PRODUCT REVIEW: New Wash (Regular & Deep)
Swimming with the whales
On my endless hippy quest to find the best and most eco-friendly products, I came upon New Wash by Hairstory Studios some years ago. This product promises to use eco-friendly ingredients to clean the user’s hair without stripping it of its natural, healthy oils in the same way shampoo and other detergents do. Sounded interesting, so I decided to see if it was worth it.
When I’m interested in a new product and not being impatient/foolish about it, and especially if I discover it via social media advertising, I try to make some effort to learn about the company, which starts with checking out their website and TrustPilot. I’m always interested in what country the company is based in, how they run their business and customer service, and, of course, the product itself. I’m sad to say that a lot of the really good information that Hairstory had on their website is, unfortunately, not there anymore for some reason, so I’m not able to share as much information as I could have back in 2020, when the original version of this article was written.
The first thing people want to know is generally, “does New Wash work?,” to which I don’t mind responding with an upfront, simple “yes.” New Wash does indeed do exactly what it promises: it cleans all the grease and gunk from your hair and leaves it feeling cleaner and silkier than you’ve surely ever felt when using shampoo.
The company itself is (or at least was, back in 2020) a part of 1% for the Planet (I wasn’t able to confirm if this is still true or not), which I’m always a fan of for dedicating 1% of profits to environmental causes, and their website used to have a lot of really good information about how detergents are harmful for your scalp and they used to have an article that depicted how we ended up going from a more natural-based hair cleanser to shampoo, which by definition uses detergents. I found them really interesting and insightful, as well as quite upfront about everything they use in their products. It’s long been established that shampoo strips our skin of everything and conditioner is used for damage control, so why not cut out that middle man?
Since I’ve started using New Wash, they’ve also changed the method of their product distribution, adding subscription options, offering stainless steel containers, and changing the packing itself, so that they’re using at least 69% less plastic, which is always awesome. They also at least used to offer rewards to industry professionals* who refer New Wash onwards, and subscribers, in the past, also benefited from passing New Wash on to their friends. It’s a modern system but one that I have yet to find a big issue with—I do prefer to get my products directly from the suppliers when possible (I don’t like pointless middlemen who take extra money and do nothing). Sadly, it’s a shame that the company has nixed at least the client referral program, though I was told that they might be reinstating a similar system in the future.
They’ve also changed their packaging over time to be more eco-friendly, promoting reusable stainless steel bottles and sending their product out in thin recycled-plastic bags instead of thick plastic bottles, which is a genuinely nice reduction of plastic waste.
It’s worth mentioning that I did struggle with New Wash in the beginning. The product feels like conditioner, so at first there was an adjustment period as I got used to washing my hair without a lathering detergent. My hair, specifically, is extremely thick in quantity but the strands are fine (I generally keep at least one side cut just to minimize the sheer amount of hair that I have to deal with). When I first started using the product, I felt like my hair had gotten heavier and greasier than before, but apparently, that was due to my very-fine hair and the fact that I was neither working the product in well enough nor rinsing it thoroughly enough. I have had to do more physical work scrubbing this cream into my hair than I had to with shampoo, but I also save time by only using one product. As I live in Finland, generally I like to wash my hair during a sauna round, so I can sit comfortably and thoroughly massage the New Wash in while I’m relaxing. I switched to New Wash Deep early on because I have a greasy scalp, but I had to switch back to the basic recipe this year because my scalp was becoming very dry and itchy. Unfortunately, I am facing a similar sense of itchiness and irritation about three quarters of the way through my new bag, so I may be having some sort of allergic sensitivity.
