International Women's Month is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate women. In honour of this special month, Irene Forte interviewed the inspiring Yulia Rorstrom.
Yulia Rorstrom is the Founder and CEO at Duck & Dry. Passionate about beauty and entrepreneurship, Yulia left her career in finance to create London's leading blow dry bar. She now boasts locations in Chelsea, Mayfair, Soho and Islington, along with a range of hair care products.
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IRENE:
I am in your lovely Mayfair salon and being a big customer of Duck & Dry, I am really happy that we get to sit down and have a chat with you. I know you had a huge career change, and you took a big leap to do this. Can you tell me a little bit about why you launched the salon?
YULIA:
Well, welcome to Duck & Dry Mayfair. Yes, it was a big leap as I am not a trained hairstylist and I don't come from the beauty or service industry. Before starting this business, I worked as a management consultant, but I do come from a very entrepreneurial family. Business talk was always around the dinner table and opening my own company was something that I have always wanted to do. As a sort of cliché, I felt there was a niche in London at the time, for a more experienced-based hairstyling destination. I think sometimes you just need to believe in yourself and pull that trigger, and so the first store on Kings Road was born.
IRENE:
And then the other ones followed basically.
YULIA:
For me, Duck & Dry was a business but also it was a way of building a brand. I have always been very passionate about marketing and branding, and I was really curious to see what a brand can allow you to do. So we started opening multiple locations, the economies of scale, building a team and training it. I was learning on the go and further on other things came into play. We created our own product line, with a collaboration between the salons, our clients and stylists, trying to build confidence and then bring it out to the end consumer. We have also got our own software, all the salon kind of CRM system. Overall, in the last eight years, I have been experimenting with the brand, with my own abilities, with the team and with the market. Sometimes you need to go where the consumer or the demand takes you.
IRENE:
Exactly, and you don't always know what is going to work or what is not going to work. You were the first and I feel like the only one to do fast blow dries here. For a busy woman like me, I love it. In the US, you could find that a lot, but in London, it is not something that really existed. I have to say, I have a lot of hair and I don't know how your team still manages to do my blow dry in 45 or even 40 minutes. Tell me a little bit about the products, the formulas, what is behind them and what your favourite one is.
YULIA:
I think hair styling is a skill in itself but in a lot of hair salons the main event is the cut or the colour while blow dries come as a slight afterthought. It is not the main service, while for us it is. With practice, you get better and more specialized, you work with different hair types, you understand clients better. In addition, the product is an essential part of this process. Even if you have the best hair and the best stylist, if you do not have the correct product, it drops quickly and doesn't last. Our products complement the skills of the stylist. I was really passionate about them as I saw myself the difference they made to my hair, the volume, the texture, how long it lasts. I think I was just curious to develop a line that could really stem from the expertise of Duck & Dry as a salon but that could also create that seamless experience, whether in salon or at home. The first product was Blow Dry in a Bottle, our all-around volume spray that took 32 formulations. We took it quite seriously because we knew that they were going to be the products we would be working with in our salons, and if they did not work effectively, there was no business. We also really wanted the products to contain natural active ingredients, be good for the hair health. We collaborated with a brilliant lab that really understood that vision. In addition, we test all the products in-house, we have our own team of stylists and regular clients that are happy to test and give feedback. Overall, the research and development part are actually quite fun, and at the end of the day coming up with product ideas is easier for us as we work with them day in and day out and we know what we're looking for. There is a lot of thought behind the product packaging and names, we wanted them to be playful but self-explanatory. We find that a lot of women still find using hair products a bit complicated or scary, there is this myth that they make your hair heavy or sticky. We are really trying to break that barrier and lift the shampoo/conditioner routine to at least include one styling product for whatever your hair needs.
IRENE:
In general, what would you say your biggest challenges have been since launching the brand?
YULIA:
I think like a lot of entrepreneurs will say, if you really truly knew, you might not do it at all. The main challenge has been the team building, running teams is difficult but at the end, you will find your own managerial style and people that come on board and stay throughout this process that are committed to the project as much as you are. Very often it is also about scaling, how to grow the brand from a single salon to the business to become an actual brand as well as managing the day-to-day operations, constantly putting out the fires. But at the end of the day when I go to a dinner party and meet somebody who is a genuine client, I still get just as excited as I did on day one. So overall, I think there are amazing ups, but as I'm sure as you know, quite a few lows.
IRENE:
I think you learn to be very resilient.
YULIA:
You for sure develop a thicker skin. The pandemic was a difficult period for services as well as Brexit and all the repercussions it had.
IRENE:
So given that it's International Women's Month and we're celebrating women, can you tell me a little bit about whether you have experienced personally any challenges being a woman in business and/or in your career in finance, which is a quite predominantly male environment.
YULIA:
Beauty is a very female oriented industry and it can very much be run by women and for women but yes, I think as a mother there is definitely an additional challenge. I have had two children in the eight years of Duck and Dry, so technically have three, and I think you just learn to juggle. I never discourage anybody from either and it is absolutely possible, it just needs a little bit more juggling and difficulties in being taken seriously in terms of fundraising investors. I guess my financial background does help me a little bit with building that confidence and being firm about it. Ultimately, I think women face their own kind of challenges and very often are connected to combining a role as a mother and running a business, which are both very challenging tasks. But I believe that we are superwomen in many respects and diving in full on often is the best recipe.
