see any gray hair or completely reverse your gray hair, that's hair dye. And hair dye is like Botox, right? It's a sort of more permanent solution that's a bit more severe, a bit more costly, you know, obviously if you're going to a salon.

10:35But you also maintain that daily, right? You don't just use – Botox is not your only skincare regimen. And I don't mean you actually, but like you as the general public. You're using wrinkle creams again and hyaluronic acids and SPF. And think of all the steps and layers we put on our skin. And then with hair dye, it's like you don't just dye your hair. And then what? Just maybe shampoo and condition. No, there's things you need to be doing to provide your hair the nutrients to have it be less gray, like slow that process, help with repigmentation. But also our products help with softer, healthier, shinier, thicker, fuller hair, right?

11:13that requires daily maintenance right right absolutely no and I want to actually dive into that if we could kind of do you know a deep dive into like what you guys discovered I mean I know you said you started with supplements and I'd love to talk about that because there's a lot of hair care supplements out there aimed at like growing your hair you know like more hair grows but there's I've just never seen anything for actually like you know helping the process of graying hair. So like, you know, what is the, what was the magic behind creating your supplements? I mean, what did you want to target?

11:46Or maybe there was like one ingredient. Tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah. So it's, it's 13 ingredients and three of them is sort of in this proprietary blend that we have, which a lot of that comes from these Eastern medicines that I was alluding to. So there's Foti, there's Paba and there's black sesame extract in there. And vitamins you are familiar with, B vitamins, selenium, copper, there's things that are a bit more common. And the reason, again, all of them are backed by science and research and evidence that they affect cell turnover and help with reducing oxidative stress and supporting the cells in your hair bulb.

12:28And so the idea was, you know, supporting that cell regeneration and the melanogenesis, which is what creates the pigment and the color in your hair. But the key here is that there is a difference between a gray hair and a white hair. And so a white hair, and that's typically what you see on a person and you'd say they have gray hair. Well, you're actually probably seeing their white hair and the white hair is lost all pigment. So there is nothing, there's no melanogenesis happening anymore. Like that, that's not, it's not happening in the hair cell and then the hair bulb. So repigmentation is less likely in that.

13:04What is possible is your hair loses pigment over, and that's the graying of it. It's just losing the pigment. And if we can catch that in time, we can help preserve that pigment and help stimulate it so that it can come back. And so what we're noticing is people will also report their hair is less dull. It's more vibrant. The color saturation is coming back in general, but it's early stages. So ideally it's less than 25 % gray is when you start. We actually are just releasing our clinical study results next week. We conducted the first ever randomized double-blind placebo-controlled study on gray hair.

13:41So we're so proud that we got 173 subjects in this study and the results have been amazing. So 88 % of people with our active stuff, they took the active supplement and the serum together. It's called system, they saw 8 % saw no new gray hair growth and or repigmentation. So less gray hair growth overall. And the average was 13 % less gray compared to placebo had 10 % more gray hair over the course of this six months. So statistically significant. We know it works. You know, we've known it's worked for the last four years, just from our consumer studies and from, you know, reviews and customer testimonials but it's so exciting to actually be able to say that it's also clinically validated that's so fascinating that's really interesting that you guys have proof that it's actually you know helping with this this process of you know the melanin part is what gets me because it's really interesting to see what generates or what actually helps you know in melanin production obviously but then also like preserving it and not allowing it to break down you know prematurely that's very interesting so i mean what is it i mean i know with melanin i mean we talk about that a lot with like skincare for example right we have like these tyrosinase inhibitors that help us with hyperpigmentation and stuff but like in the hair follicle and all i mean what is really behind the breakdown of melanin i mean is it the same or i I mean, can you go into that a little bit more to explain like what causes our hair to lose that color and to lose vitality?

15:22Yes. So I'm probably not the best person to answer that question. I am the business side of it. So I know in broader strokes and broader terms. Maybe in layman terms. Yeah, we can just kind of go through it. I mean, I wish Jay, who's a trichologist and my co-founder, could speak more to that. He's so eloquent at explaining it. But it's really just the oxidative stress is the huge factor where, you know, a healthy cell will, a free radical attacks the cell and it breaks down, right? And then it stops producing the color. And so what we're trying to do is protect that and use these antioxidants to help maintain these healthy cells and help maintain cell turnover, right?

