Drybar: Alli Webb (2017)

Hey it's Sky here. So Imagine if Thirty years ago you had a friend who passionately believe that people would spend lots of money on coffee, and that coffee could become a huge global phenomenon as a as like a chain restaurant. You would probably think that person was nuts, but Howard Schultz of Starbucks?

He believed that. Same with Tariq Farid. He was convinced that people would buy cut up pieces of fruit arranged in bouquets. And well, edible arrangements? became a hit. Well, today's story is not that different because about ten years ago, Ali Webb decided to start a hair salon that

doesn't actually cut hair. And lots of people also thought she was crazy. How she built Drybar is an amazing story that first ran back in January of last year. Enjoy. That first day was Bananas. I mean women were like lining up women. We were pissed because they were coming and they were like, It said you could walk in and I'm like

We don't have any more chairs. And and I was I was doing Blowouts at the first chair and I was running the front desk and I was I mean I was I was there around the clock. probably for six months before I took a day off because I just couldn't leave it. And I didn't want to leave it. It was so f Fun.

From NPR, it's how I built this, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. I'm Guy Raz, and on today's show, how Allie Webb went from being a stay-at-home mom just six years ago. To building a national chain of blow dry salons. Called Dry Bar. When Ali Webb was a kid growing up in Boca Raton in southern Florida,

School wasn't really her thing. Nope, wasn't interested in school. Wasn't very good at it. I was kind of dubbed the underachiever of the family. It was like what the hell is Allie gonna do with her life. She eventually went to college and after about a year Dropped out. For a while, Allie just sort of drifted. She lived in New York for some time and then she moved back to Florida and lived with her parents.

But her older brother Michael He he seemed to have it all together. He was like the overachiever of the family and he was like naturally good student, like we're Jewish and he had a Ba mitzvah. I was like, there's no way I'm going to Hebrew school. But he did it and he was great and he was he was like the smarty pants of the family. So while Allie was sort of floating around in her early twenties, Michael was doing pretty well for himself. He was moving up the corporate ladder.

And in the mid nineteen nineties Allie. started to have this idea of what she wanted to do with her life. So She asked Michael for advice. He was the first person I talked about, and I said, you know. I feel like I really want to go to beauty school. That is what I really want to do. And my parents were kind of like

They didn't get it and they had these little old lady clothing stores in Delray Beach and Boca. And next to every one of them was a hair salon. And there was these like little old ladies getting their hair done and they're like, that's what you wanna do? I'm like, no, that is not what I wanna do. I wanna move to New York City and I wanna do fashion shows and I wanna do editorial and I you know and I had like grand dreams of what I would do in the hair industry. And my brother We had always been very, very close. Like if my parents were sitting here, they would tell you that he raised me. Like he we were very, very, very close. He was w really one of the few people who really believed in this little dream. That I had.

So I li was living in Boca and I m enrolled in the local beauty school. And I loved every second of it. From the moment I enrolled, I was like Ah, these are my people. Yeah. I mean that's how I felt. I loved it. I loved the environment. I was so happy and I soaked it all up. And while I was in beauty school, I was working for

A guy who owned a local salon. And he was amazing and he taught me so much. And again I wouldn't have known it at the time, but because he owned the salon, I really saw how he managed the salon too, which was an education I was getting that I didn't even know I was getting. And But your I mean at at that point your your ambition in life was to was to work in a salon. Well to do hair. And I didn't I didn't know what capacity I was gonna be in. Although I had this like itch to get back to New York. Now I was also a huge fan of John Saha who's I'm assuming like instead of cutting wet hair you uh you can cut it when it's dry? Exactly. And it was it just wasn't done before John

And he was like it So like what like what made him hit? Like what was the deal? He had one salon in New York on Madison Avenue. He was this rock and roll kind of cool guy. He had his two huge greyhounds that like sat next to him in the salons and I had it in my head that was the only person I wanted to work for. So I moved to New York. And I remember it like it was yesterday. got an interview, I like walked in with my leather pants on and like tried to look because you're trying to look New York. Trying to look New York and cool. And I remember him like looking at me and making eye contact and I was like I know I'm gonna get this job. It was like an assistant job. It wasn't like the world's greatest.

