Will the Zylist make it to market, to become the first at-home hair cutting tool for women with long hair? That depends upon whether the start-up Equip Beauty manages to raise at least $100k during its Kickstarter campaign, which ends on December 4th, 2015.

The Zylist resembles a flat iron, but the paddle is clear, making it easy to align it perfectly. Two blades sit between the paddles, which cut the hair when the user presses down on the paddle’s edge. Since the cutting is done inside the tool, fingers are kept safe.   

The Inventor & Inspiration

Rachel Croft, who invented the Zylist, says she watched her husband cut his hair with an electric clipper, for years – wishing there was a similar tool for her long hair. “My husband would feel like cutting his hair, and 20 minutes later would have a great haircut. I’d just had our baby and was having trouble fitting a salon appointment into my schedule,” Croft explained.

She continued, “I became frustrated that there wasn’t an at-home tool for my long hairstyle. I needed a high quality haircut that would blend in at my corporate office, and I didn’t feel confident with scissors. So, leveraging my background in product development, I invented the Zylist.”

Prior, Croft worked as a medical device executive. She designed the Zylist so that it would mimic the hair cutting technique used by pro hairstylists, after watching how they lined up a comb horizontally across the hair before cutting it with a scissor.