March 10, 2026 |
If the beauty industry has spent the last decade obsessing over actives, serums and multi-step routines, Jolie Skin Co. is asking a far simpler question: what about the water you’re washing it all off with?
The US-born brand, now expanding into the UK, has built its reputation around a single hero product – a filtered showerhead designed to remove chlorine and other contaminants from household water. It’s a deceptively simple idea but one that has quickly turned Jolie into a category leader. With tens of thousands of five-star reviews and more than one million orders reached last July, the company has proven that the shower – long treated as a purely functional part of a beauty routine – might actually be where the routine should start.
For co-founder Ryan Babenzien, the idea started in the most mundane way possible. “One winter I found myself using more lotion than normal and I thought that it might be the water I was showering in that was causing this,” he says. “So I started to research water and found that most of it is filled with chlorine and heavy metals that are harmful for your skin, hair and often health.”
The deeper Babenzien looked, the clearer the gap became. Water quality varies wildly depending on location and treatment processes, yet most people never consider its impact on their hair and skin. “After realising how water is so essential for our daily skin and hair health, I then had a literal shower thought to create a beauty wellness company that purifies your water for better skin, hair and wellbeing,” he says. “That was just over four years ago when I started the journey to build Jolie, which is now the number one [filtered showerhead] in the world.”
Jolie’s premise is what the brand calls “step zero”. Before cleanser, before moisturiser, before any expensive hair treatment, there’s the water you’re showering in sometimes up to twice a day. In many places, that water contains chlorine and other compounds used during municipal treatment, which can disrupt the skin barrier, dry out hair fibres and exacerbate frizz.
The Jolie Filtered Showerhead tackles that with a filtration system clinically tested and independently verified by a leading third-party laboratory in the US. The results are unusually concrete for a beauty-adjacent product. In testing, the showerhead filtered out more than 66 per cent of free chlorine across 10,000 gallons of challenge water – surpassing NSF/ANSI Standard 177 requirements.
The downstream effects show up quickly. In trials, 81 per cent of participants reported reduced hair shedding, with average shedding dropping by nearly 50 per cent. Hair washed with Jolie showed 40 per cent less frizz compared with hair washed in unfiltered water, while users also demonstrated measurable improvements in skin barrier function, dryness and redness after four weeks of use. In short, it’s not a cosmetic promise. It’s a water-quality intervention.
Still, performance alone doesn’t explain Jolie’s growth. Filtering showerheads existed long before the brand arrived, yet few built meaningful followings. Babenzien believes that’s because most of them were designed like plumbing accessories rather than products people actually wanted in their bathrooms.
“If the product doesn’t work a brand will have a very short life,” he says. “So as you said, Jolie works and provides value to everyone who uses a Jolie. We’ll surpass one million customers by the end of 2026 so that gives some context.”
But functionality was only half the brief. “Beyond the performance and the tests that we have conducted, we’re very design and brand focussed,” he continues. “There are other filtering showers but that lack the connective tissue that makes them a brand like Jolie. We have over 700k daily active users. That’s a large data set that is loving their Jolie on a daily basis.” Day in, day out.
The design process was unusually direct. Rather than handing the concept to an external studio, Babenzien arrived with a clear visual reference from the outset. “I had a very clear vision of what I wanted Jolie to look like and had sketched that,” he explains. “That made the process a bit more streamlined as opposed to hiring a designer to come back with a bunch of ideas. We had a very focussed direction which helped.”
Like many products launched during that period, Jolie was also built under pandemic conditions. Factory visits were impossible and development took place almost entirely remotely. “There were too many to list!” Babenzien says of the challenges. “For starters we were building Jolie when Covid was still happening. It was towards the end, but I had not been able to go to our factory and everything was done remotely.” The timeline was further complicated by another life event. “Oh, and my wife Jolie had a baby three months before we launched Jolie the company into the world. I would recommend future founders not to do that! But I made it through.”
Despite the hurdles, early testing confirmed they were on the right track. “Truthfully I think from the prototype onward we knew we were close but when some of the early beta testers reported back on how it felt, how easy it was to install and how their hair looked, we knew we nailed it.”
Installation remains a key part of Jolie’s appeal. The showerhead screws on in minutes, requires no plumbing expertise and is available in five chic finishes designed to blend into modern bathrooms rather than stand out as a technical add-on – modern chrome, brushed steel, jet black, brushed gold and vibrant red.
The simplicity is intentional – and for Babenzien, it’s the product’s defining feature. “It’s simplicity,” he says when asked what he likes most about it. “We designed something elegant, timeless and functional. Sounds easy but it’s not.”
The goal is longevity rather than novelty. “Standing the test of time is our goal in the way a black tuxedo remains a classic or a Rolex submariner. They have evolved over time but regardless of the year, you know what each of those are. In 25 years I hope Jolie is recognised in that way.”
Now, with Babenzien and his wife relocated to London at the end of 2025, the UK marks the next phase of the brand’s growth. The move is part expansion, part strategic shift into markets where hard water and chlorine-heavy supply make filtration particularly relevant. “We’re bringing more products to market, which has always been our plan but we grew incredibly quickly and sustainable with one product,” Babenzien says.
That single-product success is rare in beauty, an industry that usually relies on rapid-fire launches to maintain momentum. Jolie has taken the opposite route, building loyalty around a tool people use every day. “People use Jolie every day, it’s not a trend people are trying and then on to the next,” he says. “Jolie has proven to be the essential beauty wellness tool in a world cluttered with new packaging or formulas for things that are not actually new.” In other words, before the serums and scalp treatments, there’s step zero. And Jolie wants to own it.
Photography courtesy of Jolie Skin Co.
Ryan Babenzien
