Our Story
Two People, one problem, three years of nonstop work to fix it.
Two People, one problem, three years of nonstop work to fix it.
Two People, one problem, three years of nonstop work to fix it.
This section of the site is a bit more informal, but we thought you should know the real people behind the the brand.
Every polaroid below is a piece of how RINSED came to exist.
Tap any photo to flip it over
This section of the site is a bit more informal, but we thought you should know the real people behind the the brand.
Every polaroid below is a piece of how RINSED came to exist.
Tap any photo to flip it over
This section of the site is a bit more informal, but we thought you should know the real people behind the the brand.
Every polaroid below is a piece of how RINSED came to exist.
Tap any photo to flip it over
Scroll
Tucker:
Tucker:
Tucker:
01/11/23
Me (center) with my friends enjoying a couple cervezas. Best time of my life, little did I know I was about to start LOSING MY HAIR!
It was a cold winter in Madrid
It was a cold winter in Madrid
I'd never been busier. Every weekend was another flight, another city, another late night that turned into a 6am walk back to my apartment. I wanted to walk out the door each morning looking like I had my life together, and my hair had other plans entirely. I'd dealt with dry, oily, irritated scalp off and on my whole life, normal guy stuff, I figured.
Then one morning that winter I woke up with actual strands of hair scattered across my pillow, and "normal guy stuff" stopped feeling like the right description. I bought a new shampoo. Then a new conditioner. Then another new shampoo. Every bottle promised to fix something and somehow handed me back a different problem than the one I walked in with.
I’d never been busier. Every weekend was another flight, another city, another late night that turned into a 6am walk back to my apartment. I wanted to walk out the door each morning looking like I had my life together, and my hair had other plans entirely. I’d dealt with dry, oily, irritated scalp off and on my whole life, normal guy stuff, I figured.
Then one morning that winter I woke up with actual strands of hair scattered across my pillow, and “normal guy stuff” stopped feeling like the right description. I bought a new shampoo. Then a new conditioner. Then another new shampoo. Every bottle promised to fix something and somehow handed me back a different problem than the one I walked in with.
Dana:
Dana:
Dana:
01/18/23
Nice to meet you ♡
Meanwhile, back in California…
Meanwhile, back in California…
Meanwhile, back in California…
I've spent years reading labels before anything goes near my skin, my hair, or my kids', probably a habit left over from a career spent paying very close attention to how things look and feel, interior design and television production will do that to you. So when my own scalp turned on me, I refused to just "live with it", I set off for the a dermatologist and asked what could actually be done.
The answer was "change conditioners". Cover it, don't fix it. I remember thinking, it's 2023, we're making massive technological strides as a species, and the best anyone can offer my scalp is a way to HIDE it's dryness? It felt like the whole industry was managing symptoms instead of asking why anyone needed a complicated, expensive routine just to keep their hair and scalp functioning normally in the first place.
Then Tucker called. We started comparing notes, his hair, my scalp, completely different symptoms on paper, and about ten minutes in realized we weren't describing two different problems. We were describing the same one.
I’ve spent years reading labels before anything goes near my skin, my hair, or my kids’, probably a habit left over from a career spent paying very close attention to how things look and feel, interior design and television production will do that to you. So when my own scalp turned on me, I refused to just “live with it”, I set off for the a dermatologist and asked what could actually be done.
The answer was “change conditioners”. Cover it, don’t fix it. I remember thinking, it’s 2023, we’re making massive technological strides as a species, and the best anyone can offer my scalp is a way to HIDE it’s dryness? It felt like the whole industry was managing symptoms instead of asking why anyone needed a complicated, expensive routine just to keep their hair and scalp functioning normally in the first place.
Then Tucker called. We started comparing notes, his hair, my scalp, completely different symptoms on paper, and about ten minutes in realized we weren’t describing two different problems. We were describing the same one.
At first, we were hypocrites
At first, we were hypocrites
At first, we were hypocrites
01/25/2025
Our first shipment from the lab. This was 1 of 3 "pinch-me" RINSED development days. #2 was getting the study results back, and #3 was recieving our first finalized bottle. Hopefully there are many more of those days to come!
