From Lab Bench to Backbar, How Dr. Doris Brandhuber Built Salon-Grade Organic Haircare

When chemist and aromatherapist Dr. Doris Brandhuber partnered with Viennese hairstylist and trainer Hannes Trummer, they set out to prove that certified-organic haircare could meet the daily demands of professional salons. Their working model was unusually direct, prototype in the salon, listen to clients, refine, and repeat, until a tight, functional range emerged. 

Brandhuber’s path to formulation leadership blends hard science with sensory intelligence. Trained as a chemist with additional expertise in aromatherapy, she focused on ingredient selection for efficacy, purity, skin compatibility, and environmental impact, while Trummer brought real-world constraints from the chair, performance under time pressure, finish, hold, and feel. The result is a line “developed by and for professionals,” not lab-first, but salon-validated from day one. 

Her scientific curiosity pulled in a second thread, biomimetics. Brandhuber studied how nature solves problems, then applied that lens to texture, function, and minimalism in formula design. Early in her career she even declined a research fellowship at Yale to build Less is More, a choice that underlines the brand’s founder-led R&D ethos.

Today the company produces a broad professional assortment out of Vienna, with distribution that has grown from a single salon hotplate to international retail counters, a trajectory repeatedly noted by stockists and partners. The brand narrative remains consistent, performance that respects the body and the biosphere, with a stylist’s discipline baked in.

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