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FORBES.COM OCTOBER 20 20PATRIC^WELSH^FOR^ FORBES^CONTRARIANENTREPRENEURSto disrupt the industry,’ ” he says.
Frustrated, he left L’Oréal in 2016 and soon de-
cided to start a business customizing shampoos.
With Paul Michaux, whom he had fi rst hired as
an intern at L’Oréal; Nicolas Mussat, former chief
technology offi cer at real estate fi rm Meilleurs-
Agents; and Catherine Taurin, a top hair chemist
in France, he launched Prose in 2017. (Michaux,
30, is now the company’s vice president of prod-
uct, while Mussat, 40, is its chief technology of-
fi cer, operating out of Paris. Taurin remains an
advisor but is not with the startup full-time.)
After a bit of a false start with off -the-shelf
software that proved slow and clunky, Prose built
its own version. Based on customers’ answers to
a detailed 25-question online survey, which asks
about hair type, scalp health and even Zip code,
the software quickly determines the mixture
each individual should get. Prose says it can de-
liver up to 79 trillion possible formulations using
more than 160 ingredients, which range from the
prosaic (coconut oil) to the exotic (butterfl y pea
fl ower). As with any business that relies on data
and machine learning, the more customers who
complete Prose’s questionnaire (so far, more than
2 million have), the more information it has to
refi ne its products. Helping retain those custom-
ers is Prose’s new subscription business, in which
members get 15% off and one-on-one styling tips.
Plas argues that those formulations have
helped Prose not only attract customers who
might otherwise have shopped at beauty empo-
riums such as Sephora, but also those who previ-
ously bought cheap suds like Pantene. More than
half its customers traded up from a mass brand,
he says—a switch he didn’t expect and that made
him nervous until he saw the repeat numbers.
Getting those consumers to keep paying up—
especially if the economic downturn lasts a long
time—will be key to building a larger business.
So, too, will Plas’ hopes for expansion beyond
shampoo and conditioner.
He fi gures the company could move into rela-
ted areas fi rst (hair color, perhaps) and eventual-
ly go further afi eld (to skin care, maybe, or other
beauty categories).
“It doesn’t have to be under Prose,” Plas says.
“It could be a new P&G—a house of personalized
brands.”ture funding, is worth an estimated $350 million.
“We knew that [without the machine] we were a
boutique hair-care brand in New York, which was
not the ambition of the company,” says the 39-year-
old Plas, who previously worked at L’Oréal. His
ambition, instead, is to get big: to turn his bud-
ding shampoo company into a major player in the
$850 million high-end hair-care market.
That’s not out of the question. After all, prior to
the pandemic, people were already forking over
plenty for expensive hair potions from brands like
Bumble and Bumble ($25 and up for eight fl uid
ounces) and Olaplex ($28 for 8.5 fl uid ounces).
“Prestige hair has been on fi re,” says NPD Group’s
Larissa Jensen.
Super-premium products are only a sliver of
the roughly $13 billion hair-care industry, but the
segment has been growing by double digits in re-
cent years and has held steady during the pan-
demic, while overall beauty sales have tanked.
After all, hair fl ows freely even from behind a
mask, and during lockdown people have gravi-
tated to little luxuries they can order online.
Plenty could go wrong. There could be prob-
lems with Plas’ machine—or, like many beauty
brands, Prose could simply peter out as the coun-
try settles into recession and fi ckle consumers
move on to the next “it” product.
But Plas, who has spent the better part of his
adult life marketing consumer products, is un-
deterred. A balding man with closely trimmed
facial hair, he grew up in southwest France, in a
small town called Brive-la-Gaillarde, known for
its large food market. His father worked as a pro-
duction manager at a factory; his mother was an
accounting assistant. As a kid, he wanted to open
a bakery. “I’m French,” he says with a smile.
Instead, after getting a master’s degree in mar-
keting from France’s NEOMA Business School,
he got a job managing a laundry-detergent brand
at German consumer-products giant Henkel. In
2010, he jumped to L’Oréal to oversee Elseve, a
top hair-care brand in Europe. By 2014, he was
based in New York as L’Oréal’s vice president of
digital and e-commerce strategy.
That’s where he fi rst had the idea to use tech-
nology to improve products, rather than simply
introduce new ones to grab in-store real estate.
“We would say, ‘We have a shampoo for dry hair,
so why not create a shampoo for very dry hair,
and it will help increase shelf space with two
SKUs at Walmart and Target?’ ” Plas says. “It’s a
hamster wheel.”
He pitched the idea internally at L’Oréal.
“They basically told me, ‘Arnaud, you’re not hereHOW TO PLAY IT
by William Baldwin
If the past century
was built on mass
production and
mass marketing,
the next will be
built on robots and
FedEx. Not just
PCs and shampoos
can be made to
order; it might
become routine
to get your text-
books, furniture,
repair parts, blue
jeans and canned
soup that way.
Among the play-
ers: Materialise
in 3D printing,
Protolabs in short-
run production,
Autodesk in design
soft ware. And
when your S&P 500
fund is replaced
with a custom-
ized portfolio that
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(such as where you
work and where
you live), Morning-
star will supply
the data.
William Baldwin is
Forbes’ Invest-
ment Strategies
columnist.FINAL THOUGHT
“THERE IS NO EXCELLENT BEAUTY
THAT HATH NOT SOME STRANGENESS
IN THE PROPORTION.”
—Francis BaconLocks of Luxury Cont.