16:03So it keeps producing the color. And so that's the big factor of just like kind of keeping that engine going and not letting it lose the melanin. Because once you lose it, it's very hard to get back. And we've seen some reports of people saying, you know, I did have a white hair and it got repingmented. And we've seen it. Myself, I've actually pulled out hairs that have white at the end, seemingly white at the end, but then dark roots. I think what we still need to understand and discover is like how much of that melanin do you have to have in there to be stimulated? Is it even if there's 5%, you can bring it back?

16:41I mean, again, all the science is very still new and we're trying to figure it all out and discover new things as we go. But I always say the key is the preservation of it. It's like you can't wait till it's too late. And that's why our tagline is the wrinkle cream of hair care. It's a bit cheeky, but you really think about it. You don't put a deep, you don't have a deep wrinkle and you use a topical solution and think, okay, my wrinkle is going to completely disappear, right? That's not possible. But if you have fine lines and you get it early enough and you use it every day and consistency and keeping with it, you can sort of maintain a bit of the youth, right?

17:21That you're trying to achieve. So, yeah, I mean, I think that's really the, there's still so much to be discovered and understood but we're trying to just help that melanin to keep keep in production yeah no that's really good to know you know for consumers is that we you know we can take care of that i think that's like the the really cool part to me is that there is a control factor here you know for consumers to understand is that you know it's not completely out of our hands we can do something about it and that's why i find this conversation to be so so interesting because we talk about this very readily and skincare and beauty and cosmeceuticals you know it comes up very often and when it comes to hair it's always been kind of this like you know just gray area no pun intended but like you know just we don't know you know we don't know what's causing it even if even if you look at some of the more like severe you know pathologies with hair right you look at people who have alopecia and you really try to understand it's very difficult it's a very difficult area you know of medicine of science to understand and so i think this brings so much hope to so many consumers that yeah if i if i start it early enough and if i you know approach it with this preventative mindset it's going to be better for me in the long run just like spf you know how many dermatologists out there are like preaching about spf use early on so that you don't have to deal with it in your 40s i mean it's very similar to that so totally it's exactly the thing i mean everybody always asks like what do you what will you define success you know in five years how would you you say you're successful I would say I hope in five years if people are like can you believe we were just watching our hair go gray like that was crazy like how are we not doing something about that I think that is going to be the defining moment for us I mean I I always say like I can't believe this didn't exist before and I think a lot of people rightfully so are skeptical and saying, well, it didn't exist because it can't work, right?

19:23Like that's the logical conclusion. And while it would work, somebody would have already figured it out and invented it, right? But there's always room for innovation and newness. And it's because so little has been done and researched on this topic. I think because there was hair dye and that was, you know, a decent solution. And 75 % of women dye their hair, 38 % of men dye their hair. Like a lot of people are dyeing their hair. and we're not saying to stop dye your hair or like that never dye your hair again but that can't be the only solution and the only thing that we can do for aging hair exactly no and also not to mention i mean hair dye yeah okay we all i think all of us at some point have used hair dye you know but yeah also it can become very costly very quickly you know if you're going to a salon and you're getting your hair done like it's very costly not to mention there's very harsh chemicals and a lot of the dyes.

20:16I mean, you can, there are some brands that are really doing it right, but I think there's a lot more that aren't. And, you know, when I look at that from the science perspective and the health perspective, it just doesn't make sense to me that we're blindly trusting that, okay, this, yeah, it covers up what you consider to be a problem, but the long-term health risks are there, you know, you can't ignore that with hair dye. So, you know, it's a lot of different, I think, factors that play into this idea of preventative hair care, you know, and why it's important for consumers to get behind. I mean, I think definitely beauty and overall from the way I see it, it is shifting towards this more preventative approach.

