About Us

My name is Sophie. And Virelle started because I couldn't find anything that actually worked.

I'd moved to Bali about a year earlier to work remotely as an academic researcher. London was burning me out, and Bali felt like the reset I needed. The lifestyle was slower, the cost of living was manageable, and I figured I'd spend a year or two working from cafes with better weather and fewer tube delays.

What I didn't expect was the hair loss.

About six months in, I started noticing it. More hair on my pillow. More strands coming out in the shower. My part line looked wider than it ever had. I'd stand in front of the bathroom mirror tilting my head in every direction trying to work out if I was imagining it.

I wasn't imagining it.

I tried everything I could find. Rosemary oil from a local market. Expensive serums shipped from the UK. Biotin supplements. A scalp scrub someone recommended in a Facebook group. Nothing made a noticeable difference, and most of it just left my hair greasy and my bathroom shelf cluttered.

It was actually a friend from my coworking space in Canggu who changed everything. She'd been living between Bali and Tokyo for about four years, and her hair looked incredible. Thick, healthy, full. I assumed it was genetics until she told me she'd dealt with the same thinning I was going through when she first moved to Asia.

She showed me a daily scalp routine she'd picked up from a Japanese beauty practitioner in Tokyo. It wasn't complicated. It was a specific way of stimulating the scalp, applying oil directly to the skin rather than through the hair, and doing it every single day as a short calming ritual. The focus wasn't on fancy ingredients. It was on delivery, stimulation, and consistency.

She introduced me to a few other women in her circle who had been doing the same routine for over a year. All of them had the same story. They'd all been through the same thing. Tried every product going, saw no real difference, then found this routine and stuck with it. And it actually worked.

I started doing it myself. Within a few weeks, the shedding slowed. By month two I noticed new fuzz around my hairline. By month three my part line looked noticeably better. It wasn't instant. But the routine itself was different from anything I'd tried. And because it was easy to keep doing, the results had time to build.

I went down a research rabbit hole after that. I started reading everything I could find on scalp stimulation, follicle health, light therapy, and oil delivery. And I kept coming back to the same conclusion: most hair products focus on what you apply, but almost none of them focus on how it gets to the follicle. That's the gap. That's why oils alone don't work for most women. The ingredients can be great, but if they're just sitting on the surface of your hair, they never reach where they're actually needed.

I spent the next two years turning what I'd learned into a proper system. I worked with a cosmetic formulator to develop a serum with rosemary, castor oil, coffee extract, coconut oil, and lavender, balanced to the right consistency to flow through a brush and reach the scalp without clogging or leaving hair greasy. I tested dozens of brush prototypes until the stimulation felt right. I added 650nm red light and 425nm blue light based on the clinical research around follicle and scalp support. And I designed the whole thing to take less than five minutes, because I knew from personal experience that if a routine isn't quick and enjoyable, you stop doing it.

The first proper batch of Virelle went to twelve women I knew personally. Women who were dealing with the same thing I'd been through. Every single one of them reported less shedding within the first month. Ten of the twelve saw visible new growth by day 90. And all of them said the same thing: this is the first routine I've actually stuck with.

That was three years ago.

Today, over 47,000 women use Virelle as part of their daily routine. We're still a small team. We still quality check and hand pack every order from our facility in the UK. And I still use Virelle every single day myself.

The messages we get are the reason I keep doing this. Women telling us the shedding has stopped. Women sending photos of new fuzz around their hairline. Women saying they've stopped dreading the shower. Women saying they feel like themselves again.

If you're reading this and you've already tried everything, I get it. I was you. I built this because I couldn't find it anywhere else.

Sophie x