The plan started as three products, a “gentle” shampoo, a “light” conditioner, and an “in-between wash days” rinse, because that felt thorough. It also started as a unisex brand. We spent months down that road before admitting what we were actually building: the exact overcomplicated routine we couldn’t stand in the first place.
The unisex idea had two problems. Women already have millions of products marketed to them, many genuinely science-backed, and hair with different needs than ours, so we’d have been walking into an oversaturated, sticky market. As a guy, though, I realized Rinsed was actually perfect as a men’s product. We’re an extremely underserved community when it comes to genuinely efficacious, science-backed personal care, and we are also dealing with a serious hair loss epidemic. So a “men’s product” it was.
I put that in quotes, because there’s no reason a woman can’t Get Rinsed herself. Look closely at the bottle, the word “man” doesn’t appear anywhere on it. Wink wink.
The plan started as three products, a “gentle” shampoo, a “light” conditioner, and an “in-between wash days” rinse, because that felt thorough. It also started as a unisex brand. We spent months down that road before admitting what we were actually building: the exact overcomplicated routine we couldn’t stand in the first place.
The unisex idea had two problems. Women already have millions of products marketed to them, many genuinely science-backed, and hair with different needs than ours, so we’d have been walking into an oversaturated, sticky market.
As a guy, though, I realized Rinsed was actually perfect as a men’s product. We’re an extremely underserved community when it comes to genuinely efficacious, science-backed personal care, and we are also dealing with a serious hair loss epidemic. So a “men’s product” it was.
I put that in quotes, because there’s no reason a woman can’t Get Rinsed herself. Look closely at the bottle, the word “man” doesn’t appear anywhere on it. Wink wink.
Back at Oregon
Back at Oregon
Back at Oregon
12/07/24
Eugene Oregon, AKA heaven on earth (feat. a rare break in the rain).
It was an unusually miserable, rainy Oregon spring, so my friends and I were spending a lot of time inside talking, and it kept circling back to the same complaint: what were we all actually supposed to be doing about our hair? Everyone had a different problem and a different half-fix for it, and none of the advice out there seemed to solve anything.
The more we talked, the more obvious it got that the problem wasn't any one of us specifically. We were all buying a product to undo what the last product had done to us, then buying a second, third, fourth, fifth, and so on one to undo the previous ones damage. Suddenly, the shower stopped feeling like a routine and started feeling like a cycle nobody had ever bothered to question.
It was an unusually miserable, rainy Oregon spring, so my friends and I were spending a lot of time inside talking, and it kept circling back to the same complaint: what were we all actually supposed to be doing about our hair?
Everyone had a different problem and a different half-fix for it, and none of the advice out there seemed to solve anything. The more we talked, the more obvious it got that the problem wasn’t any one of us specifically. We were all buying a product to undo what the last product had done to us, then buying a second, third, fourth, fifth, and so on one to undo the previous ones damage.
Suddenly, the shower stopped feeling like a routine and started feeling like a cycle nobody had ever bothered to question.
It was an unusually miserable, rainy Oregon spring, so my friends and I were spending a lot of time inside talking, and it kept circling back to the same complaint: what were we all actually supposed to be doing about our hair? Everyone had a different problem and a different half-fix for it, and none of the advice out there seemed to solve anything.
The more we talked, the more obvious it got that the problem wasn’t any one of us specifically. We were all buying a product to undo what the last product had done to us, then buying a second, third, fourth, fifth, and so on one to undo the previous ones damage. Suddenly, the shower stopped feeling like a routine and started feeling like a cycle nobody had ever bothered to question.
11/19/2021
Even Puddles thought I looked better with a hat on... this should've been sign #1 that something needed to change.
One bottle, many talents
One bottle, many talents
One bottle, many talents
12/07/24
It's been around the world, is leaky and peeling, and has sand from 3 different continents stuck under the label, but BEHOLD - my personal Rinsed test bottle. This vessel has held every version of RINSED. One day, it will be in the Lourve... hopefully they've upped their security by then.
