What’s in a name?

by Zahir Dossa | Founder & CEO of Function of Beauty

I would argue that our designers rival the best in the world when it comes to visual identity, graphic design, and product packaging. It was therefor very atypical for us to argue so strongly around one of the most characteristic aspects about our bottle today, the name.

Not just any name — your name. In retrospect, I understand why seasoned and novice designers would argue to keep our brand, Function of Beauty, on every bottle, package, etc. However, I vehemently wanted to have a customer’s name on the bottle. After the all, the formulation inside the bottle wasn’t simply a function of beauty — it was a function of Amber, or Nicole, or Chase.

In mathematical terms, a function is an equation, which takes in various inputs (in this case your hair type, hair goals, etc.), and churns out a specific output. While some functions are simple and could even be meaningless (spit out the same output every time or a few variations), ours was far from it (achieving 4-billion combinations on the latest pass). And I wanted to show it off — to demonstrate the importance and efficacy of technology in the beauty space.

But was there something else? I had worked with our designers on previous projects, including The Argan Tree, letting them dictate every detail about the product offering, packaging, etc. Why were we suddenly at odds with each other?

A couple months into Y Combinator, I had the privilege of meeting Joe — one of the three co-founders of AirBnB. Before meeting, he sent an e-mail stating that we’ll have 30 minutes, so make sure I come prepared with exactly what I wanted to get out of the meeting. My question was as straightforward and as complex as possible: what is our brand? We had been highlighting personalization, technology, algorithmic haircare — you name it. But I really wanted to nail it.

Joe’s opening comments were exactly what I expected — our brand is much more than simply shampoo and conditioner. That’s what we sell, but a brand goes deeper. He went further to then say that our brand was more than personalization, technology, and algorithms. Those were how we sell shampoo and conditioner, but not why we sell them.

I had brought a sample set with me, which he proceeded to peer over. A corrugated, e-flute box, with Function of Beauty in gray letters on the outside, and the inside flood-colored with the gray. Kraft excelsior wood fibers created a nest to protect the bottles — my own set. His eyes paused on the name, and I realized I was finally going to get my real question answered: what’s in a name?

We discussed the origins of the brand and why I had created it:

1. I was tired of mass-produced formulations and the industry’s desire to segment customers into different buckets.

2. I was never a fan of how beauty brands marketed their products, highlighting a beautiful female with flowing hair that took 3 hours to style and another 4 hours to photoshop — setting an unrealistic standard of beauty.

3. I didn’t like how devoid formulations were from the actual person they were being sold to.

In short, I wasn’t a fan of beauty brands.

In many ways, Function of Beauty is an anti-brand. By replacing our logo on the bottles with a person’s name, it is a way of sharing ownership of the product with the customer.

Our process to be able to take in a person’s hair profile, fragrance preferences, and hair goals, to then fill a unique, one-of-a-kind formulation and then digitally print the person’s name on the bottle was more than personal — it was a celebration of that person — of all the things that made that person unique.

Joe scribbled something down on the word cloud he had been diagramming and circled it. This is what your brand is about: celebrating individuality.