I've had the same problem since I was 14.
Lots of hair. Always dry. The kind of dry where it gets big and puffy because there's no oil holding it down. Wind would blow and my hair would just... stay wherever it landed. I hated it.
But here's the part that made no sense: my hair was dry, but it also got greasy fast. Within 8-12 hours of washing, it would feel like straw. By the next morning, it looked oily. So I'd wash it again. And the cycle would repeat.
Dry. Greasy. Wash. Dry. Greasy. Wash.
I didn't know it at the time, but I was stuck in what's called the strip-and-overcompensate cycle. My shampoo was stripping all the oil from my scalp. My scalp was panicking and producing more oil. So I'd wash again. And make it worse.
EVERYTHING I TRIED
Wax. Argan oil (turned out to be fake). Conditioners. Sea salt spray. My sister's shampoo. "Sulfate-free" shampoos that still had sulfates when I read the ingredients. I even cut my hair shorter, thinking if I couldn't fix it, at least I could hide it.
Nothing worked. Or it worked for a day, then stopped.
At some point I just accepted it. This is my hair. This is what it does. I'll just keep washing it every day and deal with it.
THE DISCOVERY
Then one day I got tired of accepting it.
I started researching. Really researching. Not "best shampoo for dry hair" Google searches—actual ingredient research. I wanted to understand why my hair was doing this.
That's when I found shikakai.
It was in a list of dermatologist-approved natural ingredients. The description said it had "potent hair-fixing capabilities" and could clean hair without stripping its natural oils. I was skeptical. I'd heard "natural" claims before.
But I kept reading.
Shikakai has been used for hair washing in India for over 4,500 years. The name comes from Tamil—"Shika" means hair, "Kai" means fruit. Literally: fruit for hair. Its pods contain natural saponins, which are soap molecules that clean selectively. They remove dirt and excess oil, but leave the protective oils your scalp actually needs.
This was the opposite of what my shampoo was doing.
THE FIRST WASH
I found a small local shop selling a 100% organic shampoo bar made with shikakai. No sulfates. No synthetic surfactants. Just saponified oils and herbs.
I bought it. I didn't expect much.
The first wash changed everything.
My hair didn't feel dry when I got out of the shower. I could run my hands through it—something that was always difficult with regular shampoo. It was soft. Actually soft. Not "conditioner-coated" soft. Just... my hair, but healthy.
And then it didn't get greasy.
Not the next day. Not the day after. My washing periods got longer and longer. Now I wash my hair maybe once a week. Sometimes longer. It's never greasy. It always looks the same.
After 10+ years of fighting my hair, it just... worked.
WHY I STARTED HIKAKAI
Here's what frustrated me: this ingredient has existed for 4,500 years. It's not new. It's not a trend. It's the original shampoo.
But almost no one in the West knows about it.
Instead, we have "natural" shampoo bars that still use synthetic surfactants. "Sulfate-free" products that just swapped SLS for SCI. Marketing that says "gentle" while the formula still strips your scalp.
I couldn't find a shampoo bar that was actually 100% natural. So I made one.
Hikakai uses traditional hot saponification—the way soap has been made for thousands of years. Every ingredient is edible. No synthetic surfactants. No sulfates. No silicones. No compromise.
The name comes from shikakai itself. We just made it easier to pronounce.
WHAT THIS BRAND STANDS FOR
Hikakai isn't a "natural alternative." It's not trying to be a cleaner version of something that already exists.
It's a return to what worked before the chemical industry convinced us we needed their formulas.
Your hair isn't broken. Your shampoo is.
— Mathis, Founder, Brussels, Belgium