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The Entrepreneurs
‘When you’re winning, change your game’: Hair raising success rules from Oribe co-founder Daniel Kaner
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- [00:00]
Daniel Kaner
Foreign.
- [00:12]
Tom Edwards
Hello and welcome to the Entrepreneurs on Monocle Radio. The show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. Today's show is about the business of scent. First we'll meet the co founder of a luxury hair care line whose much celebrated signature fragrance has created something of a cult following.
- [00:33]
Daniel Kaner
I want it to smell like I crawled into a Birkin bag and died. I want it to smell like red lipstick, tobacco, fashion and sex.
- [00:45]
Tom Edwards
And later we'll meet the founder of the world's first alcohol free, 100% pure and natural designed to be layered perfume.
- [00:54]
Arpit Kaushik
It goes against the grain, against the convention of the perfume industry in every aspect from the composition to the packaging to the weights built.
- [01:05]
Tom Edwards
This is the Entrepreneurs with me. Tom Edwards, You're listening to the Entrepreneurs. Daniel Kaner is the co founder and president of Oribe Hair Care, a luxury professional brand that he launched in 2008 alongside the late legendary hairstylist Oribe Canales. With a background at Aveda and Bumble, Daniel's known for building creativity led, values driven brands that scale globally while staying rooted in craft, culture and community. Monocle's luxury markets editor, the always well coiffed Brenda Tuohy caught up with him in London to discuss the importance of detail in product development, how the brand crafted its signature scent and the decision to sell the company to a Japanese corporation. Daniel began by telling Brenda about his philosophy of gratitude in life and in business.
- [02:04]
Daniel Kaner
I do feel like we're extremely lucky and through the journey I oftentimes will in the form of gratitude. Sit down. People will hear me say often we are really lucky. I am really lucky. And I do say that every morning as I'm sitting and looking at something Beautiful with my 21 year old dog, Mrs. Jezebel. Ms. Jezebel, the little poodle my daughter wanted, we didn't want. My wife surprised us with Jezebel and it's been one of the supreme loves of my life. I love that little dog and I didn't even. I never had a dog before.
- [02:39]
Brenda Tuohy
There's nothing like the love of an animal.
- [02:42]
Daniel Kaner
Fantastic.
- [02:43]
Brenda Tuohy
Yeah. Glorious. Daniel, before we talk about building a global beauty brand, tell us about the first moment you realize that hair could be a serious business opportunity rather than simply a service.
- [02:57]
Daniel Kaner
No one wants a bad hair day and you have beautiful hair.
- [02:59]
Brenda Tuohy
Listen, a bad hair day, we were just discussing that, that hair is integral. If your hair isn't right, nothing is right.
- [03:07]
Daniel Kaner
Well, I think that's the, that's the thing is everyone, or most people do they have hair and Everyone wants a great hair day, and most people don't know how to do it. I was lucky to have started in the business with Aveda, and I worked very closely with the founder of Aveda, Horst Reichelbacher. And then I was invited to be a partner at Bumble and Bumble. So I spent a lot of time in salons with consumers, and you see how serious they are about hair. And then the really good stylists train extensively. They're constantly training. We at Orbe have an academy in Copenhagen and all throughout the world, and we've got educators in almost every language who are in 42 countries now. So we're constantly kind of teaching kind of master classes in hair. So how did we know, you know, every product range was represented at the best level except hair? So you could find beautiful color cosmetics, you could find skin care, you could find fine fragrance. But professional hair care lived in the professional world. And there was a great deal of channel conflict. So you couldn't take professional hair care out of the salon. It was no longer professional. So a lot of hair care was sold in salon and sold in mass. And we wanted to create a pillar or a standard in great. Well, you can't just say, I want to be great. It can't be a matter of price. It can't just be a matter of design. So we said if we were to look at all the details, say that all the details matter, from the spray patterns to the formulations to the fragrance, to the packaging, if we could get close to all of that, maybe we would have a chance of getting there on that journey. And that's what we did. We said all the details have to matter. And that was our approach.
