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76 August 2014 | beautystorebusiness.com Beauty Store Business: Please tell us about your background and how you got into the beauty biz. LANDAU: Well, the fact that I, a com- pletely bald guy who spent my career in technology, got into the hair business was a total surprise. I previously spent 10 years in Silicon Valley working at Yahoo! when my sister Alli came to me with the idea for Drybar. I thought she was nuts, as I didn't understand why a women needed someone else to blow- dry their hair. But I wanted to help my little sister, and after crunching numbers with her and figuring out how many cli- ents she would need to see each day in her one shop, I lent her the money. After we opened in Brentwood, Cali- fornia [in Los Angeles], and the response was beyond any of our imaginations, I finally realized the enormous opportunity in front of us—and that it wasn't just blowouts we were selling, but actu- ally the happiness and confidence that comes from a great one. I focused 100%- plus of my energy on Drybar. WEBB: Unlike Michael, I was always destined to be in the beauty business. As a little girl with very, very curly hair, I was always obsessed with having it blown out and would constantly beg my mother to do it for me. But I was never happy with how she did it! That was actually one of the motivating factors that led me to go to beauty school— being able to blow out my own hair. After doing so and working for John Peters, who was an incredible mentor to me, I moved to New York City and got a dream job assisting the late, great John Sahag. John was an absolute master, and working for him shaped and honed my skills and styles. I was the one blow- ing out so many of his clients after he cut their hair. But then I got married and moved to California with my husband and became a full-time mommy. When my oldest son was about five, I decided it was time to get back out there and had posted a little ad on one of my mommy blogs asking if anyone would be interested in having me come over to blow out their hair. The response was overwhelming, and my little mobile blowout business called Straight at Home was born. After about a year, it became clear that there was way more demand than I could fulfill on my own, and that's when I went to my brother Michael with the idea for Drybar. The rest is history! HEFFNER: Prior to having the good fortune of joining the Drybar family, I have spent most of my career within the professional-beauty space. Most recently, I was president of OPI, and prior to that spent a number of years at CND. I began my career at Procter & Gamble in the beauty care division and was also at Unilever, within the Chesebrough-Ponds division. The variety of positions I have held within multiple disciplines have prepared me to tackle the wonderful opportunities that Drybar presents. How did your backgrounds prepare you for Drybar? Webb: I had a career in public relations, working with clients such as Faith Hill, Paul McCartney and Keith Urban, and I am a professional hairstylist trained by TONI&GUY.; While both of these experiences certainly helped prepare me, I never could have fully prepared or dreamed that I would have created this. Landau : While having started and growing several other business certainly helped, it was really the many years spent working in our family's chain of retail clothing stores in south Florida [Flip's], which truly prepared me and Alli for Drybar. It really shaped our whole approach to "bend over backwards and do everything you possibly can to please the client" mentality. As early as six- years-old, Alli and I would watch our "The Drybar concept is best summarized by our trademarked tagline: 'No cuts. No color. Just blowouts.' " All images courtesy of Drybar I n s i d e t h e D r y b a r P h e n o m e n o n . i n d d 7 6 Inside the Drybar Phenomenon.indd 76 6 / 2 7 / 1 4 1 0 : 0 8 A M 6/27/14 10:08 AM