00:00And then we have this cute little secret room.
00:02What are they called those?
00:03Secret rooms.
00:05Bunker.
00:07Where is your mind today?
00:09Welcome to Amika and Chelsea Riggs, CEO.
00:11Amika means friend.
00:13Welcome to our home in Brooklyn.
00:14Love to give you a tour.
00:16Before we get started, please make sure to subscribe.
00:21Welcome to our office in Brooklyn.
00:23We're actually in Williamsburg, right on the water.
00:26We have this amazing Manhattan and Brooklyn view.
00:28We love this space.
00:30It's our grown-up office and really manifested who Amika is today.
00:35So we're walking down the entrance.
00:37All of our rooms are actually named after products, collections.
00:41These are what we call huddle rooms.
00:43We're a hybrid and mostly remote organization.
00:46So we have a lot of team members who are still virtual
00:49and you need those quiet spaces to have those one-on-one meetings.
00:53We have several of our huddle rooms that look this way
00:55and then also our phone booths as well.
00:56So I actually am a founding member of the brand.
01:00I found a job posting on Craigslist.
01:03I was very early in my career.
01:05I think I was 22 years old
01:07and thought it would be this stepping stone to something else,
01:11something, you know, bigger at a more legitimate company.
01:14To be one of the top brands in the U.S. is just like a pinch me moment.
01:19I never imagined we'd get there one day.
01:21Fifteen years goes fast.
01:24When we were designing the space, it was completely raw.
01:28There was no walls, nothing here.
01:30We had this incredible view.
01:32So this really served as the platform and the inspiration for the structure and the layout of the space.
01:37We have about 60 spots for people who are coming in and out of the office.
01:42We wanted it to feel like the antithesis of an office.
01:45So we have beautiful big wooden tables that are actually designed and made in Brooklyn.
01:50And then we have these nooks.
01:52If you've ever been into one of the great airline lounges, they have these little spots.
01:57They feel super cozy.
01:58So this is our lounge space.
02:00I'm going to sit in my favorite chair because I feel like it's like a hug.
02:03I love pieces that are loud in their shapes, but not necessarily in their color.
02:09We partnered with an incredible interior design firm, Civilian.
02:13When we thought about designing the space, we wanted it to feel somewhere where it could be a backdrop to
02:18everything that Amica is.
02:20But also it's a workspace where we wanted people to feel calm and hang out and get to meet with
02:25each other.
02:26We have this incredible selection of games too, which is a nice way to really break the ice with someone.
02:31My favorite part of the office is actually when you first come in.
02:35We wanted like that softness, the curves to come through, not just in the furniture, but also in the walls.
02:40We had these special artisans who do lime wash.
02:43We flew them in specifically to do the reception space.
02:46I would have loved to do that all around the office, but budget.
02:49So this is what we like to call our board room.
02:53We really didn't want this to feel like that kind of stuffy, big conference room.
02:57We wanted something that would feel a little bit more dining room-like.
03:00We also wanted the chairs to be comfortable.
03:02So if you're sitting in here for a few hours, they have this great bounce to them.
03:07I'd love to show you the curtains as well.
03:09I fell in love with this fabric so much, I also ordered them from my own dining room.
03:13Okay, now we're in our kitchen space, which we wanted to feel a little bit more like a home kitchen.
03:19I love the lighting as well as the beautiful stone.
03:22Then we also have these incredibly gorgeous mirrors, the pill shapes, something that we often use in the Amica brand.
03:30So another feature is our product development lab.
03:34So we love to do all of our own testing in-house, lots of storage because it can get very
03:39unwieldy very quickly.
03:40And Dr. Sisley is going to come in here in a little bit and show you some of the things
03:44that we actually do in this lab.
03:45My name is Sisley Schillingforth. Some people call me Dr. Sisley.
03:49And I'm the director of product development at Amica.
03:51As a black woman, hair care has always been a huge part of my identity,
03:55whether that's feeling insecure about my hair or learning to really step into my true self
04:00and appreciate my true beauty as a curly girl.
04:03It was such an easy yes for me to show up here at Amica for the business
04:07because building products for Amica means I basically get to build products for people
04:12and for the planet and for, you know, people that align with my own personal sense of self.
04:17So what I'm doing here is just evaluating some of our samples for their stability performance
04:24and the packaging functionality.
04:25We put one of our hero products, The Wizard, into a new pack earlier this year.
04:30So these two samples, they look the same, but this one aged at room temperature.
04:35This one was in the 40-degree oven.
04:38So that was six times before it actually sprayed.
04:44So that was five strokes to fry.
04:46I'm just going to look at the spray pattern again.
04:48It should be nice and atomized.
04:50We don't want to see clumps or anything spraying here.
04:54No issues.
04:56Whenever we do compatibility testing like this, we always have a glass control.
05:00And that allows us to tell whether the packaging is influencing the formula
05:05or if it's not the packaging and the formula itself might have an issue.
05:09You'll notice something immediately about these that they're different colors.
05:13Something that we do notice with sea buckthorn, which turns formulas this yellow color,
05:17is that under heated conditions, they does tend to fade over time.
05:21It doesn't impact the formula performance at all.
05:24Consumers likely don't even perceive it because it's sprayed out of this bottle.
05:27But we do see that for pretty much all of our sea buckthorn.
05:30It's really interesting.
05:32All right.
05:32Thanks for hanging out with me in the lab today.
05:34Hope you have a great rest of your day.
05:37Bye.
05:38Thank you for Friday 29 for joining us on this exclusive sneak peek at Amika's HQ.
05:43Have a good one.
05:44Bye.
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