Drybar: From Humble Beginnings to Million-Dollar Hair Straightening Chain - Essay Sample

Introduction

Drybar is a chain of salons which is based in California. Its main services are providing hair straightening services. The straightening services are commonly known as blowouts. It is a company which was founded in the year 2008 by Alli Web. This is a company which was founded by one woman with a hairdryer and turned to be worth millions of dollars. The company's only area of specialization is blowouts, no color or haircuts. The services also include wash too. Drybar also sells hair care products such as detox clear, the brush crush, flatmate, detox, triple sec, hot toddy, buttercup, the 3-day bender, baby buttercup, money maker and hot toddy. The company has a simple philosophy that focuses on a specific thing and works at it effectively so that they can be the best in it. For drybar, they focus on blowouts.

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The company was named as one of the top one hundred brilliant ideas in the year 2010. The rankings were done by the Entrepreneur Magazine and the New York Magazine's Boom Brands of the year 2103. Drybar was founded on the ideas of a naturally curly haired lady known as Alli Webb who was a long time professional hair stylist. She found herself constantly overpaying when getting blowout services in the traditional salons. The company currently operates in more than one hundred countries in both Canada and the United States with about 3000 employees and their product line which are specifically made to ensure perfect blowout are sold through the company's own shops. Their motto is "No cuts, No color. Just blowouts." which refers to the services they offer.

Alli Webb spent 15 years as a hair stylist professional. It is after this, in the year 2010 that she founded Drybar. She schooled at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale where she began her career. It is in the early 1990s that she began to work for Nicole Miller, a designer, in New York City. She later left the retailing fashion in order to pursue her passion for hairstyling. She further sharpened skills after training at Toni & Guy Academy. Her dry-cut technique signature made her famous when she was acting as an assistant to John Sahag, a celebrity stylist. During this time, Alli Webb would either get a less desirable experience in the services or she would be overpriced in the traditional salon. These were the only options and were disappointing for Alli especially having struggled with her curly hair. In 2005, Alli Webb left the workforce to start a family but did not stop her career. She continued to seek a better way in which she could pursue this creative career of hairstyling.

Alli Webb began offering in-home services on a weekly basis. The blowout services were offered for friends. This little venture rapidly grew and was not anymore a part-time business. Through referrals from her clients, the business exploded and Webb saw the need of moving the business to a physical location. In 2010, she opened her dry bar in the Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles. In the following year, together with her friends, they raised 2.5 million dollars which enabled the expansion of the business. Since then, the business expanded established in several locations. Among the locations in which set up her business in earlier years are New York, San Francisco, San Diego, Atlanta, Phoenix, Scottsdale, Washington DC, Chicago, Dallas, Houston among other locations. Since then, Alli Webb has remained as the chief creative officer at her company. She oversees the hiring of competent and training of thousands of hairstylists all over the United States. She also leads to the development of Drybar's production line hairstyling tools and products. Despite all this massive task of effective monitoring of the company's operations all over the country, Alli Webb has a family to look after. Alli Webb continued to look for investors and board of trustees.

Looking at the success of Drybar and the money it has made in the business world, the company has really emerged very profitable. This is despite being created on a very simple concept of "blow dry bar." The idea of No cuts. No color. Just blowouts for $40 was rather a simple concept. The revenue of Drybar company has constantly grown over time. In the year 2012, Drybar saw its revenue grow to $19 million up from $1.5 million in the year 2010. By 2013, Drybar's revenue had risen to $39 million. With this growth, the company had operations in 11 states and had 66 locations in 2016. Drybar had increased the number of locations to almost 90 as of November 2017. The company continued with its tremendous growth in its operations and by October 2018 Drybar had 3000employees and more than 100 locations. Alli Webb is said to have turned the Drybar into a $100 million business.

Conclusion

Alli Webb can be credited to the success of Drybar. Starting as a small business which gave home services to her friends, the business has emerged a top firm in the beauty industry. The only emphasis in their operation is a blowout as indicated in their motto. Being a professional as a hairstylist, she is the chief creative officer in the company and also leads to the development of product line sold in all their shops. She also oversees the hiring and training of hairstylists. The net worth of Drybar has increased since the establishment of the business and this has enabled expansion of the business to many locations, currently over a hundred.

Works Cited

"Blow Dry Bars Are a Thriving Industry Disrupting the Salon Business." The Daily Beast: Business, 13 July 2013.

"Drybar Announces New Investment- Appointment of Paul Pressler and Janet Gurwitch to Board." NEWSWIRE, 20 Jan. 2012.

"Drybar Launches Product Line, Names New CFO." The New York business journal, 1 Mar. 2013.

"With Drybar, a Curly-Haired Girl Wages a Global War on Frizz"." the New York Times, 5 Aug. 2018.

Drybar | Premier Blow Out Salon & Blow Dry Bar, www.thedrybar.com/.