Most hair products are created in a lab, by a formulation team, for a brand that has identified a gap in the market. They start with a target demographic, work backward to a product, and land on something that tests well in focus groups.
Celtic Strand started differently. It started in a Cork barbershop, with a stylist who couldn't find what he was looking for.
The Chair Where It Started
Ciarán O'Sullivan — known to almost everyone as Kiwi — has been cutting and styling hair professionally for years. He built his reputation in Cork through KiwiCutz, a barbershop that became known for precision cuts, an honest approach, and results that clients kept coming back for.
Working the chair every day means developing a sharp eye for what works and what doesn't — not in theory, but in practice. Clients come in with a reference photo, usually something with a relaxed, textured, lived-in quality. The kind of hair that looks like it happened naturally. Effortless. Like someone who's been near the coast all summer.
Chasing that result is something every stylist knows well. And Kiwi found himself consistently reaching for sea salt spray — but consistently frustrated with what was available. The formulas were either too stiff, too heavy, or packed with synthetic polymers that created the illusion of texture without the feel of it. Products that made hair look right in photos but felt wrong in your hands.
He started formulating his own.
From Salon Experiment to KiwiSalt
What began as an in-house experiment — mixing and testing behind the scenes at KiwiCutz — gradually became something more serious. Kiwi wanted a formula that was built on real Irish Atlantic sea salt, not lab-engineered substitutes. He wanted it to be vegan and cruelty-free. He wanted it made in Ireland.
And he wanted it to work like a professional product — fast, reliable, repeatable results that didn't require a tutorial to apply.
KiwiSalt took shape through that process. The formula is mineral-forward: real Irish sea salt as the working ingredient, delivering airy volume at the roots, definition through the mid-lengths and ends, and a matte, beach-textured finish that feels natural because it is. It brushes out cleanly. It rinses in one wash. It works air-dried or diffused.
It's the product Kiwi wanted in the salon and couldn't find — so he made it.
Celtic Strand as a Brand
When it came to naming and building the brand around KiwiSalt, Kiwi took the same approach he took to the formula: rooted, honest, and built for quality over hype.
Celtic Strand draws directly on its Irish identity. The Atlantic coast. The salt air. The particular texture that comes from living near the sea. It's not a lifestyle aesthetic borrowed from California or Bondi — it's genuinely Irish, built by someone who grew up and works in Cork, made with ingredients from the same coastline.
The brand launched quietly, gained attention through word of mouth and Kiwi's established presence in the Cork salon community, and quickly attracted press coverage from the Irish Daily Mail, Irish Independent, The Echo, The Southern Star, Irish Country Magazine, and Professional Beauty Ireland. Red FM featured Kiwi on their Red Business podcast. The Irish Open came calling.
None of it was engineered through a PR strategy. It grew because the product worked.
The Pro Dimension
Celtic Strand operates as a professional-grade brand as well as a consumer one. The PRO trade partner programme exists because KiwiSalt was designed in a professional environment — it performs under real salon and barbershop conditions, not just at home in a bathroom.
Trade partners can access wholesale pricing and position KiwiSalt alongside their existing product offerings. It's a product that professionals can recommend with confidence because it was built by one of them.
What "Made in Ireland" Actually Means
It would be easy to slap an Irish theme on a product made abroad. Celtic Strand doesn't do that.
KiwiSalt is formulated and manufactured in Ireland, using Irish Atlantic sea salt. When Kiwi says "made in Ireland," it means the supply chain, the labour, and the core ingredient all trace back to the island. It's a genuine commitment to Irish craft rather than a marketing overlay.
For consumers who care about provenance — where things come from, who makes them, and how — this matters. And for a brand built around the specific character of the Irish coastline, it would ring hollow any other way.
What Comes Next
Celtic Strand is a product-first brand. The focus right now is on doing one thing exceptionally well: KiwiSalt, perfected, in the hands of as many people as possible who want a cleaner, more honest alternative to the synthetic-heavy mainstream.
What that looks like in the future — more products, wider distribution, new formulations — remains to be seen. But the foundation is solid: a real product, a real story, a real place, and a founder who started with a problem and solved it properly.
That tends to be where the best brands come from.
Read more about Ciarán "Kiwi" O'Sullivan and Celtic Strand at celticstrand.com. Book a cut at KiwiCutz in Cork through the site.