20:54You know, I see it across the board and I just think it's high time that all of us, you know, as consumers, we take more pride and take more control of our health, you know, and realize, I mean, for example, I'll tell you, Alison, like for me, I have an autoimmune disease, Hashimoto's, And when I got Hashimoto's, yeah, it's crazy how much it does because I didn't realize, even having a medical background, there's a lot of autoimmune disorders. And I'm speaking about this because a lot of our listeners are women, and women are more prone to get autoimmune disorders. But we don't understand how much can happen because of this one problem that you have.

21:33And it leads to all these downstream, maybe not as drastic impact on your health. like something that's much worse but they're still like things you don't want to deal with you know what I mean and graying hair for me I noticed my hair did start graying more you know after I was diagnosed I understood that I have this and it's a progressive disease and you know I I did notice there was a change in that so I just wonder from that perspective that how much is happening you know like based on our comorbidities you know what I mean what is that doing for overall you know hair health or beauty or skin health all of that stuff so it makes sense that we use these otc options as adjunct therapies you know to what we're dealing with you know and so i'm really on that bandwagon of really believing in this stuff and and i think that people need to understand that you know if you want something to change like you have to go and find solutions you have to medicine doesn't have the answers you know all the time we're trying but we don't you know just yet.

22:37No, totally. And I think that's why we appreciated sort of my, you know, my parents' medical and scientific perspective and background and rigor around the products that we're making. But also that's why we look to Eastern medicine of, you know, Western medicine doesn't have all the solutions. And I think they need to work together and solutions need to be combined. And that's like why we did the supplement and the serum. And we're seeing that's the most effective when you combine inside out and outside in. Yeah, I think it's just being open to finding different solutions and realizing that not everything is like a magical cure, right?

23:16Like it's so funny. It's like, this is not magic. This is science, right? And like, we try to be very clear of like, you know, sort of showing before and afters of like, okay, this is what you can expect. We have these great before and afters we're releasing on the clinical study where we see the placebo versus active and you can see the placebo, like there is more gray hair. Like we get asked all the time, what will happen if I stop using it? If I don't use it, it's like you will get more gray hair over time. It's actually more than 10 % was higher than we expected people to get in. Even a placebo, as you know, can sometimes even make a difference.

23:52So can you imagine if it was people were not doing anything, it would be even less than that. So, yeah, I think it's all still new and I'm really excited about where the research could continue to go and the solutions that we hopefully will just continue to provide and provide better ones and more effective ones. We're always trying to research new ingredients and new solutions. And, yeah, that's on us to make sure that we're doing this in the best way that we can, given the technology we have now, but hopefully better technology in the future. absolutely and i think you brought up such an interesting point when you discuss the the merger of this you know eastern medicine philosophy with what we have in the west because i think now more than ever we're seeing that there is such untapped potential in eastern remedies that have been utilized for centuries i mean i think definitely there's been you know a spotlight that has been put on you know eastern like chinese medicine whether that's ayurveda chinese medicine all of these different theories and you know there's a lot of stuff there that can be utilized that we haven't understood in western medicine because unfortunately in the west everything we do is based on you know like the technologies that we create you know that's it i remember one of my mentors saying that a long time ago he was like if you ever practice like you know global medicine you know and you go anywhere in the world you'll notice that no one else is doing what the West is doing because the West relies on our machines.

25:21You know, we rely on them. And in the East, it's more about, we have, they have a more holistic view, I think that they look at the human body and what's going on. And so there's a lot of untapped potential there. So the fact that you guys have utilized some of that and really brought it in, you know, into your products, that's very fascinating as well. Yeah. No, that's, that's so interesting. I mean, I, this is sort of a non sequitur, like sort of related topic, but I'm constantly fascinated by SPF and that the fact that the FDA hasn't approved these new ingredients here in the U S. And so we're stuck with these like white zinc, white, very like hard to blend.

25:59Oh my gosh. I'm just like trying to get my kids to put sunscreen on. And they're like, mom, this is horrible. Like I can't, I, and I'm like, oh, you're going to get cancer and like wrinkles. You can't, you have to put it on. And then, And we see in Eastern cultures, they have amazing new technology. I'm buying this Biore SPF off of Amazon that is like water. I mean, you just put it on. Oh my God, it is the great. I have bought so many. I should be like an ambassador for this brand. I talk about it constantly. And it's exactly to your point. it's because they've had the ability and they're like they're not constrained by these sort of limitations that have found these new technologies to make spf enjoy my kids are like yeah i'll put that on it's great i love it it feels so good and that's what we should be using like that makes it so much easier to do these proactive measures so yeah yeah no i think that's such a good point i i also think it's because you know in the east there is a more open mindset about these things I mean, I think we just don't, we're not used to it.

