Category Creation Is Hard: Building Hairstory into Retail from Zero

Bryan Mahoney

Welcome back to another episode of the Brilliant Commerce podcast, where I am lucky enough to get a chance to sit down with some of the brightest minds in commerce today, behind today's iconic — and, as I really like to say, next-to-be-iconic — brands, and today's guest is no exception to that rule. Joining me today is Dina Rosenbloom, CEO of Hairstory. Dina, welcome to the pod.

Dina Rosenbloom

Thank you, Bryan. I'm so excited to speak with you.

Bryan Mahoney

I've been following your career for a little bit — we had a couple of maybe near misses, maybe ten years ago, an opportunity to work at the same company I just learned about. I'm happy our paths are crossing now, virtually. Where am I finding you today?

Dina Rosenbloom

I'm in Manhattan, near Union Square, in our office.

Bryan Mahoney

How long have you been in New York?

Dina Rosenbloom

Since 1998. Lived in Brooklyn since 2001 — was lucky enough to land there right before the big stock market crash, and somehow I still haven't been able to get myself out of New York.

Bryan Mahoney

It has that pull. I'd always wanted to live in New York, got the opportunity in 2015, and only lasted six years — maybe I'm not as tough as you. There's just something about that city, and about commerce too — a lot of the brands I have a relationship with today were born in New York, or that's their spiritual headquarters. There's no place on earth to be building in commerce like New York City.

Dina Rosenbloom

I think commerce, whether brick-and-mortar or online now, lives in New York — it's everywhere around you, ever-present.

Bryan Mahoney

It's not the only game in town, though, and that's what made New York unique to me — you saw all these risk-takers, maybe the art of the pop-up got started there because there was all this real estate and landlords willing to take risks on brands signing short leases. Look at the role pop-ups play in brand building now. But we'll get a chance to talk about that. Today you're CEO of Hairstory — for those who haven't discovered it yet, tell us about the brand.

Dina Rosenbloom

I have to pinch myself every once in a while — I've actually been a customer of the brand since its inception in 2015, and I've been with the company for coming on four years now. Hairstory is the product of Michael Gordon, the founder and creator of Bumble and Bumble. After he sold Bumble to Estée Lauder, he wanted to go create something creative, and he had his own need — a close colleague of his had scalp issues. He knew from building an empire in hair care that stylists would always complain about shampoo and how it strips the hair, and about the whole cutting process after cleaning the hair, because the conditioner makes it too slippery and their hands get really dry — imagine washing hair all day. So he created a cream that does not contain any detergents, which are found in all other shampoos, and what that does is strip all the oil out of your scalp — the good oils, the bad oils, the dirt, all at once — and then you put conditioner back on as a band-aid. New Wash doesn't foam, because detergents are what make a product foam, and it was a totally different way of cleaning hair, discovered after he tried it on himself and some of his closest people and saw the health of the scalp change immediately, and the hair feeling moisturized by its natural oils. Hairstory was really born out of that need. He then partnered with Eli Hallowell, the former general manager of Bumble and Bumble — I've worked with both of them for a long time — and Eli is a master strategist and business person who came up with some really novel ideas for how to run this business and tap into a professional market that had been underserved. They created the first-ever affiliate model, basically an influencer-affiliate model before social media had that whole influencer-marketing context, through the professional channel — working with independent hairdressers who didn't belong to a commission salon, couldn't afford to buy huge opening packages of inventory, and were kind of hodgepodging whatever products they had, leaving a ton of potential revenue on the table. They created an affiliate model that let those independent hairdressers sell the product through Hairstory's website and earn commission.

Bryan Mahoney

There's the origin story of brands as old as the direct-to-consumer industry itself — a founder can't find the product they're looking for, and they go make it. But what's interesting to me, that I didn't get in my research, is that the stylist dealing with slippery hair from conditioner or dry hands has another need right there, and the other need is that a trusted professional is leaving business on the table when they could be an advocate, a storyteller for the brand. You spent a long time at brands like Bumble and Bumble and Creed, in marketing leadership. At brands like that, how much of your time was spent on storytelling, and is that the reason they tapped you on the shoulder — creating a category, telling a story, doing something disruptive, not necessarily meeting the customer where they already are?

Dina Rosenbloom

I don't know about that specifically, but honestly, whether I was conscious of it or not, what attracted me to those brands is that in every one, it hasn't been that hard — although it's hard work — to tell the story or grow the brand, because the products speak for themselves. The quality, the branding, the tightness and clarity of the message had been set from the onset by the founder, and that makes a marketer's job easier. You still have to do the massaging, the caretaking, the hard work of making sure that message maintains and stays clear to your audience, reiterating the brand's values and promise and aspirational meaning. I've worked for some amazing brands.