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Brenda Tuohy
Poor Bay sits at an interesting crossroads between fashion, beauty and luxury. Was that positioning deliberate from the start?
- [05:08]
Daniel Kaner
Absolutely. I mean, to see Orbe, who was such a cool guy, he was so, so involved in fashion. And so in the beginning, we'd hear ourselves saying, we're a fashion brand, not a beauty brand, not a hair care brand, because it was so much about fashion, hair, makeup, the culture of and getting the look. And so it was quite intentional, and it still is today, the way that we look at it.
- [05:37]
Brenda Tuohy
How did you come up with the fabulous fragrance at Orbe?
- [05:42]
Daniel Kaner
Oh, I'm glad you. I'm glad you bring that up. It's quite a story. Under the idea or the guise that everything matters, we. Orbe had wanted a perfume, and he worked a lot with Jennifer Lopez in his early days, I guess from his later days, her early days and she was always. She read the gutter credits of the fashion magazines and she said, if I ever get my shot, I want that guy to do my hair. And then Sony Records called him and said, hey, we've got a new artist. Would you come down and do a cover? Try? And they were together for a very long time. And he said when Ms. Lopez would leave a meeting, her. Her fragrance was through the room. You could smell it in the room. He said, that's clapped. He had a log snapper. He snapped his finger and said, that's what we're after. So we went to my friend at Givaudan and we were kind of snuck in this beautiful room where someone like Mr. Tom Ford probably would go, or Mr. Leonard Lauder or Mr. Marc Jacobs. We pitched our idea and our perfumer said, what does Orbe smell like? And we didn't know because we had never done a brand before. So she was very gracious. She gave us each a notebook and we sat down and Orbe was writing the story out. So she came back in and, you know, Orbe stood up and said, orbe, what does it smell like? What's the story? And in his kind of gravelly voice, he said, I want it to smell like I crawled into a Birkin bag and died. I want it to smell like red lipstick, tobacco, fashion and sex.
- [07:14]
Brenda Tuohy
That's wonderful.
- [07:17]
Daniel Kaner
So we knew, we knew where to go with that one.
- [07:19]
Brenda Tuohy
I mean, it's alluring, it's sexy, it's powerful. The brand began in salons, but now has a global presence. How did you decide when it was the right moment to expand beyond the professional hair care world?
- [07:32]
Daniel Kaner
We did right from the beginning, but we. We stayed curated with some of the best salon owners in the world, and that was really the point of expansion. We found some and it was great. They had a. Believed, they had education within their salons. They really believed in a beautiful future with beautiful hair and precision. Those were the people that we love to partner with. So we're broadly distributed in the right places, but we're very selective with some of the salon partners and the retail partners that we do business with.
- [08:04]
Brenda Tuohy
Do you think that through social media or other channels, that the consumer now is better at doing their own hair? And did that enable you to take your products, not just sell them in salons, to sell them in specialty stores?
- [08:20]
Daniel Kaner
I think so. I think way back in the day, I remember coming to the UK and I remember going to Space NK for the first time when it was just starting out in Soho and Nikki had like, I think 30% products and 70% clothing. And it had all the kind of indie brands and things. And I think they used to call their consumer like product junkies, like those that really were into it. And there's a lot of people that are into beauty, both men and women and young people that are really good at it. Right. They're really good at doing their hair, doing their makeup, sense of personal style. And they're a little bit more interested in. I do think we're in a time now where, you know, we're going to be working a lot later maybe than our parents did because we're young and look at you.
- [09:07]
Brenda Tuohy
And I'm never giving up.
- [09:08]
Daniel Kaner
Exactly right. And vibrant. So I think, and it's a time of such great personal style that people are kind of doing their thing. So I think beauty is really important today. And I think longevity and people are into plastic surgery, people are into, you know, all sorts of things. I think the low hanging fruit is definitely getting your hair right, getting your makeup right, getting your grooming right. And the man, he has really come into the market with a vengeance.