Regarding the company and their customer service, I have mostly had extremely good experiences with them, with one distinct negative impression. The company was undergoing a big change with their website that was causing customers a lot of grief and it was very clear that their customer service was pretty overwhelmed. My circumstance was that I got an email on Friday telling me that my subscription was about to charge and send me another expensive 32 oz pack of New Wash on Monday, and that particular Monday was an international holiday. Even worse, when I tried to log into my account to move the subscription, because of those technical changes they were undergoing, I was completely unable to log into my account and change the charge-and-deliver date (I was also baffled by them sending me a notification the Friday beforehand… seems like way too short of a timeframe). I fully confess to being in a panic, because this product is not cheap and I was very scared of being suddenly charged nearly over 150€ for something I absolutely did not need. I sent an email that included the line “wtf is going on here?” and received an astoundingly unprofessional response where the customer service rep snapped at me and demanded that I never swear at her again… I have a lot of issues with this response. The main was that I didn’t actually swear at anyone. Pardon the fact that I’m a linguist and an editor, but saying “wtf is going on here” is not swearing at anyone, and I even softened it by changing “what the fuck” to “wtf,” so if you’re being really technical, I didn’t even swear, as there was no curse word typed out in that email. I do understand that customer service was probably quite stressed out about getting a lot of these emails during this changeover, but that doesn’t excuse childishness or reactiveness in how you talk to your clients. Fortunately, ever since then, the customer service reps have gone back to being extremely polite and helpful.
Clearly, though, the most controversial thing about New Wash is its price, which seems to be the only place where the makers get a little bit shady. The company claims that the cost of the product is because the essential oils that make up most of the ingredients are expensive (essential oils are, indeed, generally expensive, at least to consumers), but their math doesn’t seem to add up regardless of the truth of that. Also, if you’re claiming to be a sustainable product but you’re not actually attainable by the average person… how sustainable are you, really?
Why did I put the subtitle “swimming with the whales” in this review? A “whale” is a phrase used to describe someone who buys the biggest package of anything in bulk that they can get—the customer gets the best discount and the company gets a big sale. For example, if you happen to play the Pokémon Go mobile game, you can spend real money to get in-game pokecoins, with the consumer getting more pokecoins if they spend more money (0.99€ = 100 pokecoins, 6€ = 550, 24€ = 2500, up to the whale, 120€ = 14,500 pokecoins). Nevertheless, finding clients who have the money and desire to shell out the big-bulk-price is very rare, hence why it is called “catching a whale.” The whale principle applies here, to a tee. A standard 8 oz (2.37 dl) package of standard New Wash is currently (as of 01.2024) listed at a cost of 52€, with a frankly negligible 5% subscriber discount marking it down to 49,90€. The other options are 20 oz (just under 5.91 dl) and 32 oz (9.46 dl), which run at prices of 124€ (117.18€ with the 5% discount) and 187€ (177,65€ with the discount) respectively. If I may be so bold as to say, this is an absolutely obscene price to pay for something to wash your hair, I don’t really care how high quality it is. It’s simply not affordable or even reasonable for the average person, thus leading me to believe that this company is more interested in catching the elite and elusive whales than having their product out there making the world a better place. [ed: of interest, as of 11.2024, the price of the 32 oz bottle seems to have gone down by 20€ to 157€]
Add to this that the website suggests that you will be using less product, which will help justify the price. While it is true that you are only using one bottle of product instead of two, I have not found that their claim that “you need to use less of this product” is remotely true. I have found that I need to use the same amount of New Wash as I would have used shampoo, and if I let my hair grow longer, I need to use quite a lot of the product because more needs to be worked through my dense hair into my oily scalp. However, their claim that your hair will stay nicer for longer is indeed true! When I used shampoo, I felt like my hair was nice for about 1 hour after using it, after which it would go limp and flat. With New Wash, my hair actually remains nice for a few days without needing to be washed regularly. The thing about that though, is that I work from home, so the New Wash doesn’t really save me any product on a daily basis, because I didn’t wash my hair any more before than I do now, I just had a greasy head when I was home alone, whereas now I look nicer in my own presence (something I don’t particularly care about). So in the end, unless you’re someone who’s on display a lot or who has a compulsion to shower every day, this product isn’t really saving you much overall.
What is also interesting, however, relates back to the company itself and their desire to catch and keep their whales. If you are a customer who buys their big bulk bags, as I have been, I have felt like this company has been willing to do backflips to keep me happy. When I first emailed them and told them that New Wash was not working for me (admittedly it was after their trial period was over too, but only barely), they enthusiastically stood behind their product and offered me a free bottle of Deep to see if I would like it better. I did, so I bought the big pack. Even now, when I had the issue with the dry and itchy scalp, they gave me a new full-sized bag of the regular product to try out. Frankly, I don’t know a single other company who are so willing to give away an expensive product in order to keep their customers happy, but I do appreciate them for it. That said, if they are so willing to give the product away, it also makes me wonder if the product needs to be priced the way it is.
