MONDAY Is Making Hair Care Inclusive and Sustainable

MONDAY Haircare rejects exclusivity in the beauty industry by selling its award-winning, salon-quality products at accessible price points. But this is only one of the four core tenets of MONDAY’s business.

Founded by New Zealand entrepreneur Jaimee Lupton, MONDAY creates hair care formulas that are inclusive, sustainable, cruelty-free, vegan, and free of SLS and parabens.

With an emphasis on natural ingredients, MONDAY’s products contain hair boosters such as sage, watercress extract, and coconut fruit extract. 

MONDAY’s signature pink bottles are also 100% recyclable. In addition, sticky plastic labels are avoided altogether by printing directly onto the bottles.

Neha Khoral of Setting Mind interviews Lupton to learn more.

Khoral: What inspired you to start your own company? How difficult was this endeavour in the beginning?

Lupton: It stemmed from my own expensive beauty habit – I was spending an extortionate amount of money on products each month. I’ve always believed that beauty products should work without costing a week’s salary, and there’s a lot of skincare brands that do that.

But when it came to hair care, there was such a big gap between brands available in the salon and what was available more readily in mass retailers. The beauty and skincare industry has been over-saturated for a while, but I felt the hair industry needed a refresh.

In the very beginning, the development phase was initially a challenge for me — I was constantly second-guessing myself — but once I got some great feedback from industry heavyweights like Jo Horgan of MECCA, I found the confidence to better stick to my guns [when] making big decisions. Launching this product has had its challenges, it takes a lot of hard work, but I’m lucky enough to have an incredible team around me and have loved every minute of it. This is my passion!

What would you say to young, female entrepreneurs who wish to follow in your footsteps?

Not to doubt yourself! I know that’s sometimes easier said than done, but when you’re trying to do something new or different – or sometimes just generally as a woman in business – you’ll come up against enough people who’ll doubt your ideas or your vision.

You really need to be your own biggest believer and also surround yourself with people who will question and challenge you, but ultimately believe in what you’re setting out to do too.

And don’t be afraid of failure! You’ll make plenty of mistakes or wrong turns at first as you figure things out, but they’re just learnings. Don’t beat yourself up about them – just take the lesson and move on. You’ll paralyze yourself with fear and doubt otherwise.

 Where did the name MONDAY come from? 

I kept coming back to the idea that it seemed stupid to save your best hair days for “special occasions”; to only put in effort to the way your hair looked on the weekend. In my pursuit of flipping that notion on its head, I wanted a brand name that posed the question: “Why save your best hair days for Saturdays and Sundays?” In other words, “Why can’t we have good hair on a Monday?”

What inspired the aesthetics and design of MONDAY’s products, and how have you been continuing to innovate over the years?

We designed MONDAY’s packaging to be both functional and aesthetically pleasing. When I would go into a supermarket, everything on the shelf seemed to be screaming at me – I wanted something that whispered.

Our decision to use a single tone of pink was inspired by the sleek and minimal packaging we’ve come to expect from high-end hair care brands. MONDAY’s packaging is decidedly simple and uncomplicated – which mirrors our commitment to making “good hair” an uncomplicated endeavour.

How have you chosen ingredients for your products? 

First and foremost, I’m a beauty junkie, so I’ve spent most of my twenties splurging on expensive beauty products – including hair care. Over time I came to recognize the ingredients that really pack a punch when it comes to the health and maintenance of my hair.

Once I identified those ingredients – things like shea butter, sunflower seed extract, Vitamin E oil, Jojoba Oil – I then set about sourcing them from ethical suppliers at a cost that allowed us to sell a range of shampoos and conditioners in line with other supermarket brands and make ourselves competitive against the “Old Guard.”

Harnessing what’s taken place in the skincare sector – creating a relevant new-age brand for millennial and gen Z consumers who demand more from their brands – not only do they want a good product at a fair price, but they want it to be beautiful, make them feel good about using it.

What did it mean to win a Glamour award this year? What does this achievement mean for the future of MONDAY?

That was really exciting for us! I’ve always loved trying products that beauty editors recommend and approve of, so for them to give their tick of approval to MONDAY was a little surreal. Especially coming a couple of months off the back of our launch into North America… and then being followed up by a Cosmo Holy Grail Beauty Award a couple of months later! It’s great to have all the things that our customers love us for recognized, and hopefully just the beginning for us.

MONDAY stands for social responsibility. What charities have you thoroughly enjoyed partnering with and what causes do you intend to support in the future?

Our intention has always been to work with a charity or not-for-profit in each of the regions we’re sold in. When we launched into North America we partnered with GLAM4GOOD, an organization that works with women and girls who might be marginalized or disadvantaged, but in a way that’s really tailored to their needs. They believe that beauty and style have the power to lift people’s spirits and confidence, and that everyone deserves to look and feel good, which is an ethos that really resonated with us.

How has the COVID-19 pandemic affected MONDAY and your inspiration?

COVID of course has had huge implications for the ways we live, and most of those aren’t necessarily positive, so I don’t want to trivialize. But I suppose one of the silver linings of the pandemic has been that we’re looking at ways we can take care of ourselves at home and show ourselves some self-care and kindness in small ways.

MONDAY has always been about everyday little luxuries and I think those have become all the more important, especially when our time can feel very same-same! You can have a great hair day even if it’s just for a Zoom meeting.

What can we expect to see coming up from MONDAY in the future?

We have several products in their development phase at the moment, which I’m really excited about. We set out to create a really streamlined range of products that work, and have always said that if you’re using a quality shampoo and conditioner you don’t need a million other products.

But these are things our MONDAY community has asked for to complement their hair routine, like a purple shampoo, dry shampoo and treatment. If I told you about the others, my product team would probably take them all off me…