Meet Greg Starkman, Founder of hair care range, Innersense Organic Beauty

Can you tell us a little bit about Innersense and the inspiration behind starting a hair care range?

The inspiration of Innersense came from my wife, Joanne and I, who are both salon professionals with a real love and passion for all things beauty. But it was the birth of our daughter, Morgan, who was born with a rare genetic disability where Joanne became an avid health advocate for herself and for our family. She became a label reader and began to really understand the levels of toxic ingredients that are found in our beauty products. Myself, as a passionate hairdresser and formulator became incredibly enamoured with green and organic chemistry wanting to eliminate the toxic ingredients that were found in most beauty products as well as eliminating cosmetic ingredients that might compromise our hair.

So, we’ve harnessed the power of botanical ingredients to deliver the emollients and efficacies that you, as a consumer, demand, while eliminating again the very ingredients; resin, silicones, plasticisers, microplastics, that ultimately coat and provide compromise to the hair.

Innersense is a certified B Corp brand. What are some of the steps have you taken to work towards protecting the planet?

Part of being a B-Corp is part of our mission in action. Os a responsible, global business it was important to us to really step up our efforts in sustainability and making sure that we were achieving the highest standard in good manufacturing practises, ingredient sourcing, production and more importantly, making sure that we’re meeting all the key pillars as far as being carbon neutral and plastics neutral.

We’re 1% for the Planet and give back substantially in our philanthropic efforts especially with regards to women’s health. Being B-Corp means that we’re caring for the environment the world and more importantly our people and you, our beauty guests.

How are products from the range tailored to different hair types?

The Innersense range really covers all hair types from fine, normal, coarse to highly textured hair and it’s because of the emolliencies of the ingredients we use that provides amazing hydration and shine. So when you look at products like our Colour Awakening Hair Bath, this is formulated with a rich concentration of coconut, pumpkin seed, avocado and shea butter that provide great cleansing but at the same time, impart great hydration. The nice thing about it is that these products don’t leave any type of build up or residue on the hair shaft but again impart great hydration and shine.

Balance was formulated to tone blonde as well as bleached hair. It’s also phenomenal at cutting the yellow out of grey hair, as well as brassiness, helping add beautiful, brilliant tone to the hair whilst imparting great shine and vibrancy as well as hydration without drying the hair out. Again, we’re utilising really emollienting ingredients that provide the performance value while at the same time helping tone, so the Bright Balance Hair Bath is a great toning shampoo.

The Bright Balance conditioner is also rich in shea butter, monoi oil, tamanu and some other great ingredients that provide great emolliences while toning to bring hydration. It also has great emolliences ingredient to help impart great hydration and shine without being drying like most colour treated shampoos are. The Bright Balance conditioner. They can be used together or separately.

What’s the importance of maintaining good scalp health on top of looking after the health of our hair?

Scalp Care has become so important especially as consumers are beginning to recognise how important it is to utilise great products on their scalp, just as well as products on their face. The thing that’s important to understand is that 80% of scalp conditions are very much induced by the products that people use. So, when you’re utilising ingredients that are very healthy and help feed the follicle, cleanse the scalp, remove build up and impurities and really help build the strength of the follicles, then the follicle will grow hair that is much healthier and stronger.

Our scalp care products have been designed to go in and pre-treat, remove impurities as well as sebum and other types of product build up. Our Daily Active treatment serum from the Harmonic Renew Hair Kit brings great nutrients like hyaluronic acid that helps build and fortify the follicle that promotes healthier hair growth – a very important part of your daily regime.

Can you tell us a bit about the products in the range that you have for hair styling?

Our styling range has developed with professional hair stylists in mind. The products are working tools that provide great hold, shine but at the same time provide hydration. That’s the benefit of Innersense. All of our styling range is formulated with a base of aloe vera which provides hydration. We also work with natural ingredients.

I Create Shine – a light oil and has an amazing floral fragrance.

Refresh Dry Shampoo – A non-aerosol and non-flaky shampoo

Quiet Calm Curl Control – One of our most popular products that helps to define waves without making it stiff or hard whilst imparting hydration at the same time.

Sweet Spirit Leave In Conditioner – Something really important is to always replenish your hair with great hydration. This is made with rich aloe vera as well as eucalyptus which helps the tensile strength and a little bit of honey which imparts shine, but also acts as a natural humectant to lock in moisture, whilst not utilising any silicones of plastic on the hair.

Hair Love Prep Spray – Our thermal protector made with a lot of amazing ingredients really providing excellent preparation before styling and great heat protection before heat styling.

Smooth Serenity – This is an amazing product that provides great smoothness, helps close down the hair cuticle, bringing great hydration and shine without weighing the hair down.