Bryan Mahoney

It's the balancing act between traditional brand building and — there's no shortcuts. If the product isn't good, especially something you put on or in your body, customers won't come back no matter how attractive the win-back offer is. It all starts there, and it's nice to be at a place where that's a building block. As CMO, I'd imagine you have to balance traditional brand building with getting customers in the door — I've seen the marketing role become more commercial over the last fifteen or twenty years. How did you see that evolve, from your time at brands like Creed all the way to now at a startup?

Dina Rosenbloom

There are so many brands infiltrating the market now that it's diluted — how do you get through the noise of what's a true brand proposition and delivery, making good on the promise the brand makes, versus yet another copy with a nice look and packaging? I'd say all three brands — Bumble, Creed, now Hairstory — were built out of aspiration: a small group of trendsetters discovering the brand, loving it, seeing that it delivers, telling their friends, and those friends telling their friends, plus other layers on top, whether a salon with an amazing cutting technique or a fragrance brand with generations of history and sourcing. I think you have to be patient as a founder or marketer, not try to do too much or reach too far, and really let the brand build through its worth and the actual product. If you don't let it steep and you get a viral moment instead, you'll die as quickly as you were born.

Bryan Mahoney

I'd encourage founders and marketers to think about virality in a controlled, disciplined way — this managed chaos. If you have the discipline to let it steep, especially with a physical product, you have to discover it, try it, see the results, buy it again. No matter how good the tools are today, it still takes time to establish that relationship and trust. If we think about it on a longer time horizon, we can have moments that feel chaotic, amplifying the message and going fast, but you've got to have a longer-term perspective on what it takes to build a brand.

Dina Rosenbloom

To add to that — if you're building something with longevity, you'll learn things along the way and have to pivot; there's no way you get it right a hundred percent of the time. Maybe that's one aspect of my leadership that's worked in these organizations, because I've come in when they're not so big or bureaucratic that you can't get through it — you need to be nimble, listen, know when to fix, change, or slightly pivot. I talk about it like a nervous system — lots of different paths lead to the main artery, and you have to choose the path to get there, though I don't think there's ever really an end. If you try to do it too fast, you're going to bleed out before you get safely to the main artery.

Bryan Mahoney

That's a good segue into category creation. Being disruptive, being a category creator, is often romanticized — everyone loves that founder story, I couldn't find this product so I made it and created a category. But if you're willing to be honest, talk about the part no one talks about — where creating a category is really hard, where customers aren't looking, and you're telling them the thing they're doing is wrong. How do you do that delicately when you believe so strongly in the product's efficacy?

Dina Rosenbloom

It's such a good question for me, because I'm not the founder, so I don't have that same founder vision — coming in as CMO and then quickly becoming CEO, I had to be careful about not throwing it all out there at once, because I didn't have all the history or nuance of explaining the product, figuring out the right value props, or how to stick to the core story. I'd been a customer of New Wash forever and knew what it did for me — changed my life, and my son's life too. But it's really hard to create a category, and I think we're still having a hard time creating one, in an area like cleansing your hair — when does anyone think not to shampoo? You shampoo, you condition, you focus on styling, and then you wonder why your scalp hurts, why it's dry and tight, why you overproduce oil, and you think a scalp solution is the answer, or you just wash more. When you believe in something and want to tell everyone, trust me, it does this and this and this — it adds volume, reduces frizz, adds softness, defines curls, it's one step, you don't need conditioner or a mask, your scalp will feel great, maybe your dandruff goes away, and you need less styling product — if I told you all of that on day one, you'd be like, hmm, I don't know about that. There aren't that many early adopters. It takes a lot of repetition and hard work and advocacy and social proof, and again repetition, sticking to your message and the core, just to get one new customer to believe. Honestly, at Hairstory, I wouldn't say we've hit the tipping point — I think we're hopefully going to get there soon, but we're not there. I don't think people fully understand yet what we're trying to deliver. We have a lot of great customer service policies and an amazing customer service team, which has been the case at every organization I've worked with — that's super important, and I've never outsourced a customer service team. They basically win back customers every day who say their roots are oily, it's not working for me — well, did you use it this way, maybe try this formula. This is the long road. Disrupting a category like this is the long road.

Bryan Mahoney

The two best examples I've come across for guest experience — Glossier was famous for it, the team was called the G-Team, they just took care of customers. And Blue Bottle Coffee doesn't get enough recognition for their guest experience — it's part of your daily ritual, and if you run into a problem, it's not something they outsource, they take it really seriously.

Dina Rosenbloom

Hair is so important to people — the bad hair day thing is real. When you're investing your money in something that isn't perceived as inexpensive, it's a premium-priced product, and when it doesn't work for you, you're going to contact customer service. Our customer service team is one of the three or four most valuable people in the organization.