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Brenda Tuohy
Hairdressers often have an incredibly close relationship with clients. What does that teach us about trust and brand loyalty?
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Daniel Kaner
What I've learned in business is that when you're building a team, you've got to build trust with the team. And through trust comes comfort. And once you have that, you can do anything you need to do. And you think about the consumer having such trust with their hairdresser is unbelievable. When you talk about when digital started to become really important, people said that they have engagement. I used to look at them saying, by someone putting a like on your screen, that's not engagement. Engagement as a hairdresser with their client, like, do anything to me. Tell me everything about your family. That's deep engagement.
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Brenda Tuohy
Where do you see the most interesting innovation in beauty right now? Formulation, sustainability or perhaps the way brands connect with culture?
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Daniel Kaner
You know, for us, I think we've been paying attention to, you know, an audience that's somewhat narrow. A lot of us in beauty. I think today the exciting thing, our journey is to broaden the audience. All hair textures, all people kind of within our beauty journey. I do think that the market's very interesting in longevity, very interested in kind of the medicalization of everything. So as we're working longer, as we're aging more beautifully, anything that can help us do that is, I think, something that's going to be very popular.
- [11:03]
Brenda Tuohy
If you were launching a beauty brand from scratch today, knowing Everything, you know, now, would you do it differently?
- [11:12]
Daniel Kaner
No. You know, I thought about this question a lot, and I think, you know, you're always going to have problems with partnerships. You're always going to have aberrations in the market. You're always going to have supplier and supply chain challenges. What I would do is very similar. I'd look for great people, you know, to get, you know, on our bus. As Jim Collins would say in good to great, the best people on. I would develop a culture that is shared. I would find something that is needful in the marketplace. I would try to do it the very best that you can do it. I would be married to the idea of value creation, where everyone walks away feeling like a winner and everyone walks away feeling really good about it, bringing value.
- [11:56]
Brenda Tuohy
It does sound like a winning combination, truthfully, that everybody's involved and everybody's getting something out of it and putting something.
- [12:03]
Daniel Kaner
It feels good. It feels like you want to be part of that organization that you said
- [12:08]
Brenda Tuohy
earlier, Daniel, that, you know, one mustn't become complacent. You have a rule about when things are going really well and the momentum is really rolling along. What is it that you say that one must do?
- [12:21]
Daniel Kaner
Yeah, I got it from a book by James Kerr, and the book was called Legacy. And he talks about the importance that when you're at the top of your game, change your game. So this idea of moment, momentum, and so often when we're having success, you know, we think, okay, we're going to hit our numbers or the markets embraced it, and we sit back with our cigar or whatever we're into these days, it provides a certain cover to innovate. The success of the momentum gives you the opportunity to go back in and do more, try something different, and you just continue with that cycle. And so often in American business, I can't speak as well about business here, is that, you know, we squeeze all the juice out. We're not thinking about planting new lemon trees or blending our lemon tree with our avocado tree and coming up with something new. And that's really the interesting cycle of business in life. You know, I'm always thinking about my garden when it's in full bloom. What more do I want to do? You know, you can always see that.
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Brenda Tuohy
Yeah. To keep the flowers blooming.
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Daniel Kaner
Yeah.
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Brenda Tuohy
For a few.
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Daniel Kaner
Keep it interesting. Don't want to be the biggest. Just want to be interesting.
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Brenda Tuohy
And I suppose you need to be challenged. We all do. Or if life becomes a little dull. Yeah, I. I feel the same way. I feel the same way. I'm glad to be on board. What have you learned about scaling a luxury beauty brand internationally while still maintaining its sense of exclusivity?
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Daniel Kaner
Again, not all press is good press, not all press is good press, and not all sales are worthy sales. And by virtue of trying to make sure that we've got the right curator, you know, the right store, the right salon, the right belief system, it created this kind of natural flow of curation for us. So it wasn't just the opportunity to come sell our product in the stores, who will love it, who will nurture it. And it's also very important to have the right type of organization and team that have similar beliefs to make sure that they can keep the culture of sales, the culture of relationship moving in the right direction.
