Hair Longevity Brand Manuscript Joins Sephora Accelerate

Manuscript, a scalp- and hair-longevity brand, will join Sephora Accelerate, the retailer’s brand incubator program that elevates the next generation of founders.

The brand was founded by beauty and grooming veteran journalist Nick Burns and marketing executive and investor Ye Jin. The pair share the same personal frustration of fruitless searches for the right products for thinning hair. Burns spent years as a grooming and beauty writer for GQ, Esquire, The New York Times, Men’s Journal, and many others, testing countless products on the market. But when it came time to invest in a product to address his own hair issues, the process was a lot more daunting than he thought.

“I’d reviewed thousands of products and couldn’t find one I actually wanted to use,” he said. “If you wanted to keep your hair, you had to choose between using oily products or taking medications with serious side effects. I knew what good products looked like, and this wasn’t it.”

Jin arrived at the same problem from the business side. A marketing executive and angel investor, she helped scale brands from Google to Airbnb and Michael Kors — and experiencing the same problem.

“The part in my hair was widening,” said Jin. “I tried everything and nothing fit into my daily routine. Products that were supposed to help with thinning left my hair greasy, making my hair look even thinner.”

High-Tech Formulas

Longevity formulas built with Korea’s leading lab Manuscript partnered with Kolmar Korea, which is among the world’s leading Original Development Manufacturing companies. Working with Kolmar’s R&D teams, Jin and Burns are developing high-tech, anti-aging longevity formulas for the scalp and hair that help restore it a more youthful state.

The brand’s debut SKU, Root Water Hair Longevity Serum, is slated for launch later this year. It addresses the appearance of thinning and designed to reduce new gray hair growth.

“For us, being chosen by Sephora tells us hair longevity isn’t a niche — it’s the future of hair care,” said Jin. “We’re so excited to join Accelerate and for the opportunity to learn from the best in the beauty business.”

Meet the 2026 Sephora Accelerate Cohort

Sarah Guller & Lexie Hull, Forta Cosmetics – Cofounded by WNBA pro Lexie Hull, Forta is a performance cosmetics brand built for the active woman, with products designed to withstand sweat, motion and long hours.

Krys (Deal) Lunardo, Dealbodies – Dealbodies delivers clinically-fueled body concentrates with four times the active strength of standard body care to fight flare-ups.

Tatiana Ramuth Glezer, Mowe Beauty – Mowe is skin-first makeup made for movement. Designed like performance wear, it’s breathable, sweat-adaptive and built for motion.

Kristin Lim Duckworth, Base-K – Base-K is a scalp-first haircare brand rooted in Korean head spa tradition, built around a refined daily ritual that supports healthier, denser-looking hair over time.

Elysia Chen, Pepper Pout – Pepper Pout is a beauty brand bringing a modern East-meets-West perspective to beauty through thoughtfully designed products that feel “playful, personal and culturally fresh.”

Christina Eison, Reference – Reference is a fine fragrance and personal beauty brand built on Syncretic Beauty, a product framework drawing from seven global terrains to create original scent and body essentials with the depth to endure.

Jenna Morales Ledbetter, Omora Beauty Lab – Omora is a clean beauty brand that creates complexion-focused makeup for acne-prone and sensitive skin, formulated without pore-clogging ingredients, fragrances, or common irritants.

Flavia Zhamo, Everyday Chemist – Everyday Chemist treats skincare as an object of craft, formulated and handmade by a mother-daughter engineering studio.

Mimi Koné, MORÉ – MORÉ is the first premium, science-backed hair care ritual built exclusively for textured hair.

Tanya Gonzalez Chandhok & Faye Harris Wood, EAUSO VERT – A female and Latin-owned fine fragrance brand redefining a traditionally unchanged market by centering culture and lived experience through scent.

Hannah, Innae Beauty – Innae Beauty creates thoughtfully designed beauty products that help customers feel their best from the inside out.