at the salon and I I was assisting him a little bit and I was assisting the other stylists in the shop, which meant I was the person washing and blowing the hair. And it was a great education. I was still very, very new in the industry, even though I had my license and was on the floor in South Florida. It was a very different ball game in New York. So I mean I used to do all of John's clients and his girlfriend and and it was like the best training you could ever imagine. Yeah, so I mean it sound sounds like you were having a a great time, but then I read that you left, you like dropped out of of like the hair

And you went to become a publicist, is is that right? Well, not even. I became like an assistant to the guy who was running the music department at Rogers and Cowan. It's like one of the big ones in New York and they represent everybody. Which was a pretty awesome job. I mean, he represented Paul McCartney, Janet Jackson, Jennifer Lopez. So now I'm like I don't know, twenty five, twenty six. And I then I started to get get married and have kids. Then I started getting that bug. And during this time I did meet my husband and New York City and and we met at a at a bar named Hell in the Meepacking District. In Hell. He always says we were a matchmate in hell. Like a dive bar in the meat packing district that d obviously doesn't exist anymore today.

Okay, so you met this guy, who was now your husband, of course. W what was he he doing at the time? He was in advertising. So we started dating and it we got very it was like love at first sight. I mean really we were together like every day since and we practically moved in with each other like right away. So we We were we got married. We got engaged a year after we met and then we got married two years after we met and

I I think I was I you know, having grown up in South Florida, the winters in New York were starting to kill me and I was like, I gotta get out of here And so we decided to move to LA and he For him in advertising, it's like he needs to be in a big city. So So you decided to move to LA just'cause you wanted to change the scene and he thought, I'll just get a job there. Yeah. And you figure I'll figure something out. Yeah. Well at that point I was like really itching to have kids. Yeah. So

We within a year we got pregnant and My first son Grant was born in two thousand and five. And I was like As happy as could be. And I thought I wanted to be a stay at home mom forever. I loved every second of it. It was so great. And then we had our second son, and do you have kids?

Yeah, two boys. Yeah, so It was like it got a lot harder with home and a stay at home mom for five years. I got really antsy again. Like I can't go to the park every day. And I remember my husband used to come home from work and I'd be like because I hadn't really t I'd talked to kids all day and I felt like Man, I need to do something for myself again. And that's that's that's what initially started. And then it was like, Well, what am I gonna do? Am I gonna go back to working at a hair salon? Like

I have two kids now, what do I wanna do? And and because blowouts and doing hair was always my thing and so many of my girlfriends uh would ask me to blow out their hair all the time. They would just like say hey Because they knew I they knew my story, they knew I was hair so I was I always had good hair. And so they would always ask me. Did you charge them? No, no. I would just do it. Especially if it was like for a party or an event or a wedding or something. I just did everybody's hair. And I was good at it and so I remember like sitting in my living room with my best friend with our like babies crawling around and I was like, you know, maybe I should start

a mobile blow dry business where I go around and blow out like My mommy friends,'cause I was very immersed in like the mommy community, which is really strong in LA. So I posted on this mommy group called Peachhead where it was like a Yahoo group and it was this resource for moms. It was like five thousand moms in LA and they all went to this site. So I posted on there one day when I had this idea popped in my head. I said I'm I'm a longtime stylist. I'm thinking about starting a mobile blow dry business where I charge, I don't know, 35 or 40 dollars Would anybody out there be interested? I got flatted with emails. Like yes, I'm interested. I I'd I'd pay thirty five to forty bucks uh for a blow dry. Yes, pretty much. So

I so I started getting email. So then my husband was like, I think this is such a great idea And he said, But you need a cute website. If they think it's cute, they'll call you. But at this point you're thinking This is gonna be like my side hustle. I am just going to У нас? No, no. I was like I thought about putting all the tools I had in a duffel bag and heading out the door. That was In your car. In my car.