- [14:26]
Brenda Tuohy
You eventually sold the company to a Japanese corporation. What made that partnership right for the next chapter for Orbe?
- [14:34]
Daniel Kaner
That's an excellent question. Because sometimes sales are not the best thing because we, we were not done. So, you know, a lot of salon owners funded our business. There were these people that kind of handed over a check because they believed in me, they believed in the team, they believed in the brand. We promised an exit strategy at some point, so we knew we had to sell it at some point, but we weren't done yet. So we had to find, I guess you use the term strategic. And I knew this company and they had this great color brand called Goldwell, but they didn't have an Orbe. And I thought if you had Orbe and you had Goldwell, you could compete at the very highest level in that channel. And so I knocked on their door, I had some friends there and they agreed and they kept me on. I mean, I've been there for. This is. I've been there for 8.3 years now since the sale.
- [15:28]
Brenda Tuohy
Okay, so you're definitely doing it right. And what do you think is the buzzword? What is it that people want right now from not just from Oribe, but from hair products really? I mean, have you got something new in the pipeline?
- [15:43]
Daniel Kaner
Well, it's confidence, right? It's feeling like I look good, I can hold my hair up. I mean, the world kind of beats us down a little bit. We're in, you know, it's been complex times for a while. So fit. And if we can have a little bit of self confidence, I think, I think that's the most we can hope for. So we're feeling good about it.
- [16:01]
Tom Edwards
That was Daniel Kainer, the president and co founder of oribay Hair Care. You can find out more by heading to oribe.com. You're listening to the entrepreneurs. Arpit Kaushik is the founder of Dilly House, a London based small batch artisanal perfume brand which is with a remarkable origin story. After a life changing cycling accident in 2022 left him with a brain injury, Arpit was advised to avoid alcohol entirely, even on the skin. Discovering that no high quality alcohol free perfume existed, Arpit set out to create one. The result is Prem Rouge, a water based 100% natural fragrance duo designed to be worn alone or layered. Arpit stopped by Midori House to discuss the challenges of starting a new product category, Personal Resilience and the creative process. He began by telling me what he thinks makes a great fragrance perfume.
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Arpit Kaushik
As such, it's a very personal choice. So what works well for one doesn't work for the other. Because each one of us like our thumbprint, we have an olfactory blueprint as well. So the only way I would say to test whether a perfume is good or not is whether it fulfills its objective as defined in the breeze. So in our case it was bring about the feeling of calm and ease, the concept of gentle moments and of course love. That's the central theme of the perfume.
- [17:39]
Midori House
Now you say it's personal and I guess the very origin story actually of Dilly House is profoundly personal for you. And it's interesting we talk about eureka moments here that lie behind the creation of great businesses and actually the story of Dilly House begins from a really challenging circumstance. Let me ask you a bit about that because for founders, business is always personal, but this is uniquely. So tell me a bit about what happened actually sort of before Dilly House began.
