Business & Products

While DEMI has developed and rolled out multiple brands as salon-only products, ELEVATE is our first stand-alone men's brand. As its name implies, the brand concept is to "elevate"a man's hygiene, appearance, and career prospects.The first wave of products released included a shampoo, color conditioners, and styling products.
The shampoo contains decyl glucoside, a cleansing ingredient that thoroughly removes sebum but is gentle on the scalp. It cleans the pores and removes styling products,which adds volume. The color conditioners aid the absorption of the dye into the hair.Along with being usable at home, these conditioners naturally blend the gray hair in so they are the perfect products for those who do not currently dye their gray hair.
Styling products, such as waxes and gels, contain "Style keep beads"(*refer to lower left column), an industry-first technology that maintains high setting power and a deodorizing effect, even after a long period of time. This solves a number of issues unique to men, such as being concerned about the odor of their scalp from the afternoon to evening, and how their hair styles fail to hold long enough due to sebum production.

Researchers at the Institute of Hair Science and Technology

ELEVATE was launched to capitalize on the expansion of the men's grooming market. Due to the number of men who started to use hair salons at the beginning of the 2000s, the men's grooming market nearly doubled over the prior ten years. Even today, it remains a promising market. In addition, as male customers are likely to become repeat customers, the opportunity for hair salons to approach them with additional proposals and over-the-counter sales has also increased.
We have a lot of experience in developing products for women, but as ELEVATE was a product for men, we not only conducted surveys of male consumers, but also made full use of the cooperation network we have nurtured with top hair salons in Japan. We asked for and incorporated the opinions of hair stylists at these salons and began to work on a product once we had determined our concept.
The R&D team was also a little different for this brand. With a mission of "men developing a brand for men," the team consisted of four male researchers of the same generation as the target group, each of whom had different strengths in particular areas, such as shampoos and styling agents. This was a rare case for DEMI, where there are many female researchers involved in product development. As we were close to the target group, we visited hair salons, and to obtain the latest information, proposed product ideas, and become product monitors to verify product usability and functionality. This enabled us to incorporate technology into the product from the user's perspective. Along with gathering men's opinions, we also reflected women's opinions on "fragrance", an important aspect of haircare products. In addition, the successful use of Style keep beads, a functional material jointly developed with a functional material manufacturer in Fukui Prefecture, made this a good example of what open innovation can achieve when external technologies are also utilized.
Though this product line is still new, the functions that we focused on when developing ELEVATE have ensured its success at hair salons. We are proud to have provided a valuable tool for DEMI to open up new doors in the continuously expanding men's grooming market.
In a second wave of ELEVATE products, scalp care and facial care items will be added to the product lineup in September, and a third wave is in the pipeline. ELEVATE will be a brand that men ask for by name in hair salons.