And so you would blow dry the At their homes. Like you'd go in okay. I is like while your baby's sleeping Because like we were all like when our baby is napping was the only time we could do anything. I'll come to your house and blow dry your hair. Yeah, I mean that was I mean, this was not a very like thought out plan. That was it was so basic.

And honestly we came up with forty dollars because it was like cheap and easy. It's like two twenties. Done. And and and you like you put this out there on on this mommy website and all of a sudden mommies were like, Yep, I Totally want this and And you said to like put things in your calendar? Yeah, and I started doing these boats. And of course, like I still had to pick up my kids from preschool at like two o'clock or whatever it was. Yes, I was in traffic. And between gas and whatever, I don't think I actually made any money. Right. But it really wasn't about the money. It was much more about getting out there and like talking to adults and just like doing something for myself and being able to kind of

You know, satisfied that desire in me to do something for myself again. So you start Doing this, you start driving around. The West Side of LA. And I got really busy really fast. And it was very word of mouth. Like I'd go and do one mom and then she would tell like six of her friends and then all of a sudden they would come. And it was such a thrill. And I got to the point where I was saying no More than I was saying, yes.

And so that's when I was like, Huh. You know, this is interesting. And I think that's then I started asking my clients, I said, What what do you do when I can't come to your house? And they're like, Well I either like begrudgingly go to my cut and colour salon where they overcharge me and want to cut my hair and there's all this pressure. Okay. Or I go to the like discount chain down the street, which

kind of sucks and the experience is bad and bad lighting and And I was like, God, there really is two bad choices out there, and that's it. And so that's when I think the idea started percolating for me and I was like, Huh, you know, there's no place like in the middle. And that's when I went to my brother. And he was working for Yahoo at the time, also when Yahoo was in like was like the thing. Yeah. And it was really successful. And he was watching my little business from the sidelines and he thought it was an interesting idea, but Nothing beyond that. So I told him that I thought I should turn

my little mobile blow drive business into an actual brick and mortar. So instead of me going to my clients, they could start coming to me. And I asked him to have basically help me and help me. Fine. Did at any point Any anyone, particularly I'm thinking men, say to you

Wait, you wanna start a store? Where you just blow dry hair and what? Like who's gonna go? Like why would anybody pay for it? Well and also my brother, ironically, and my husband both bald and they're like they have no they're like w what Although my husband always had this interesting insight because he knows what my hair looks like naturally and he always would say You get your nails done, but I never notice it. When you get your hair done I notice it. And so he was like, I think this is the next nail salon. I think this is gonna kill it.

Let's do this. Faling up, how Allie started to imagine a salon. With a service most women didn't yet know they wanted. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This? From NPR.

It's how I built this from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So Ali Web Have this idea for a business where you just Blow dry people's hair. No cutting, no colouring

Just blow drying. And her brother Michael and her husband Cameron They were on board. So to start the company, they cashed out Cameron's retirement accounts. And Michael put in a chunk of money he had made during the dot com boom at Yahoo.

And the three of them, they start to get to work, trying to figure out the details of what dry bar would be, while at the same time, still holding their day jobs. That's when there was like the moonlighting phase when I was still running my mobile business and taking care of my kids. My brother had a real estate marketing company at the time and Cameron was a creative director in advertising agency, which is like he already was working crazy hours. So what would happen is Every night once the kids were asleep, My brother was at his house. Cameron was home, we'd all be like on our laptops in bed and

we'd be working on dry bar and so Cameron at night started developing the dry bar website and building out the website. And he was really new to that. He never built a website, but he was a designer, so he could do all of that. So In the wee hours of the night, for weeks we started developing the website and Michael and I started looking at real estate and trying to figure out where the shop was gonna go and talking to landlords and all this like crazy stuff and I was on the phone with the cosmetology board like around the clock trying to figure out what I needed to open these this shop and And then you know, that's kinda how it all started. Were you nervous? Or I mean did you feel like

Uh like this will be okay, or or was like a part of you like this is a lot of money that we've put into this. They were more nervous than me. My brother was probably the most nervous because he had the biggest stake in it financially. But I had a really good feeling. I I it was like one of those things in my gut. I was like I know there's enough women out there like me that to will make one shop work.