Bryan Mahoney

That's amazing — brand ambassadors too, to a large degree, I'd imagine. So you're still working hard to convince people, and once you get them in the door, is there anything else besides the product working that makes your retention numbers as sticky as reportedly they are?

Dina Rosenbloom

Definitely the product does all the heavy lifting, and we have a really strong subscription business because we give great subscription benefits — we're constantly looking at it and trying to make it more favorable to subscribers, giving them the best deal, hopefully across other channels where we sell too. Our direct channel really should be the destination for retention, but we sell on Amazon — that's a harvesting channel for us, people like to shop there, and we want to meet them where they are.

Bryan Mahoney

Subscription's established this reputation — is it something you just bolt on, or does it feel more like membership? It sounds like you're constantly looking at how to make those perks better and better.

Dina Rosenbloom

We are constantly looking at perks for subscribers — I think we could do a way better job, and it's an area we're focusing on right now. Years ago, before my time, we had a strong loyalty program, before subscriptions even had their heyday during COVID, and then some things switched and we no longer had it. So we're going to introduce one very soon that will add value for subscribers. We've seen the same trend everyone else has with subscriptions — fewer people subscribing, for the same reasons everyone's seen a dip. But New Wash is not our only product, though it's the lion's share of our business and sets the stage for the rest of the line — when you use it, you cannot go back to shampoo. You try, and you just can't. You're destroying your scalp and you feel it, and there isn't another product on the market that does what New Wash does, so why wouldn't you subscribe if you could get the best price? I think people just need repetition — not everyone's reading every email — but we do have strong biannual promotions that bring the regular repeaters back, particularly if they're price-sensitive. I'm all for people returning to purchase one time; not everybody has to be a subscriber, but if you're loyal to a brand and figure out your cadence, it's easy to make sure you never run out.

Bryan Mahoney

I think the subscription model is going to change over time. If we looked at your data, there are probably cohorts of people you wouldn't call a subscriber who are essentially subscribed — you send them an email, they say, yeah, I'm running out, and they're loyal, just not on the auto-ship program. I can imagine a future where I text you, hey, running low, can I ship you some more, and you text back, yeah, actually, do you mind — and commerce is just happening frictionlessly. I think we're up against messaging that subscriptions are somehow bad, you're getting tricked into something, when for a certain cohort they want the auto-ship, they want to never run out, and others just need a nudge every once in a while. That's where the direct channel matters — do you know your customers well enough to know when they're ready to order, what they've tried, how to bring them back as a subscriber without applying the pressure?

Dina Rosenbloom

We do, I think there's always room to grow, but it's a pretty simple business model when you're selling one core product — it's not that hard to understand how often someone uses it or how long before they need to replenish. We probably could do a much better job getting more information from customers, so we do have a journey where we try to send people through our HairChat — a proprietary chatbot we built that feels like a person, in the voice of our lead hairdresser, Wes Sharpton, that recommends appropriate products and cadence based on the person's hair needs, and we get more personalized information from the customer that way.

Bryan Mahoney

It's fascinating what customers are willing to share with an agent when they know it's not a human on the other end.

Dina Rosenbloom

The average number of words people put into a Google search is like seven. In a chat, it's like twenty-something — our first question is, tell us about your hair, and people write novels about their hair.

Bryan Mahoney

So much richer. The other thing I think is amazing is how you acquire customers — you talked about a different take on influencer or affiliate, working through hairdressers, meeting them where they were, maybe before they even knew they were looking for this. It sounds innovative, but also feels familiar to something older, kind of the beauty-consultant model — am I getting that wrong?

Dina Rosenbloom

No, you're getting it right. One of our co-founders came from a direct-selling environment, and he brought that structure here — it had never been introduced in a hair care brand before. Combined with Michael and Eli's vision of reaching the independent hairdresser, that birthed the Hairstory affiliate model. When you're trying to convince a potential customer to change how they wash their hair, who's better to do that than a hairdresser who's literally using the product? They're our best advocates — almost 5,000 of them and growing — and they really believe in it, because I don't think you can trick a hairdresser. They're either going to use it or not; you might pay someone to rep something, but you won't get a genuine reaction unless they're actually using and believing in it. And the cherry on top is we don't just give them a standard commission for the sale — the first time a customer buys through their link or code, that customer is forever linked to them, and every time they repurchase after, the hairdresser gets that same commission as passive income, potentially for years if the customer is a subscriber. That's one of the main differences between our model and any other brand that's adopted an affiliate model since.

Bryan Mahoney

Everyone wins. I've seen affiliate models not work more times than I can count, usually when it's forced — I turned on the affiliate channel because everyone said I had to. You have to do affiliate if it feels authentic to your brand, and that story is so powerful — these stylists already have an entrepreneurial spirit, and now you're giving them the tools and the program, and they feel like they're part of something. Not only is it making their hands better, it's making their customers' hair better, and their wallets better — that feels like the trifecta.

