EXCLUSIVE: HigherDose Launches Red Light Hat to Expand Consumer Reach

Red light is the name of the game at HigherDose.

Friday, the recovery-focused, biohacking brand, is launching its latest device, the Red Light Hat, $449, which will be available direct-to-consumer and exclusively on sephora.com later this year.

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Similar to some of the brand’s bestsellers, the hat combines both red light and infrared.

“Most people know about the skin-enhancing benefits, but most people don’t know what the red light and infrared are actually doing, which is ultimately feeding the mitochondria to produce ATP [adenosine triphosphate] which is energy which means every cell in your body is functioning better,” said HigherDose cofounder and co-chief executive officer Lauren Berlingeri.

With this, the benefits could include regrowth, fuller strands, scalp health and overall hair vitality, the company said.

Berlingeri and cofounder and co-CEO Katie Kaps have identified an array of use cases for the hat, including women experiencing hair loss due to menopause and men with thinning strands. They expect the launch to help the company capture a wider audience.

“It will expand our demo in a lot of different ways,” said Kaps. “Men are the obvious ones. I could see a lot of women who are already familiar with the brand buying this for their husband or boyfriend over the holidays. It opens up some fun new campaigns that we could do with more men.”

Berlingeri added: “Whether or not you’re losing your hair from something like chemotherapy or stress or just baldness, this drive and focus around hair vitality and hair health has been just something that everyone’s really thinking about.”

With this in mind, the brand is recommending this as an addition to one’s holistic hair health routine.

“I don’t think that there’s enough solutions that really do work. There’s supplements that you can take that help, but if you tackle it from all different angles, you’re gonna have the best results,” Berlingeri said. “Red light does that topically. It is so good for increasing blood flow and circulation to the hair root, which is so important. It’s so good for healing any scalp issues.”

To further prove the product’s efficacy, the brand is leaning into before-and-after images from its consumer testing. The brand recommends that to start, customers use the hat daily for four months.

To prompt user consistency, the duo intentionally opted for a design that looks like a regular baseball hat.

“We didn’t want it to be embarrassing for people to use by making it this big helmet,” Berlingeri said. “We wanted to make it more incognito with the baseball cap, making it super chic and ultimately kind of cool.”

The hat’s design could also be helpful for the brand’s future in retail, as it is a smaller product that fits on shelves unlike HigherDose’s bestselling Infrared Sauna Blanket, $699. The team did not confirm a brick-and-mortar launch.

This new launch is reflective of the brand’s wider strategy to build out a lineup of red and infrared-based products, which currently includes bestsellers like the Red Light Face Mask, $349, and Red Light Neck Enhancer, $349. According to industry sources, the brand’s red light category is expected to reach $2 million in sales by the end of the year.

“It’s been something that we’re leaning more into as a company,” Berlingeri said. “We have more red light and infrared products coming out.”