I do have a very minor issue with how zealous their customer service can be too, because it clashes with their desire to be eco-friendly. It’s worth noting that their stainless-steel dispenser pump bottle is not actually a very good device for this product, because the cream is so thick that it breaks the plastic nozzle pretty easily. I’ve broken about 3-4 of them in the past year or two. The problem there is that I have told the company that, for example, they don’t need to send a replacement right away but could include it when I order more New Wash (which I was doing in a week, on that occasion), but they sent the new pump nozzle ahead of my order. Also, since then, they’ve changed the bottle for whatever reason, so the new nozzles didn’t fit the old bottle, but when another nozzle broke, instead of just replacing it, they replaced the whole bottle, so now I have two stainless steel bottles and only one functional nozzle between them. Not the most eco-friendly practices, even if I do appreciate their enthusiasm and response speeds.
Regarding the bottles, my recommended change for the company would be to have the product come in a package that can hang upside-down, for example from the shower head. I think they would be much better off if they tried to let gravity draw their product down, rather than using a pump on a very thick product. This would also save the rather annoying process of cleaning out the inflexible stainless steel bottles if/when they need it. Watering down the product does not help, nor does it benefit me as a customer (it’s not shampoo, after all, so watering down the New Wash just means you’ve got pockets of water in your bottle of cream), so that’s not a solution that is more convenient for me, the user.
The thing is, even if I really like the product and I’m generally pleased with their customer service, I’m not convinced that I’ll be able to keep using the product long-term (assuming my scalp stops itching). The cost is just so insane… who do you know, honestly, that spends more than 187€ per year on shampoo and conditioner alone? Unless you happen to buy really expensive products like Paul Mitchell (which run around 20-25€/bottle), I’d be hard-pressed to believe that a single person would go through 187€ worth of shampoo and conditioner in a year. Furthermore, as mentioned, those useful articles that they used to have on the history of hair products don’t seem to be on their website anymore, or at least they’re not somewhere where they’re easily findable, sadly. It’s hard to learn anything about the company or its beliefs on the product website now, which is a shame… why did they stop educating their clients?
Overall, I like the product a lot, even if I’m not sure that I can afford to use it. If you like eco-products and have a little extra coin to spend on them, I absolutely recommend trying out New Wash! However, if you’re looking for a more affordable alternative, I don’t have anything on my list yet that has matched New Wash in quality. I’ve heard good things about Trader Joes in North America and Curl Girl Nordic in Europe. I haven’t tried the former yet since I don’t have access to that brand, but since I am facing this itchiness, I do need to try something else at least temporarily, so the Curl Girl Co-Wash is the next product on my list. I came across that brand when I was looking into New Wash alternatives and I found a Reddit discussion where people claimed that it worked exactly as well, but had some issues because it uses mango oil, which causes bad allergic reactions to people with poison ivy sensitivities. I had emailed the company about this and asked if they have any products without mango oil, or if they offer samples so I could try and see if I would have an allergic response (I am allergic to a weird variety of plants), and they never replied (this was several months ago now), but I did hear back when I poked them on Instagram.
I have also heard that if you’re looking for products that have similar recipes and are available in Europe, you can test out DevaCurl’s No-Poo Original Zero Lather Cleanser; Briogeo’s Be Gentle, Be Kind Avocado & Quinoa co-wash; Jessicurl’s Hair Cleansing Cream; or Eden Bodyworks’ Papaya Castor Scalp Cleanser. If I’m not impressed with the Curl Girl co-wash, these will be my next products to look into.
So, alas, I cannot currently offer a better alternative to New Wash per the whole spectrum of things (yet)—they are the clear winners on product quality and service, they’re just unreasonably expensive and have become less transparent over time, and thus are not an option for the average consumer, especially the way the world and economy are going these days. However, keep an eye out here, because if I do find an alternative, I’ll certainly write about it once I’ve given it a chance.
[ed: as of November 2024 I am officially testing out the Curl Girl Nordic brand co-wash, so stay tuned in the coming months for a new review]
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