27:04Our culture isn't used to it in the West. So like, yeah, there's a lot. I mean, there's a lot of innovation happening over there. And I think we just need to get kind of up to speed with that. You know, I know what you mean about the sunscreens. It's very hard. We just had our awards and it was very difficult taking our sunscreen options, you know. So yeah, there's a lot to be discovered. But I mean, I think, you know, coming back to Array and what you guys are doing, I think one of my questions is definitely about this preventative piece that we're talking about, you know, so what do you recommend to consumers?

27:34Like if someone's brand new to the line, what would you recommend that they start off with, you know, just to set them up themselves up to really test it, you know, and try it? Yes. No, I love this. And we're actually trying to rethink how we guide consumers on our website to the right products, because we do have now nine products because we're in retail, we're in Credo, we just launched into Erewhon. So we have to have options and give people like fit into their routines. But I'd say, you know, if you're less than 25 % gray, and even if you're a little bit more than 25 % gray, but still in a manageable space, start with the supplement for sure.

28:13It's sort of the baseline every day, take this easy to integrate into your routine. It's vegan, it's gluten-free, It just has really good nutrients in general. Start there. And then I would always recommend adding the serum. It's called To The Root. It's our topical daily serum that's very lightweight. It's no oil, no fragrance, actually. It's just super absorbent, adds volume, actually. So it's kind of a styling tool as well. But use that daily. But if you're somebody who's like, you know what? I'm not going to use a daily serum. It's too hard to integrate into my routine. Well, then use the shampoo.

28:45You can integrate that into your lifestyle. that has, it's called the melanine complex. It's our blend of, and it's patent pending of our antioxidants and peptides. But use that, integrate it into your shampoo regimen. And then the other products are sort of around lifestyle factors. So you're in UV a lot, you're outside, you live in a climate that has a lot of sun exposure, use our UV mist, which is, it's called living mist. It's a UV protection and a detangler. You do dye your hair. Okay, well, we have a post hair dye. the first ever, never existed. We just launched it in May, post hair dye scalp serum that will, it's been clinically proven to repair hair and help with the oxidative stress on the scalp post hair dye in 15 minutes.

29:30It typically takes about three days for your scalp to recover after hair dye. And so integrate that product. It also has the melanin complex as well. Do you, you know, use a dry shampoo because you're not shampooing every day. Well, we have a dry shampoo. It has a dehydrated melanin complex. Do you have, do you heat style a bunch? Well, we have a vegan collagen clinically proven heat styler that up to 450 degrees protects your hair. That doesn't go on your scalp. So that's not helping with the gray, but it's helping with the other attributes of aging hair where it gets coarser and drier and duller.

30:04And so that's, I'm like, did I cover all of our products? I think we always scrubbed too. So, you know, if you like a detox and your hair, you have like a greaser scalp or buildup. We have an amazing, it's a more of a chemical exfoliant rather than it doesn't have like sandy, gritty feel. It's really a great detoxifier. And that also has the melanin complex. So as you can see, we're just trying to start with, if you're going to buy only one product, get the supplement. If you could please just buy a topical in conjunction with that, buy one of our topical products to add onto that. And daily, that's the biggest key is it has to be consistent.

30:42You have to keep using it on a daily basis. That's awesome. So is it, is it meant for any specific hair type or is it pretty much like good across the board? Yeah. So we were very proud in this clinical study too. We, we did a very diverse group of people in terms of ethnicities and hair types. We wanted to make sure that we were saying it works on all hair types. It does. All of our products are color safe. So you can, if you dye your hair, You can use these in conjunction with dyeing your hair. They're all clean ingredients. That's why we're in Credo. We're making sure that we're very conscious of the ingredients that we're putting on to the scalp.