Hello, my name is Stephanie, and I’m a recovering hair product snob.

There, I said it. I’ve been hooked on high-end hair products since I was 17. Before that, my idea of splurging on “good” shampoo was to buy Pantene or Aussie at the supermarket instead of Suave. I’m not kidding; I went from Suave to Aveda on one sunny afternoon in a salon on Douglas, and I never went back.

Well, maybe that’s not entirely true. My income hasn’t always been able to match my appetite, so I’ve been willing to settle for generics that produced the same results and had the same smell and shine. I’ve also been known to bargain shop on eBay for products by the liter or in bundles to save money (free shipping gets me every time).

However, lately I’ve been unhappy with my hair. I’d just switched off from the big A to Bumble and Bumble, hoping to see some perk return, and it wasn’t happening. My hair was dull, limp, flat, refusing to hold a curl, stringy if flat-ironed… and I was desperate. My stylist suggested rinsing it with a de-mineralizing agent, and then using a deep conditioner. A pricey option, and in the end, my hair hadn’t improved much. I resolved to go on with life and hope that it would fix itself. My pocket book didn’t leave me any other options.

Then my beloved editors asked if someone wanted to try out a new hair care line called Semplifi, created right here in Wichita. Semplifi only has five products, and the developers claim it can fix anything. It has to do with the way the products work together, the way they work with your hair, and another little secret. Of course, I was skeptical; who wouldn’t be? I went to their website, and scoffed as I read the glowing testimonials. Still, I was intrigued. So, I came up with a plan. You see, under my roof there are four women with four very different kinds of hair, and very different hair problems. If Semplifi works as well as it claimed, it should work for all of us, right? Thus, the experiment was born.

I contacted the distributor and was thrilled when they offered to bring me and my daughters in for a consultation with the developer of Semplifi, Al Melchiorre. Al was very enthusiastic about the product line that he spent five years on. He told me that when he came up with the idea of Semplifi, he had to work with developers in Vancouver, Canada, because he couldn’t find anyone here who believed in what he was trying to do. I felt a little guilty, since I was so doubtful.

However, Al was very persuasive as he spoke about Semplifi. He explained that the secret of Semplifi is that certain products penetrate and fill the shaft of your hair, making it impossible for anything else to do so. The end result is that your styling products can’t penetrate and therefore don’t damage your hair. Al went on to assess each of us, running his fingers through our hair, lifting it, examining it… I really felt like he was doing detective work! Finally, he sat down with each of us and gave instructions on how to properly combine the products. Each of us had different problems, so we each had different ways to combine them to get the maximum benefit.

The plan is that all four of us will keep track of how we are using the products, and what our opinions are. We are making notes on how our hair reacts when we just wash and go, when we flat-iron, when we break out the curls for a night out, and any other time we do something different. Today I used mousse and put my hair in pigtails? Noted. In a few weeks, I’ll be back with an explanation about each of us, and what our hair was like before and after Semplifi. I’ll also talk more about the products and the Semplifi website at that time.

This skeptic has to confess that my immediate impression is positive. Actually, all four of us were impressed after Day One. After just one washing, and applying the products as instructed, we all felt like our hair was cleaner, silkier, and better-looking. My hair was lighter and full of volume, something I can’t remember it being in the recent past. I actually didn’t know how to style it, because it wasn’t the same hair I’m used to. If the next few weeks keep going like this, my next article might just sound like those testimonials I scoffed at on the website only a short time ago!

Have you used Semplifi? What did you think? What hair care products do you swear by?

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