- [18:07]
Arpit Kaushik
Yeah, so I'd spent 20 years plus in tech and I was running a tech startup. We just started and had a couple of big names as clients. Then in February 2022, I was cycling back after meeting someone over coffee. Someone opened their car door without looking, hit me. As I was cycling past, I went flying, landed on my head. I was wearing all this gear, a high vis jacket and a helmet. But since I landed on my head, I had multiple seizures and air ambulance coma and statistically I shouldn't have survived that. 89% people in that state D 7% survive in a vegetative state and only 4% go on to make a recovery. And off it's actually only 2% without severe neurological deficit. So I don't know how but I managed to beat the odds. But brain injury, it's a lasting Thing you just learn how to manage it, it doesn't go away. So the neurologist said, no more alcohol. Giving up drinking, easy peasy. But giving up perfumes, which are 70 to 90% alcohol, that was difficult. I went around looking for Alcoh free perfumes, couldn't really find anything that I liked. And plus, because water and oil don't mix, you don't have alcohol free perfumes in a spray format. So couldn't find anything myself, thought, let's,
- [19:34]
Midori House
let's do something about it. Isn't it amazing? So many of these, the innovators we talk to on this program and just in Monocle's world generally, it's that moment of saying specifically what I needed, specifically what I wanted wasn't there. So I thought, right, so you've had that moment of, well, terrible luck, misfortune, serendipity, good fortune, a confluence of events, the decision is made, right, I'm going to do it. What does then that next phase look like? Because I think if people explore Dilly House the brand now, hopefully they can actually engage with the products as I've been fortunate enough to do. But to check it out, they'll see it's beautifully realized, very coherent vision. How do you go from that in the abstract to delivering that in a relatively short period of time?
- [20:22]
Arpit Kaushik
When I started, you wouldn't have ever placed your bets on me. I was not from the industry, I didn't have any network, I'd never built a commercial grade perfume before. I was going about this on my own and I was bootstrapping this without any external investment. So all odds stacked against me. But I don't know, one door opened and then the other door kept on opening. So first was deciding the technology that okay, we want an alcohol free perfume in a spray format. So then discovered this French technology called water plant emulsion, which allows water and oil to be dispersed together and that's what makes alcohol free perfumes in spray format possible. So chose the technology. And then he introduced me to a few master perfumers whom I had conversations with. The one we finally found 10, 15 minutes late of our conversation, I knew she's the one. She just totally got our brief.
- [21:19]
Midori House
Let me ask you more about that.
- [21:20]
Tom Edwards
Why?
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Midori House
Was it because you struck up a great rapport? Was there some key words or key notion that you'd maybe struggled to communicate to someone else that she seemed to understand? How could you be that confident in just a few short minutes?
- [21:32]
Arpit Kaushik
Yes. So most others, they had a very technical or very functional view of making A perfume. She was the first one who asked me about what you want people to feel, what journey you want them to be on. And I was like, okay, we are on the same wavelength. And she calls herself a creative explorer, she and her colleague who actually teaches perfumery. So yeah, it was a perfect team. One of our master perfumers, she doesn't speak English and I don't speak French, but regardless of that, we communicated really well.
- [22:05]
Midori House
So the language of fragrance was shared by both of you. And tell me a bit about the model because. So this was the origin of Prem Rouge, which debuted in October, of course. So it's all natural alcohol free, but it's not just about that. I guess the model is a little different. You have this limited, these limited sets. There's a scarcity, which obviously is a draw. Tell me about how do you decide where in the market you pitch that? How do you balance scarcity with commercial imperatives and this kind of thing? How did you formulate your sort of structural business approach as well?
- [22:40]
Arpit Kaushik
Yeah, so the first thing is that what we ended up building is what I tell people. It's the anti perfume because it goes against the grain, against the convention of the perfume industry in every aspect, from the composition to the packaging to the way it's built. Yeah, we chose the technology, we chose the master perfumer who started work on the formulae. We then started designing the packaging again, someone I met at Do Whales. And then I started exploring, you know, suppliers for each of these products. And then I realized that the whole supply chain is set up against micro brands. They all operate in scale, they have minimum order quantities. So I went from supplier to supplier trying to get the minimum, minimum order quantity that they can provide. Plus the other thing was all the labeling. So we chose to do it ourselves. And I reasoned out I can't personally label more than 729 sets because each set is two bottles.
- [23:44]
Midori House
And a couple of quick questions I know you're super interested in, in the layering of fragrances. And again, this is an industry which is skewed to work for bigger players, but it's also quite prescriptive. This fragrance, this fragrance, choose the one you're interested more in, what happens at the intersections. What about a bit of this and a bit of that? Tell us how unusual that attitude actually is in this space.
