Denver Life Magazine Just Called Us Out (In a Good Way)
Clean or effective. Pick one.
That's the trade-off most hair care brands still hand you. Highland was built to prove you can have both, and Denver Life Magazine noticed.
Their new feature, "Highland Haircare Proves Clean Can Perform," digs into where this whole thing started. If you don't know the Highland story...spoiler: not a lab. A stovetop.
The Boulder Kitchen Where Highland Began
Our co-founder Boone Whiteside grew up on Highland Avenue in Boulder. He got tired of products that made him choose between performance and clean ingredients. So he started ordering raw materials and mixing formulas in his friend Ben Medalies' kitchen.
No investors or white coats. Ben and Boone were college kids who kept asking, "Why not us?"
That question became a brand.
Two Friends, One Bet
Boone and Ben met in college during their junior year and became fast friends. Not just the kind who show up to the same parties. The kind who start asking what they could build together.
We spent years kicking around ideas. What could we do differently than everyone else? Boone was already deep into mixing his own hair product by then, trading barbershop purchases for something he made himself, and friends kept asking for more.
Starting a company with your best friend is a risk. Everyone warns you about it. For us, it became the thing that made Highland work.
From One Pomade to a Full Haircare Lineup
Glacial Clay Pomade came first. Then Glacial Cream, now a bestseller. Then the Wash, our pH-balanced, sulfate-free answer to shampoo. Then its counterpart, the Condish.
Playful names. Serious formulas.
As Ben put it in the feature, Highland formulates for the long-term health of your hair and scalp, not just how it looks the morning you use it. But there's a line they won't cross: if it doesn't work, they've failed. Full stop.
The Condish, the Hard Way
Our newest addition, The Condish, took over two years, four different labs, and more formula iterations than the team can count. Most conditioners lean on silicone to fake the feeling of healthy hair, coating strands instead of actually conditioning them.
We wanted the real thing. A formula that conditions the strand, feeds the scalp, and keeps working after you rinse.
It took longer than we'd like to admit. Then we shipped it, once it earned its name.
The Standards We Won’t Bend On
Denver Life put it well: clean ingredients and real performance, same bottle. That's the whole bet.
We care about what goes on our hair, and our customers do too.
Read the full story on Denver Life Magazine, then come see what a Boulder kitchen experiment turned into.
Ready to ditch the trade-off? Shop the Highland collection now.
