LONDON — The hair care brand Typebea, cofounded by Australian entrepreneur Anna Lahey and musician Rita Ora, recently celebrated its anniversary.
The brand already has more than six products on the market, from a shampoo and conditioner, boosting peptides to styling serums. It’s now added a 3-in-1 dry shampoo to its range as the business scales.
“It cleanses the scalp and creates a volumizing lift, but what’s really different about our dry shampoo is that it does have that efficacious dose of baicapil, which is the hero ingredient that’s in our G1 peptide hair serum. Baicapil is clinically proven to reduce hair loss and promote hair growth by a staggering 60.3 percent,” said Anna Lahey in an interview with Kieran Lahey, her partner in business and life.
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Typebea has been taking their products beyond shelf life in bathrooms. They’ve extended into the travel size market with smaller versions of their products.
“Mini versions of the product in general are a big part of our retailers strategy, such as Sephora and Douglas,” said Kieran Lahey, who is chief executive officer of the brand.
According to Typebea, in the first full year of trading, the brand has projected a turnover of between $12 million to $15 million. The brand has experienced a 500 percent growth year-on-year.
The brand’s biggest market to date is Europe, which accounts for 55 percent of the market share followed by Australia with 33 percent, the U.K. with 9 percent and U.S. at 3 percent.
The G1 peptide hair serum is Typebea’s hero product and accounts for 44 percent of sales. It’s also the number-one hair serum in Sephora in Australia.
Scaling and starting a business is nothing new to the Laheys.
Anna founded Vida Glow, a collagen and wellness brand in 2014 with Kieran onboard as chief executive officer. The couple continue to operate the business.
In 2021, Vida Glow underwent a rebrand during the COVID-19 pandemic and invited Ora to attend the relaunch event for a key sum.
“There was a small group of people at the event because Australia was so strict about the pandemic and Rita was filming ‘The Voice.’ At the time, Rita overdelivered on all her deliverables [in the contract with Vida Glow],” said Anna.
As travel rules relaxed, Anna and Rita met up in London and Los Angeles to have general discussions that led to the subject of starting Typebea together.
“I could tell that there was this interest of her doing something that was her own, as opposed to putting her name to a brand deal. We naturally bonded over hair. Rita had some pretty funny hair stories about committing to a look and for women, much of our identity is our hair,” said Anna.
Starting a hair care brand was also a personal sentiment to Ora, who experienced her mother battling cancer and losing all of her hair with chemotherapy.
“As a young teenager, Rita saw the sort of emotional toll that it took on her mum and the identity crisis, if you will, of what losing her hair did to her personality and how that made her feel,” said Anna.
Scaling the business was always on the cards for Typebea.
The Laheys used their track record with Vida Glow to plan out the first year of the brand.
“We wanted to launch with major retailers from Day One. We’re now in 22 countries across Europe with the likes of Sephora, Douglas and Boots because we’ve worked with them before [on Vida Glow],” said Kieran.
Typebea is currently working on its North American strategy as it projects a lot of incoming growth from the region, as well as eyeing up the Middle Eastern and Asian market, where there’s promise.
