‘Like a day at the beach’: N.S. company adds ocean water to products to give customers ‘Salty Hair’

A local product makes waves – proving beach hair in a bottle.

The feeling of salty, ocean hair was one Mike Petrosoniak wanted outside of swimming, so he created it.

He started his Salty Hair business because he was in the water often as a kite boarder in the Lawrencetown, N.S., area.

“And loving that feeling of my hair after I get out of the ocean, and basically trying to replicate that feeling,” he told CTV News on the beach in Seaforth.

“I have a chemical engineering background, and a bit of an entrepreneurial drive. And so I wanted to see how I could combine these different passions, and started to experiment with how I could replicate that feeling of right after you get out of the ocean and started with literally a bottle of just ocean water.”

But that didn’t do the trick.

“Didn’t do a whole lot, so I needed to pivot,” he laughed.

“I went through about 80 prototypes, to get to the final product. And I do use real ocean water in the production of it. I filter it, I concentrate it. So Salty Hair is several times the salt concentration of the ocean,” Petrosoniak said.

“And then I add in a bunch of plant-based ingredients. So, I don’t know if you’ve ever squeezed an aloe leaf, but that gel that comes out I was really after, other plants that had those sort of plant-based gels in them to add moisture, additional hold texture, those sorts of things. And so Salty Hair, our main product, is made up of that concentrated, filtered seawater.”

“And those plant-based ingredients that add texture, hold more moisture, that sort of thing. And it really leaves your hair feeling like a day at the beach.”

Though Petrosoniak was excited about his endeavour, not everyone was on board right away.

“When I was first telling my mom about the product I asked her, ‘You know that feeling right after you get out of the ocean? And that, that salty feeling?’ And she was like, ‘Oh, yeah. So you’re trying to fix that?’ he laughed.

“I’m trying to give you that salty feel every day, even when you can’t make it to the beach.”

Petrosoniak is a resident chemical engineer at Dalhousie University and since it took him quite a while to develop the spray he enlisted students to expand his product line.

“I brought the project to Dalhousie, really for the development of our second product, which is now our shampoo bar. And, I do have to tell you, the students did a great job with it. Number one, it took me a long time to develop that first product because it’s a lot of trial and error,” he explained.

“And it does take some time to get that done. So really tapping into the knowledge of the four students, a TA and a prof that were on the team to help design that shampoo bar to speed things up. It also brought a lot of fresh new minds and thoughts to the product development and really turned out with a good product.”

Supervising professor Amyl Ghanem said the students involved loved the project.

“They love going and doing hands-on projects, so they were developing, ordering materials, formulating and trying different formulas,” she said.

“Apparently you can get long locks of hair from Amazon, so they had little bits of hair hanging all around the lab where they were testing formulas, really scientifically.”

Focusing on the environmentally conscious aspects of cosmetics, Petrosoniak also gives back to the ocean as much as he takes from the water, which he feels resonates with people.

“It gets people pumped about giving back as well. Like thinking about what types of packaging they use. Again, using a shampoo bar that can be packaged in cardboard was important for us so that we’re getting away from plastics as much as possible.”

“And to get people pumped about buying into a product that gives $1 from every product sold back to the ocean. We work fairly closely with the organization Reef Life, who is our main partner in regrowing coral reefs.”

That concept resonates with students too.

“Traditionally, chemical engineering wasn’t focused on the environmental impacts,” said Ghanem. “It’s increasingly important for us to recognize the effect we have on the environment, and our students are very much aware of that. They’ve grown up in that kind of world, so I think they are very mindful of it.”

Salty Hair can be found in salons throughout the Maritimes and parts of Ontario, and is expanding thanks to the salons that stuck with them through the process.

“Local barber shops were buying it. There were several times where I stocked out, and thankfully the barber shops were very loyal and stuck with our product and kept stocking it.”

Since Petrosoniak collects the water himself, he can make about 500 bottles per batch now.

“I think people love hearing your water actually comes from Seaforth Beach, Lawrencetown, Crystal Crescent. We do move it around a bit, although this is my favourite beach to source from,” he explained in Seaforth.

“Sourcing the ocean water actually looks like getting into my wetsuit, getting my booties on, my gloves on, swimming out a little bit, filling up big 25 litre jugs of water, several of them.”

And while he has plans to expand, he also knows the draw of Salty Hair.

“I think one of the reasons that people are buying the product, whether here in Nova Scotia or even in Ontario or across the country, is they do love the feeling that it gives you. I think there is something different about the feeling of actual ocean water than just water with salt in it,” he smiled.

“There are other salt sprays on the market. A lot of them have alcohols in them, which help dry the product in your hair faster, but it also leaves your hair feeling a little brittle and crunchy. So Salty Hair literally uses, again, those two components, concentrated ocean water and plant-based ingredients. And it leaves your hair feeling kind of really full and really texturized.”

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