- [24:07]
Arpit Kaushik
Actually, this. This is the world's first alcohol free, 100% pure and natural, designed to be layered perfume. When I wrote the brief, I wanted it to be 100% natural. And the other thing was those who love perfumes, they know expecting one perfume to do the job all day long, it's a tough ask. So they normally layer their perfumes. I used to do that as well when I could have used alcoholic perfumes. So the brief was okay, it has to be layerable. And I knew that the rose and tuberose combination works very well. So, yeah, that's why we chose the layering concept. And you may find natural perfumes, you may find alcohol free perfumes, you may even find individual bottles like Jo Malone, for example. You can mix and match different perfumes and they all layer well together. But yeah, none have all these three together. And most people, they experiment that, okay, does this work with that or we know that these notes, they are in work in harmony with each other.
- [25:15]
Midori House
I love it. And I like this meeting of instinct and feeling with, yeah, clear fascination with this sort of almost academic rigor of these processes. And I think if people enjoy the products, they'll really get a sense of how that's all come together. Just tell me maybe finally, what are the challenges now? An amazing origin story. So thoughtful. And I said, I think it's a really, really, they're really great products. What are the challenges that you're facing currently? It's kind of smallish batch, so I guess that has some challenges. But tell me, you know, with your founder's hat on, what kind of preoccupies you day to day in terms of what's happening next?
- [25:51]
Arpit Kaushik
A senior marketing person told me that you don't have a product problem. It's a very unique product that no one else makes. You don't have a brand problem because even though you are new, but you have a fairly okay brand story. You don't have an operations problem because that's your strength and you've managed to launch this within a year. That your biggest problem is what he called distribution. Getting people to know that you exist and then trying out and eventually becoming customers. So I think that's the biggest thing on my mind. How do we get people to be aware about us? And then the other thing is that perfume, people would like to experience it before committing. Now the way we've designed a model is that every perfume comes with a sample. You sample that first if you like it and seal the box and keep it if you don't, send it back. So that's the model. But people do really want to smell the fragrance. And when we participated in fairs, we saw firsthand how it made them feel. So with a product that demands that physical experience, trying to Sell it. Selling it online. That's the other challenge.
- [27:06]
Midori House
Final thought, what are you most excited about? I guess we keep describing this as a journey. It really does feel like that the next steps are always exciting. But what are you kind of looking forward to the most? Are you already setting yourself more challenges personally and as a business leader to push this thing forward? Forward. How does, how do you look towards the future?
- [27:22]
Arpit Kaushik
Yeah. Firstly, this is a very personal project. I know that after the accident, everything in my life was collapsing, from relationships to career to finances to relationships, health, of course. But there's one thing which gave me meaning, purpose and hope, which was building Dilly House. It takes a year to build a perfume. Someone told me that and I was like, hey, no, I can do it in half the time. One foot the cost. And a year later I'm like, okay.
- [27:49]
Midori House
He was right.
- [27:50]
Arpit Kaushik
So we've already. Even before the batch 001 was launched, I'd written the brief for the next one, batch 002. And we just invited some of our early customers to a co creation session where we sampled the first trials of batch 002. So that's what's next. And then other products for other senses.
- [28:15]
Tom Edwards
That was Arpit Kaushik, the co founder of Dilly House. And since Arpit stopped by Midori House, Dilly House has been awarded B Corp certification. You can find out more about the business and the amazing journey it's been on by heading to Dilly House. And that's all for this episode of the Entrepreneurs. We'll be back at the same time
- [28:44]
Midori House
next week to programs produced by Laura
- [28:46]
Tom Edwards
Kramer with audio editing by Jack Dewars. Listen again and find out more about the show@monocle.com that's where you can subscribe to Monocle magazine and ensure you read more about better businesses every month. You can also follow us and catch up with the archive of past programs wherever you get your audio. If you'd like to get in touch with the show, do email Laura. You can find her on on LRK@monocle.com. i'm Tom Edwards. Goodbye and thanks for listening to the entrepreneurs.