I'm sure one shot will work, or at least work a little bit. And and at that point we had figured out if we can do like thirty blowouts a day, thirty, forty blowouts, like that'd be a great business. And so in my mind, like I remember going to sleep at night being like if we can do Five blowouts an hour and we're open X amount Like I would literally like figure out how many people we're gonna have to come in to make those numbers. But you were gonna do the the blowouts too, right? I mean you were gonna be uh running the shop, blow drying hair And you'd have to hire people.

Yes. Well so that the hiring process was kind of funny. And there's a couple of stylists that still work for us who remember this. Like I used to have stylists come to my house and blow out my hair. That was there. interview, you know, I would talk to them, make sure they were nice, and then they'd blow up my hair. And if they did a good job, I'd hire them. I mean that was it back then. And I only hired like I don't know, about fifteen.

stylist and I wasn't sure. There was enough stylists out there like me that that were interested in Just the styling part like I was, but There were. What was it that was gonna be your like competitive advantage? Like what what was there was no competition.

There was no one doing it. No there was no competition. There were hair slow. How is it that nobody thought of this? Nobody thought of it. There was nothing. So you o you've you found a spot and where did you open the first location? So I was living in Santa Monica and the first location was on San Vicente, which was a thoroughfare. If you came off the four oh five and you were going to Santa Monica the Palisades or Brentwood, you kinda had to take that that route. And also I should tell you that my brother having worked on other big projects and he met uh this guy named Josh Heitler, who's an architect. And so my brother one of the many, many things he's brought to the table when I d had this idea to have a salon

He went to Josh and said, I do want to build a hair slum for my sister and Josh Was like Sure. And and they and we offered him some equity to to get involved. And and and that was again, I I don't even know if I would have thought of an architect. I mean that was my brother. And and what was your vision? Like what was when he came to talk to you, what did you say like how did you want it to look? Well, I knew I wanted it to feel like a bar. And

I remember explaining to my brother and to Josh that Yeah. that something that happened in my mobile blow dry business that when I would go to my clients' homes and do their blowouts, it was usually like in their living room. It was never in their personal bathroom in their home. So I'd do it in their living room. So they couldn't see the blowout when it was happening. And when I was done with the blowout, I'd say, Okay, I'm now I'm ready for you to look look at it. And so to go from not seeing your hair to seeing this amazing gorgeous hair was like kind of a powerful thing. And I explained that to Josh and to Michael and And so that was the kind of a task for Josh, like how do we incorporate that into the design of this shop? So we um

the mirrors are behind the stations and that's very intentional that when you the client is done, the stylist spins her around for the big reveal. And that totally came from my My blowout business. So The idea was that the experience was going to be different. Well, and I wanted again, it was like taking everything that I had accumulated in in all of my years as being a stylist and saying, like, I'm just gonna do it the way I wanna do it, not the way I'm It's always been done and of g of course it was like a bar and I wanted the flat screen TV because I thought that would be like a fun getaway for women and like And when you play on the T V

All like um chick flicks. Nice. All chick flicks. And it's like movies that you probably wouldn't watch again, but when you see them and they have subtitles you get really drawn in. I mean I sit there sometimes and I'm like I love this movie. Sleepless in Seattle. It is, it's like Sleepless in Seattle, like how to be single, like we play like breakfast activities, like all of it. And my Michael, my brother had the idea to put charging stations for your iPhones at ever I mean it was like it was such We got so lucky the fact that Mm.