We scrapped the three-product, unisex plan and started over: one bottle that did everything a guy needed, without tricking him into buying it through cheap, gimmicky marketing. It also just had to work. I was one of the guys it needed to work for, and I needed it bad.
We partnered with a world-class formulation lab, the same one that helped write the clean beauty standards Whole Foods holds its own shelves to, among the strictest in the industry, and held ourselves to those standards even in stores we had no plans to sell in. At the time of this writing, Rinsed is Sephora, Ulta, and Whole Foods clean.***
In late 2024, we got version 1.0. It was bad. Genuinely bad. Version two was a little better, nowhere close to where we are now. Meanwhile our own problems kept getting worse, and the more I researched, the more the pattern held: nobody knew what to use, nobody knew what to do, and nobody was actually trying to fix it. We kept going.
Rinse
The proof is in the pudding
The proof is in the pudding
The proof is in the pudding
04/17/2026
Before I had recieved our ultra-custom, masterfully designed finalized bottles, I went through the painstaking process of 3d printing a fake one. I then designed and printed a custom wrap-around sticker, all in effort to have a "prop" bottle so that I could shoot content on my trip to Costa Rica. Long story short, it looked completely fake and I scrapped all the footage. We also lost the fishing tournament... Pura Vida.
A year and a half later, after shipping endless samples to family and friends everywhere (thank you all for being our guinea pigs), we’d finally done it.
Suddenly, I started getting stopped at parties by friends I’d sent 2oz samples to, begging for more. Once they ran out and went back to shampoo and conditioner, they hated how it felt. The problem was, the lab only sends you a gallon of each version to test, and once it’s gone, it’s a few weeks before they can make more. Selfishly, I never let mine run out. I couldn’t stand the thought of going back. As of writing this, I’m 2.5 years shampoo-and-conditioner clean.
Moral of the story, people loved it. We went through enough versions to fill an incredible-smelling, very good-for-your-hair swimming pool, but people loved it.
A year and a half later, after shipping endless samples to family and friends everywhere (thank you all for being our guinea pigs), we’d finally done it.
Suddenly, I started getting stopped at parties by friends I’d sent 2oz samples to, begging for more. Once they ran out and went back to shampoo and conditioner, they hated how it felt.
The problem was, the lab only sends you a gallon of each version to test, and once it’s gone, it’s a few weeks before they can make more. Selfishly, I never let mine run out. I couldn’t stand the thought of going back. As of writing this, I’m 2.5 years shampoo-and-conditioner clean.
Moral of the story, people loved it. We went through enough versions to fill an incredible-smelling, very good-for-your-hair swimming pool, but people loved it.
Rinse
Rinse
RINSED takes flight
(and the wait begins)
RINSED takes flight
(and the wait begins)
RINSED takes flight
(and the wait begins)
02/01/2026
The type of bottles the testers recieved. With no branding to cloud their judgment of the brand, they evaluated their experience entirely on whether or not the product worked better than shampoo. The vast majority though it did and said that they'd never go back.*
02/20/2026
While we waited for the results, we began shooting our launch video. Filmed by, scored by, acted in by, and dreamed up by real humans. This is the real deal folks.
06/07/26
Action shot of Dana dialing in our packaging. We wanted you to feel like you were opening a high-tech, beautiful product upon delivery. Hint: look behind the rip-strip for my favorite part.
We still weren’t comfortable asking guys to overhaul their routine based on feedback from people who knew us personally. So we did two more things. First, we got it dermatologist tested, and it passed with flying colors. 0/50 markers for sensitivity**. BANG! Second, we commissioned a full nationwide study. I remember telling our chief scientist we wanted to go ahead with it. “Are you sure,” she said, “most brands at your stage don’t go this far.” That was exactly the motivation we needed.
For the entire month of January 2026, men across the country stopped using shampoo and conditioner completely. Instead they got a plain white bottle with nothing printed it but the phrase: “nourishing hair wash.” Two weeks in, 91% said their hair felt healthier.* By the end, 2/3 said they’d give up shampoo for good.* I thought I’d feel surprised. I didn’t. I took one exhale, signed off on the formula, and we started sprinting toward launch.