IRENE:
Do you have any advice to an aspiring female entrepreneur?
YULIA:
I think very often when people start to think about a business, they think it needs to be a brand new idea and get scared if they feel that it already exists. What I always say is that the key is not always to come up with something utterly unique but to come up with something that is better, different, or better priced. What I would say is to not feel discouraged if you believe that something already exists in the market, just think how it can be done better or differently. Overall, I think that although the research, the thought behind it, the conversations, the late nights thinking is very important, at some point it is that first step of doing it and committing to it, which is often the hardest. If it is something that you genuinely feel that you want to do, if you are passionate about the project or just passionate about owning your own business, give it a go.
IRENE:
Also, until you launch, you don't really know anything. It is from launching that you then adapt, it is never going to be perfect when you launch.
YULIA:
In fact I lot of founders of big consumer brands always say that the initial idea is rarely the final product. So, although you might be stubborn as a founder, wanting to retain the DNA of the product and brand, you have to stay agile to the circumstances, the feedback, and be open to your baby having different iterations along the way.
IRENE:
Of course. So, you are Ukrainian, and it has been and still is an incredibly difficult time, but you have done a lot to support. You launched something called Authentic UK; can you tell me a little bit about that?
YULIA:
Yes, I'm Ukrainian. My family still lives in Ukraine. Although I have made the UK my home, Ukraine is still the place I was born. The war has had a tremendous effect on me and my family. Often there were times where I felt so helpless, and I thought that the best way to cope with it was to contribute positively towards the efforts. This is why a Ukrainian stylist and I decided to set up Authentic, a fashion pop-up that we held across the Duck and Dry locations. The idea behind it that was that although Ukraine is going through such a dark time, we wanted to shine a light on the creativity of many talents that continue to work in Ukraine right now. For example, I was at a fashion show this morning of three Ukrainian designers whose teams are still based in Kiev producing and designing under quite literally air raids. We wanted to support that talent and shine a spotlight on Ukraine in a more positive outlook. Also, we felt that expressing Ukrainian culture and heritage through fashion, at the time when we are fighting for the right to exist, was something very important. We also have volunteers on the ground in Ukraine who are distributing all the funds raised directly there. It was and it still is important for me to support because it is an ongoing conflict, and it requires all of our efforts to keep up the morale.
IRENE:
The conversation is very important, to constantly remind people that it is still going on.
YULIA:
The awareness is is very important. Everybody is worried about the fatigue setting in. A year down the line, it may not be on the news as much as it was but keeping that conversation going as well as public support is very important. I think that a lot of political decisions are still driven by the electorate and the public support is also very important for the people on the ground. Ukrainians are very touched by the support they have received, that fighting spirit needs to be fed by the support of a wider community.
IRENE:
How can people donate now?
YULIA:
In all our salons, they can donate by just card terminals or cash in cash boxes. Also, for every product that is sold, 15% of it goes directly to the fund. We are also hoping to do more events and more fundraising efforts as well as actively trying to recruit Ukrainian refugees and working with the Ukrainian talent in various capacities from models to shoots. I think a lot of it is not just about pure donations but about supporting the Ukrainian economy, whether it's employing people or buying goods and services. We are trying to look at it from an all-round perspective with the intention of rebuilding.
IRENE:
Incredible, thank you for sharing that and for what you are doing. Moving on to something less serious and more shallow, but obviously you know how to look after your hair but what do you do to look after your skin? Do you have a similar ethos with skincare just as you do with hair care?
YULIA:
Absolutely. I think as as you get a bit older, you definitely start thinking about the health of your skin more. I've started using SPF. It is better late than never. I really love products within the anti-aging, anti-wrinkle categories, concerns that you start having as an entrepreneur. Of course, also using natural ingredients on the skin is just as important. Knowing the authenticity behind the product line as well as looking great on the bathroom shelf doesn't hurt. I think with skincare it is also a very emotional process. It is the scent, the feel of the product as well as the results.
IRENE:
Any favorite Irene Forte products?
YULIA:
I am and have always been a huge fan of face toners and I feel that they are hugely underrated. So your toner, the Helichrysum Toner.
IRENE:
It is one of the most popular products. It has hyaluronic acid, healing helichrysum, it is very plumping and hydrating.
YULIA:
I feel that it really helps with the pores and the skin feels clean and fresh before applying a moisturizer. Also, the prickly pear moisturiser is amazing and prickly pears have so many natural actives.
IRENE:
It's a superfood and it is also considered as the plant version of hyaluronic acid. So, it is very hydrating but also healing. It is a very good ingredient and all over Sicily, hence why I started using it.
YULIA:
I am very excited about that product in particular, and I really enjoy using it.
IRENE:
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to chat.
YULIA:
Thank you, I really appreciated it.