my brother and my husband and Josh and me, it was like we were this perfect storm of all these people that came together to do this and that had the perfect skill set. So it was just this we were this like powerhouse that nobody had to pay anybody to do. Alright, so you open the first location in Brentwood in in Two thousand ten. Two thousand ten. And what's What happens if people show up? So I don't know if you remember Daily Candy. Yeah, it was it was like that that daily email lister of thing about about fashion, right? Yeah. Well it back in its like original state, daily candy was this like Website.

that you would get emails from them and they would be these like places you never heard of and they would break like businesses and stories. You'd get these like nuggets of of information that w nobody knew. And we got David Kennedy to write a story about Dry Bar coming. That must have ran like three or four days before we opened. I remember sitting at lunch with my brother on our Blackberries, because before iPhones, and and we used to get appointment notifications. And all of a sudden we're sitting at lunch and our phones start going crazy and all these appointments start booking, and we're like We thought like they can we thought like the system was broken. We're like, what is going on? And then someone s sent us the daily candy piece and we were like

Oh my God, it's because daily candy ran today. And so Everybody started booking appointments before we even opened. And so that very first day we opened to a very, very full shop. And so That first day was bananas. I mean women were like lining up women. We were pissed because they were coming and they were like, it said you could walk in. And I'm like, We don't have any more chairs. And and I was. I was doing blowouts at the first chair and I was running the front desk and I was I mean I was I was there around the clock probably for six months before I took a day off because I just couldn't leave it. And I didn't want to leave it. It was so

Fun. So you guys were incredibly busy f like right from the beginning. So so were you making a profit in in that first year? Well Even within that first year we turned everything back into the business. So not really. You know, I mean we were barely

taking any money for ourselves and within six months we opened our second store. And it just kept going and going. H how did you scale it up? I mean obviously you had it Like a big hit on your hands. Right. So how did you begin the process of of scaling it up when you didn't have a whole lot of cash to work with. Well that was that was the challenge and that's where it was like, thank God for Michael,'cause Cam and I were like the creatives and we're like What now?

We're sort of business people. But we all knew we had something on our hands. And we used to I used to get women coming in being like Can you get these Beverly Hills women their own shop? It was like we were the cool club you couldn't get into, but that's not very cool for long, you know. So And did your husband at this point leave his job? He couldn't leave yet,'cause I wasn't taking his salary. I was like, we still needed his salary. So he was but he was still doing a lot of work. gosh, my h poor husband, he was basically working two full time jobs. And you had two kids. And we had two kids. So I it was crazy. It was such like a life flip and it was you know, we just didn't we couldn't believe how how much our lives had changed. And yeah, and then w Cameron stayed I think it was about a year and a half before he actually left his job to be able to

Take him to drive our full time. So as you started to to scale up, did you have to go uh find outside investors? So again, I had knew nothing about raising money and Michael started to say, Hey, I think I think we should franchise this'cause we had we were getting mobbed with franchise requests. I remember like we had a our first meeting with like a franchise consultant group at Cameron's office, like his big advertising office, because that's only place that we had an office. Like we could sit at a conference table. Which so that's so funny, that was so long ago. But so we started getting like our documentation in together so we could franchise. And so

I was a little like Not like super excited about franchises'cause I didn't I didn't want to like give it away is how I kinda felt about it. Yeah, I mean I mean I I would imagine that you would be freaked out that you know, uh some franchise couldn't maintain the quality that you want it to maintain. Oh yeah, it was c caught me up at night and and we we were very, very particular and about who we franchise with and made sure that they understood the importance of all of that stuff. And and like I said, there there was that fear and there still is that fear today, but it was great and it really did help

spread our name and you know much quicker than we could have if we didn't do franchising and then we're raising money at the same time. Uh your first store in two thousand ten, which is crazy. By the way, how how many locations do you have today? Sixty seven. Well sixty eight. As of tomorrow. It's pretty insane that you go from

Being a stay at home mom to running a or being a an executive at a multi million dollar Two years. How did you

Mentally make that transition. It's still so mind blowing to all of us that it took off and happened the way it has and It it's it's been such a shift and it is it it was hard and it's still hard to this day balancing it all with the kids and but I think we all kind of grew into it pretty naturally and and f we uh there's so much passion behind what we're doing and we all love it so much that There's probably adrenaline rush that It was a lot of m figuring it out as we went along, but but we did.

