Living Proof
This article was originally published in The Rose Sheet
Executive Summary
"Excited by the success [the brand has] had out of the gate," Polaris Venture Partners gives Living Proof $9 mil. in funding to advance its technology pipeline and support international expansion. Living Proof'sNo Frizz line of silicone-free, frizz-neutralizing hair products, which rolled out in February, "is one of the biggest launches to enter the market this year at Sephora," the Cambridge, Mass.-based brand says. "This financing will give us the capital to create and market category-busting new products like we've had with No Frizz," Living Proof CEO Rob Robillard states, adding: "It will allow us to replicate this early success in markets outside the United States." Founded by biomedical scientist and MIT professor Robert Langer, Living Proof touts itself as a performance- rather than marketing-driven brand backed by the resources typically reserved for biopharma startups (1"The Rose Sheet" Oct. 13, 2008, Marketing In Brief). Products also are sold through QVC and the company's Web site
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Marketing In Brief
Living Proof: No Frizz hair-care line is first launch from company led by biomedical scientist and MIT institute professor Robert Langer, that aims to outperform - rather than out-market - the personal-care competition. "We saw most of the industry using the same basic ingredients and spending millions to try to differentiate their largely similar products," says Joe Flint of founding firm Polaris Venture Partners. Living Proof's "point of difference is to approach beauty problems from an outsider's perspective, using the resources you would typically find in a venture-backed bio-pharma startup," with guidance from personal-care industry veterans but no "preconceived notions of what could and could not be done," according to Oct. 7 release from Cambridge, Mass. company. No Frizz hair products feature new molecule PolyflouroEster, which is smaller than traditional frizz-fighting agents and offers an extremely thin humidity barrier while reducing surface friction, making it the most effective, lightweight frizz-fighter on market today, Living Proof asserts. National Medal of Science winner Langer - whose research, firm notes, has led to breakthroughs in advanced drug delivery - states: "Our thinking is that if we can find solutions for some of the toughest medical challenges, we should certainly be able to cure frizz.
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