Alli Webb spent her twenties working in hair salons. When she moved to Los Angeles and have become a stay-at-home mother, she began a cellular blowout aspect hustle — so she would go to a consumer’s dwelling, blow-dry their hair, and elegance it for $40. No haircuts or hair colour.
“I bought tons of purchasers,” Webb informed entrepreneur Jeff Berman on the Masters of Scale podcast earlier this month. Her first pitch was to different mothers on a Yahoo group. It learn: “I am a stay-at-home mother and a longtime hairstylist. I will come over and blow out your hair for less than $40 whereas your infants are sleeping.”
Webb’s pitch was profitable and she or he quickly could not sustain with demand. She began serious about opening a brick-and-mortar location so her purchasers may come to her, as a substitute of her going to them.
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Her brother, former Yahoo advertising and marketing director Michael Landau, was keen to assist financially again the enterprise, although he did have some questions at first.
“He was just a little perplexed, ‘Like, why cannot ladies blow out their very own hair?'” Webb mentioned. “And I used to be like, you probably did develop up with me.” In earlier interviews, Webb shared that she had frizzy hair rising up and was “obsessed along with her hair.”
Landau was lastly satisfied by the success that Webb noticed in her aspect hustle. He invested $250,000 whereas Webb and her then-husband Cameron Webb put of their financial savings of about $50,000. In 2010, the founding crew opened the primary Drybar salon in Brentwood, California. It famously affords no cuts and no colour.
Alli Webb. Picture Credit score: Brian Stukes/Getty Pictures
Although Drybar’s salons supplied a restricted vary of hair companies — simply the wash, blowout, and elegance — Webb says that she wasn’t involved in regards to the enterprise mannequin. What she needed was quantity: 30 to 40 blowouts per day to interrupt even.
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Demand ended up doubling expectations — to 60 to 80 blowouts per day.
“We realized in a short time, like throughout the first few days, [that] we had captured lightning in a bottle,” Webb mentioned. “Ladies have been coming in and fairly actually droves. I imply, we have been turning folks away left and proper.”
Drybar grew to over 150 salons throughout the nation inside a decade. Webb ended up promoting Drybar’s product line to main shopper merchandise firm Helen of Troy for $255 million in money in 2020. WellBiz Manufacturers acquired the franchise rights to Drybar salons in 2021 for an undisclosed sum.
Webb could not have imagined what Drybar would change into. When she opened her first store, she simply needed it to be a spot the place she may do what she beloved.
“I used to be actually enthusiastic about it and never considering I used to be going to show it into this large multi-million-dollar blowout empire,” she mentioned.
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