Do do you work more now or do you work less now than than you did when you started? It's different kind of work. In the beginning I was in the stores non stop all the time. And I I remember so well when it went from like three to five to seven stores and being like I can't be in all the stores at at one time anyway. Like I used to be able I remember we had

Brentwood, West Hollywood Palisades in Studio City, like I could hop around Those were pretty easy for me to get to store to store. And then as we started to grow

You know, I slowly but surely like started bringing in people who You know, we brought in a regional manager who kind of managed the managers, and then I managed the regional manager. And and it kind of kept going like that in that way. And now now we have This massive infrastructure now. How many people work for the company? Well there's about three thousand stylists and about about I don't know, maybe seventy, eighty people in our support center. So it's pretty massive now. And so now it's like you know, it's good and bad. I don't have to be in the wee every day which I which is kind of good. But then it's like there's days that I'm like

You know, decisions get made and things get made that I'm not involved in anymore, which I used to be involved in so much. And you know, it's like it's very hard for me to walk in stores. I walk in stores and I see everything that needs to be fixed and changed, you know, where I d I don't get to enjoy them the way most clients do. Does that not only drive you crazy, but drive the people in the stores crazy? When I come in. I think it I think it makes everybody nervous, which is still so weird to me. I'm like, Why are you nervous? But it does. And that is truly the weirdest thing and it's Courtney Art our field. director, she's like, Why don't you understand that it makes people nervous? I'm like, I don't understand. I don't think people should get nervous. What what have you learned about

You know, I mean you you didn't have a business degree, you didn't have an expert managerial experience. You weren't trained to do any of this. So what are some of like the your strengths that you learned about and your weaknesses you learned about as you had to kind of take on these roles? Well I think my strength is Th was the confidence that I knew this business really well. Nobody could tell me I didn't know this business. I knew how to treat customers, I knew how to treat stylists, I knew how to make this business work. I knew how to talk to people, I think from being in PR. You know, everything I had done. I always felt like I mean it's so cheesy, but I felt like everything like led me to this moment in my life. And I felt like I had what I needed to have to run these stores. And then there were, you know, there are things that I didn't know.

Tha that's where Michael and Cam came in and Michael knew to hire like we needed a president of retail. I was like I didn't I didn't even know that was a thing. Like I, you know, and so there was so much of like the things that I didn't know were filled in. And I think that that was one of my biggest learning experiences. You need to bring on people who know what you don't. What is I mean, a lot of people listening would say, I would never be able to m to work with my partner in a business. Like it's a really Hard, but it sounds like you guys have A really you know

functional working relationship in a great marriage. Is that is that true? I mean does it are there tension. Is there tension in running the business together? Yes. I mean there there is. I mean my husband and I is certainly a struggle and and yeah, it definitely comes with its challenges. But The good so much more outweigh the bad. And we we have especially now, we have different teams that work under us and so we don't have to like we don't work nearly as closely as we did in the beginning, but There's so much trust that you have when you're working with your husband and your brother that It supersedes everything, I think.

If I said to you You know, seven years ago when you were, you know, driving around in your Nissan ex Terra to people's homes blow drying hair. In seven years you're gonna have seventy stores all across the country and you're gonna be doing a hundred million dollars in in revenue a year. Would you be like You're out of your mind. Yeah. Yeah. Pretty much. I mean, I could not see that far down. I'm and I remember people asking us. You know, what's next for you guys? And I was like We're gonna keep opening stores and I think it was you know, the to be at sixty seven, I mean it's a mind blowing because it wasn't a premeditated like we didn't have a business plan. It wasn't like this is our goal and this is our trajectory. Like there was none of that. It was all this very

organic and we're on to something so we're gonna figure it out and keep growing it. Yeah. And it's very, very rewarding for me personally because I was like the one in the family that everyone was like Oh God, what's Ellie gonna do? And and so it's it's particularly gratifying, especially for my parents who have seen My brother and I succeed together in business, and we love that we're able to be close. on another level through the business, so it's pretty special.

