I've been doing hair since I was fourteen. I still am.

I'm a third-generation hairdresser. Honestly, I feel like hairdressing chose me — I've been in salons for as long as I can remember, and some of my earliest memories are weekends in my mum's salon.

I lined up on Oxford Street with everyone else, hoping someone would give me a start. Someone did.

At nineteen, I left. Looking back, I left too soon — and I fell flat on my face more than once before I found my feet again.

That garage is where I rebuilt my clientele, and it's where I started putting my work online — long before anyone in this industry thought that was a real career. I got plenty of opinions about that from the top end of the industry.

I kept posting anyway.

Here's the thing about starting with nothing: I couldn't afford a big kit.

“When I first started, I couldn't afford a huge kit with a massive range of products. I had to be smarter. I asked myself: how can one product have multiple functions?”

That question is still the whole philosophy. Every formula I make has to earn its place — prep, protect and polish in one, or it doesn't get made. It's why Prep & Play exists, and why it went on to win Best New Hair Styling Product at the 2023 Australian Hair Fashion Awards.

I'm not interested in selling you seven things when three will do it better.

Twenty-six years in, I never left the floor. I'm still on the tools — still with my hands in real hair, still learning from it. That's not nostalgia. It's quality control.

And I don't develop these in a lab and hand them to the industry. Every formula is built and tested with working stylists across real salons, on paying clients with real hair and real opinions, before it ever reaches a shelf. If something's heavy, or crunchy, or doesn't last past lunchtime, we find out fast.

Fine hair that drops by lunchtime. Colour that's been lifted one too many times. The hair that walks in on a Saturday morning wanting to look like the photo. Those are the briefs.

I've been a ghd Creative Artist and ghd Hair Director, leading hair backstage at Australian Fashion Week — including Mariam Seddiq's Resort '23 show.

“Mariam kept sketching these beautiful shapes and curves in her artworks, so I wanted to replicate this through the hair looks.”

Vogue Australia, Marie Claire and Harper's Bazaar have all asked me what I'd do with your hair. Two of my products have won their category at the Australian Hair Fashion Awards.

But the award I'd frame is this one:

“This win is for every person who wants to feel like they've just walked out of my chair, even when they're just running out the door.”

Our customers come back to reorder roughly every five months — about twice a year. Not because they forgot about us. Because the bottle was still going.

Concentrated formulas mean you use less. One pump of Prep & Play, not three. At $59, a bottle that carries you five months works out to under $12 a month for the product doing the most work in your routine.

I could have made it thinner and cheaper and sold you twice as much. I'd rather you bought less, and it worked.

If you need a lot of product to get a result, it isn't the right product.

You'll find Natalie Anne here, on your salon's shelf, and with our retail partners. I genuinely don't mind which one you use — if it's easiest to grab it when you're in the chair, grab it there.

It does mean our own repeat-purchase numbers understate how loyal people actually are. Plenty of customers buy from us once, then restock at their salon for a year. We can't see those. We're glad they happen.

I build this with my husband Arthur, our co-founder and head of logistics. I'm a mum of two. We work with Vinnies because this industry gave me everything, and I'd like to hand some of it on.

That's never going to change.