The Body Lab Brings Scalable Customization to Body Skin Care

The Body Lab, a new customizable body care brand, is built on the lessons learned by Eric Delapenha when building and scaling his customized Strands Hair Care brand.

The Body Lab range comprises eight core formulations of body washes and lotions focused on four core concerns; these fragrance-free formulations can be customized with add-on fragrance dose sets for a more personalized experience.

Throughout 2023, body skin care outpaced the overall skin care sector, per Circana; at the same time, personalized solutions in skin care have primarily focused on facial care products.

The Body Lab, a new customizable body care brand, is built on the lessons learned by Eric Delapenha when building and scaling his customized Strands Hair Care brand.The Body LabEric Delapenha founded Strands Hair Care in 2018, offering personalized product discovery via a precision hair test.

The brand debuted direct-to-consumer in 2020, offering a test kit that allowed shoppers to test their scalp oil levels at home, see their hair cuticle under the microscope and co-create hair care products based on their specific needs.

The brand later created The Hair Lab by Strands in collaboration with Walmart, which provides AI-powered 2-minute hair diagnostics at the retail shelf.

The Hair Lab generated more than $10 million in retail sales in 2023, per the brand, serving more than 750,000 consumers.

Delapenha is now bringing these learnings to The Body Lab.

"With The Hair Lab we were able to solve accessible customization by creating a simple and elegant system of adding one component (dose) to another (base) to create a personalized formula," said Delapenha. "[W]e've proven that we can scale this unique approach and customer behavior in hair and ultimately to other beauty and personal care categories. So we started to look at body care and realized there was little innovation in the space and that it is full of compromises for customers. In today's sophisticated world filled with new offerings, a growing segment of consumers do not want to choose between fragrance experience or skin care performance, even when it comes to their staple body care products."

"[W]e created The Body Lab to introduce the first intuitive body care customization experience to retail (and also online) that empowers each shopper to design their own clean, custom formulas that match their unique skin type and fragrance profile," Delapenha explains. "While fragrance customization is core to The Body Lab's experience, each shopper can also decide if they want their formulas to be fragrance free, giving a solution for all skin types."

The founder notes, "We are taking a similar base + dose customization approach that we do with The Hair Lab after seeing how scalable this format can be, adjusting it to the body care and fragrance space. Customers can go to TheBodyLab.com to complete our user-friendly AI powered diagnostic and discover which of our four fragrance-free body wash and body lotion base formulas are best for their unique skin type."

Delapenha adds, "The current base formula categories are: Anti-Aging [featuring retinol and lactic acid], Calming [featuring colloidal oatmeal and bisabolol], Moisturizing [featuring squalane and hyaluronic acid] and Smoothing [featuring glycolic and lactic acids]. Then, customers can choose to add their own custom blended fragrance, adding up to two unique fragrance doses to their bottle with premium notes like Summer Citrus, Midnight Lavender, Coconut Milk and more."

He concludes, "We will have eight fragrance doses at launch to choose from, and will provide data-driven scent recommendations if the customer is not sure what to select. When they receive their Body Lab package, they can mix their base and fragrance doses together in the comfort of their own home and elevate their shower and lotion experience like never before."

If combining two or more options, the fragrance variants offer consumers more than 35 potential scent concepts, per the brand.    

Is the brand considering an in-store expansion, as with The Hair Lab? Delapenha replies, "We have plans to expand to retail but we cannot disclose when or where at this time. Stay tuned."