By the way, some of those testers wrote in asking what the product actually was, because people around them had been complimenting their hair ‘nonstop’. If you’re reading this and you tested a “nourishing hair wash” that January, now you know.
Balance Restored, Get RINSED
Balance Restored, Get RINSED
Balance Restored, Get RINSED
Team RINSED
Dana and I, your founders. If you made it this far this, you're a real one. Love ya. Unless your BIG SHAMPOO, then kindly f*ck off.
We live fifteen minutes from San Francisco, on the water, in one of the healthiest counties in the USA, and neither of us has gone long without being near the ocean our whole lives. Water, and its strange mix of purity and power, sits at the center of everything here, simple and strong at once.
When we first sat down with our brand designer, an individual behind some of the most recognizable clean hair, body, and home brands out there, he asked us something that stopped us for a second: “Isn’t Rinsed kind of a negative word?” Dana and I looked at each other and realized, no it is not. It was never about something being bad. It’s about something being made new again, refined on purpose, gentle, a life rinsed free of the nonsense, stress, and extra harm that creeps into daily life. Building something better by removing what doesn’t belong, not by adding one more thing to the pile.
What started as a literal description of what we’d done to a formula became how we think about most things now. We built this because we needed it to work on our own hair. We still do, every morning, every night, every rinse.
We live fifteen minutes from San Francisco, on the water, in one of the healthiest counties in the USA, and neither of us has gone long without being near the ocean our whole lives. Water, and its strange mix of purity and power, sits at the center of everything here, simple and strong at once.
When we first sat down with our brand designer, an individual behind some of the most recognizable clean hair, body, and home brands out there, he asked us something that stopped us for a second: “Isn’t Rinsed kind of a negative word?” Dana and I looked at each other and realized, no it is not. It was never about something being bad. It’s about something being made new again, refined on purpose, gentle, a life rinsed free of the nonsense, stress, and extra harm that creeps into daily life.
Building something better by removing what doesn’t belong, not by adding one more thing to the pile.
What started as a literal description of what we’d done to a formula became how we think about most things now. We built this because we needed it to work on our own hair.
We still do, every morning, every night, every rinse.
We live fifteen minutes from San Francisco, on the water, in one of the healthiest counties in the USA, and neither of us has gone long without being near the ocean our whole lives. Water, and its strange mix of purity and power, sits at the center of everything here, simple and strong at once.
When we first sat down with our brand designer, an individual behind some of the most recognizable clean hair, body, and home brands out there, he asked us something that stopped us for a second: “Isn’t Rinsed kind of a negative word?” Dana and I looked at each other and realized, no, it is wasn't.
It was never about something being bad. It’s about something being made new again, refined on purpose, gentle, a life rinsed free of the nonsense, stress, and extra harm that creeps into daily life. Building something better by removing what doesn’t belong, not by adding one more thing to the pile.
What started as a literal description of what we’d done to a formula became how we think about most things now. We built this because we needed it to work on our own hair. We still do, every morning, every night, every rinse.
One more thing…
One more thing…
One more thing…
There’s about a million details we couldn’t fit here. Our first time inside a factory decontamination chamber. Getting quoted fifty thousand dollars for a professional “nose” to help us pick a scent, (we said no).
This page could be twice as long and still not cover it. If you see us in person, ask. We’ll give you the scoop.
There’s about a million details we couldn’t fit here. Our first time inside a factory decontamination chamber. Getting quoted fifty thousand dollars for a professional “nose” to help us pick a scent, (we said no).
This page could be twice as long and still not cover it. If you see us in person, ask. We’ll give you the scoop.
There’s about a million details we couldn’t fit here. Our first time inside a factory decontamination chamber. Getting quoted fifty thousand dollars for a professional “nose” to help us pick a scent, (we said no).
This page could be twice as long and still not cover it. If you see us in person, ask. We’ll give you the scoop.