Chapter 4 153 Conclusion Hair coloring products are a very important part of the beauty care market, allowing consumers to maintain their natural hair color as they age and go gray, or allowing them to express their personality with a range of different hair colors. Hair coloring products provide achievable, and obvious, cosmetic transformation, making them very desirable to a wide-ranging consumer base. Thus, even though the process of coloring is complex and relatively time- consuming, the size of the benefit means that millions of consumers use these products as part of their daily basic beauty regimen. The product chemistry is very complex and this has meant that the essential components of the system, i.e. hydrogen peroxide, dye precursors, alkalizers and so forth, have changed very little since the first hair coloring products were introduced in the early 1900s. However, over the last ten years there have been many innovations that have improved the consumer experience of using the products. These innovations include improvements in application and conditioning profiles, new forms such as foams, and new technologies to reduce the hair damage as a result of using the product. It is anticipated that innovation in this space will continue over the next twenty years, allowing the stylist more opportunities to create new looks and the consumer to improve her ability to create the color she wants from the comfortable and privacy of home. Acknowledgements Thank you to The Procter & Gamble Company. Also, thanks to Ying Boissy, of P&G, for providing the images, and to Keith Brown and Marc Dahlgren for content discussions and advice. References 1. K Brown, The Chemistry and Manufacture of Cosmetics Volume II – Formulating, M. Schlossman, ed., Allured Publishing (2000) J Corbett, The Chemistry of Hair Care Products, J Soc Dyers Colourists, 92, 285-303,(1976). 2. RS Berns, Billmeyer and Saltzman’s Principles of Color Technology, 3rd Ed., Wiley-Interscience (2000). 3. G Prota, Melanins and Melanogenesis, Academic Press (1992).