Yahoo Finance Exclusive: Founder backed by Naomi Osaka and Howard Schultz raises $3.1 million to build a Drybar-like blowout chain for textured hair
Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Nita Ambani will become chairperson of the media company resulting from the Reliance Industries-Disney deal, Rep. Katie Porter (D–Calif.) faces a stark political future, and a founder builds a blowout chain for textured hair. Have a restful weekend.
- Salon experience. While Piersten Gaines was attending Harvard Business School, she started thinking about blowout bars like Drybar that promised a standardized level of service at any location. As a Black woman with textured hair, she hadn't often had that experience. "I had a lot of really terrible salon experiences throughout my life," she remembers. "When I learned about these blowout bars where people could just walk in and trust that no matter whose chair they sat in, they were in good hands—I had never had any experience like that."
She came up with the idea for a chain of blowout bars designed for textured hair. She pitched it to Shark Tank investor Kevin O'Leary during a class presentation and received good feedback. After graduating, she decided to turn the idea into reality. "It just made sense to me that if we could do the same thing for people with textured hair, it would be a really great business model," she says. Her salon chain Pressed Roots started with popups in 2018 and now has three locations in and around Dallas with two more locations outside the city on the way.
Gaines has raised $3.1 million in funding, Fortune is the first to report. Pressed Roots' investors include tennis star Naomi Osaka, former HP CEO Meg Whitman, and former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz's Schultz Family Foundation. Gaines connected with several angel investors through another backer, the firm Slauson & Co.
Gaines says that investors were impressed by her pinpointing of an underserved market and the devotion of her customers to their hair. "People weren't going to get their hair done [during COVID]. But our demographic was. Even if they don't have anywhere to go, this demographic needs to get their hair done," she says. "What resonated with [investors] was that this demographic shows up and they spend a lot of money."
Pressed Roots specializes in the silk blowout, priced at $75. The salon experience is standardized, with hairstylists completing the chain's own training program and working as employees rather than independent contractors. "We spend a lot of money, a lot of time in salons, and the level of services just do not match the money that we're spending," Gaines says. "Our goal is to make quality haircare accessible."
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
The Broadsheet is Fortune's newsletter for and about the world's most powerful women. Today's edition was curated by Joseph Abrams. Subscribe here.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
