HUNTERSVILLE, N.C. — poolHead Products, the only personal care company specializing in water sports, announced today that its line of hair products for swimmers and divers is now available nationwide.
Scientists created the poolHead line, including the revolutionary “Invisible SwimCap,” a naturally based cream that, when applied to hair before a swimmer enters the pool, actually protects hair from the harmful effects of chlorine and other pool chemicals. No other product is designed to actually prevent damage caused by pool chemicals.
The products are the brainchild of Dr. Katharine Presty, a Huntersville, N.C., scientist whose 13-year-old daughter is a nationally ranked diver who practices more than 200 days a year. Presty has spent thousands of hours around pools, and has learned that nothing is harder on hair than daily exposure to harsh pool water.
“I can spot swimmers right away, just by looking at their hair,” Presty says.
When Presty starting looking for ways to deal with the dreaded “pool head,” she was disappointed.
“I tried the products that were supposed to treat pool-damaged hair, but found that they didn’t work,” Presty says. “As a scientist, my first instinct was to find out why they didn’t work.”
Presty immersed herself in every piece of research she could find on pool chemistry, and about how external external elements affect skin and hair. What she found is that each strand of hair is encased in cuticles, which are transparent, overlapping, scale-like cells. Chlorine causes the cuticles to open like petals on a flower. The ragged surface no longer reflects light, which makes the hair appear dull. Also, the raised cuticles make strands more susceptible to tangles.
“Chlorine essentially burns the hair through oxidation,” Presty explains. “That process can’t effectively be reversed. New growth is really the only effective way to have healthy hair again.”
So three years ago, Presty decided she’d just come up with the solution herself. Like all innovators, she began with a unique premise: the only way to keep pool-exposed hair truly healthy was to protect it at the point of contact with chemicals.
Using her research findings, Presty developed a prototype. Then she enlisted a highly respected cosmetic chemist to refine the product. The result was poolHead Products, a line of naturally based, patent-pending hair products whose flagship is the Invisible SwimCap pretreatment.
Presty sees several levels of potential customers, including competitive swimmers, divers and triathletes;
Presty even adds one subgroup of customers that might be surprising: competitive male swimmers. “Guys hate to wear swim caps,” she explains. “They get very hot over the course of a swim, and aren’t exactly the height of fashion for a young guy.”
Presty has already landed a couple high-profile endorsements, from Olympic divers Christina Loukas and Tracey Richardson. But her best example might be her daughter, whose hair reveals no clue that she is in the pool more than 200 days a year.
“She’s my testimony,” Presty says.