Dina Rosenbloom

We have hairdressers who make a lot of money every year just from Hairstory, in addition to standing behind the chair — imagine being in a profession where you're on your feet all day, and that passive income, as it grows, makes a really big difference. We offer them a lifestyle they maybe wouldn't have achieved otherwise.

Bryan Mahoney

That has to be why it's working so well. Before I let you go, I wanted to end on transitions — you spent decades in marketing and then transitioned into the CEO suite, but before that you left larger organizations to walk into a startup. What's the one thing someone could have told you, or you could tell a future you, that would prepare you well for that transition into startup life?

Dina Rosenbloom

We're a ten-year startup, so I don't want to necessarily speak for a true year-one or year-two startup — Eli and the other founders did an incredible job building this brand, and I want to give them credit. I came in when we really needed a pivot, things were getting a little soft and stale, so we needed to rebuild. The advice I'd give someone stepping into a startup, whether founder or joining someone else's, is you have to be humbled by the information you learn — there's so much at your fingertips now, you can't assume you know everything. Having been a long-time customer was super important for me. There's a level of rigor and being efficient with funds, testing and learning — we have a very strong test-and-learn environment, not putting all your money into huge bets, but testing the waters first and then making the right bet, because cash can be depleted quickly. You also have to move quickly — even testing and learning, you need a plan, figure out if it's working, pivot or lean in, and do it fast, or you'll waste time in an environment that needs to grow.

Bryan Mahoney

And the biggest transition of your career was moving from CMO to CEO — I did a similar one when we started Chord, after being in the CTO seat for a long time. When you talk about testing and learning, did your experience set you up well? What advice would you give a future you working on that transition from CMO to CEO — it's not really a job you apply for, it's suddenly available and you just have to take it.

Dina Rosenbloom

That's exactly what happened to me — suddenly available, and I had to take it because I was already here. My advice would be to lean on subject-matter experts and be a lot humble. I was not a finance genius, being in a marketing seat, like most marketers aren't close to being CFOs. I really had to lean on my partners internally, including Eli, the co-founder and chairman of our board, to learn how to run a business from a financial standpoint versus a brand-building standpoint. I also needed the right people in the right seats — the CEO experience has been very humbling in people management, really getting the strength where you need it. I've had to reorganize this small company a couple of times since I've been in the seat, and it's hard, but at the end of the day you're the one making the decisions, and you have to go left or right, and left isn't always going to lead you to where you need to be. I think I've done a good job hiring amazing talent and then leaning into it, sometimes shifting roles to play into people's strengths to make sure I retain them. If you can do that with the majority of your leadership team, you'll succeed — you can't succeed by just plugging a hole.

Bryan Mahoney

That's excellent advice — very wise words, honestly, like you've been in the CEO seat for decades, not just a couple of years.

Dina Rosenbloom

Can I say one more thing? I didn't get to mention it, and it's a moment for this brand — we're going into retail, which is huge. We just announced it last week, we've partnered with Ulta, going into a select number of doors. Big change for this brand in so many ways, and we've been preparing for it. When I started in the CMO role, which only lasted about six months before I moved into CEO, my intent from the start was to get us into retail — a lot of the decisions I made were through that lens. Getting Ulta to say yes was a huge win, and our team had been working on repackaging the brand, rebranding our visuals, relaunching our site for a lot of other reasons too. I feel like a brand that's ten years old — we wouldn't have been prepared to be there before this experience, and we wouldn't have gotten in without someone at the helm who has a lot of retail experience. That might be a topic for another episode, but especially once we're officially in for a few months, it'd be really fun to catch up.

Bryan Mahoney

I think it'd be great to talk about that other transition — the way we talked about affiliates, I do affiliates because I have to do affiliates, and now there's a playbook, you have to be omnichannel on day one. But there isn't really a playbook, and thinking about the story you told today, there's a brand-building component and a category-creation component — if you show up on day one at Ulta and say we're this new category and we want to be on your shelves, they're going to say no. You show up with a brand that's already established the story it's telling, and now suddenly they're interested. It goes back to the idea that things just take time — being patient, willing to test, willing to adapt. I'd love to learn about how you ultimately got to Ulta, and some of the other changes you're seeing across the business, maybe in person, because I feel like there's a lot more we could unpack.

Dina Rosenbloom

That'd be fun — there's so much to talk about, I'd love to have a part two.

Bryan Mahoney

I would love that. Thank you so much for being such a wonderful guest today — so lovely to finally meet you, please come soon.

Dina Rosenbloom

Yes. Thanks, Bryan.