Ali Webb, founder of Drybar, the company by the way is planning to expand internationally very soon into Canada and also into Europe. Allie just published a book all about blow drying hair. It's called The Dry Bar Guide to Good Hair for All. And you might not believe it if you met her or if you saw pictures of her, but Allie's hair is actually Naturally curly. I guess I should clarify you have very uncurly hair right now. Yes, well yes. But if this is like a very carefully styled Did you get that done in the last few days? Well, I am a professional stylist myself and I have been for twenty years. So I actually did my own hair this morning. I I know how to do that. Yeah, right. I built a business on that.

And please do stick around because in just a moment we're gonna hear from you about the things you're building. Hey, thanks so much for sticking around because it's time now for how you built that. And today we're gonna update a story we ran last year, and this story comes from Chris Healy of San Diego. Hello. Who, like any other entrepreneur, wanted to solve a problem. But before we get to the problem, here's a bit about Chris. My hair is blonde. It's About down to the middle of my back. So Chris and his buddy Lindsay, they're both dudes with long hair, and when I say long, I mean Brooke Shields in nineteen eighty too long, and because of this, they kept running into a problem that a lot of men with long hair face. We go to the women's hair care aisle.

And search For the hair ties that look the least girly. The struggle is real, guys. It's not a very fun experience when you have to choose the least bad option. So one day, and this was back in 2014, when Chris was driving back with Lindsay after visiting a client. It came to him. I swear it just popped out. The the words just popped out. I got it. It's hair ties. For guys.

In short. A more manly man bun scrunchie. Chris wanted a hair tie that was a little bit wider, a little more comfortable. And with some cool designs he wasn't seeing in the drugstore aisle. Everything from surfboards, lightning bolts. Martini glasses, camouflage.

Rocket launchers. Fun designs. So Chris and Lindsay thought, we've got this great idea. Let's make some hair ties. Quick and easy.

But it wasn't so simple. We started out buying our own materials, tying them off, finally got a manufacturing connection. We got the first round with our designs printed on them. Not what we were looking for. Finally probably five Samples later we finally got what we wanted and it took almost two years from the time that we had the idea until we had the product ready to sell. That was back in December of 2015. Since then, they've sold more than 30,000 packs of hair ties to customers all over the world. Their website is called The Longhairs. We truly are a lifestyle brand because having long hair is a lifestyle, it's a choice. I mean just look at DiCaprio and Brad Pitt or Harry Styles and of course David Beckham. Celebrities who have all at some point worn a man bun, which is a term Chris actually doesn't really like. So we call it a highball.

Like a fine glass of scotch. It's refined, it's dignified. And it portrays the proper respect of the fine men's hairstyle that it is. That's Chris Healy, co-founder of The Longhairs. Since we last spoke to Chris, he and Lindsay are both working full time and earning a living with the longhairs. They've also established a charity partnership to make wigs, and next year, they'll try to break the world record for the largest hair donation.

In history. And if you want to find out more about the long hairs or hear previous episodes, head to our podcast page, how I built this.npr.org. And of course, if you want to tell us your story, go to build.npr.org. We love hearing what you're up to. And thanks so much for listening to the show this week. You can subscribe at Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, and while you're there, please do give us a review. You can also write to us at hibtnpr.org, and if you want to send a tweet, it's at how I built this. Our show is produced this week by Casey Herman, with original music composed by Rumpin Aram Louie. Thanks also to Noor Kutsi, Sunas Meshkinpur, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. Our intern is JC Howard.

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