How Dianna Cohen, launched her haircare brand Crown Affair from a google doc that went viral

Joining me on the show today is Dianna Cohen, the founder of haircare essentials startup, Crown Affair.

Crown Affair is a company that’s reimagining hair rituals and taking a considered approach for the top of your noggin.

And this story all starts from an unassuming google doc. When Dianna decided to share her hair care routine with some women in her life - and that document suddenly went all over the internet -she saw an opportunity to innovate in a space that she had such a fond personal connection with, and bring her past industry experience in building brands for companies like Away, Outdoor Voices and The Wing into her DTC brand.

Launched pre pandemic Dianna shares the lessons she’s been learning along the way, how she approached her pitch and the importance of community and storytelling.

Please note, this transcript has been copy pasted without the lovely touch of a human editor. Please expect some typos!

Yeah, so hi, I am Dianna Cohen, I am the founder and CEO of Crown Affair, which is a hair care line focused on medical care for healthier hair. I've lived in New York for 11 years, which is where we're chatting and chatting right now. I've worked in Consumer for the last eight.

It's been quite

A journey as this world of e commerce and consumer businesses has evolved quite a

Bit.

And I yeah, I mean, I'm such a consumer nerd and I am truly a hair care nerd up of all. And Crown Affair was

Really born

From my passion of

Just taking

Care of my hair and my daily rituals and the way that you have a skincare friend who knows all of the little details. I've always been that friend with hair.

So that's really

How this journey started.

I love that, and when we were talking about rituals a moment ago, before we before we pressed play on this recording, and I was thinking to myself, brushing my hair is actually a ritual that I really love, too. I read that that you also had that. And it's something that I think is like so important that you take note of those tiny rituals that maybe hadn't considered before. But when I was thinking about rituals before and when I was reading about your brand, I was like, yeah, I actually really enjoy my moments of hair brushing as well. It's so important, but I'd never thought about it before.

It is truly one of my favorite parts of the day.

I mean, I especially

Now spending so much time at home,

All of the

Moments and structures that I have that support my

Well-being, brushing my hair

Every night, being one of them,

Even just the whole ritual

Of how I take care of myself. Shower is like a 30 minute situation with lymphatic drainage and how I oil my hair. But even in the morning, just

Like I write journal,

I do my morning pages every morning from the artist's way. I have to stretch and roll. And I

Think just being so

Aware of the things that make you feel whole is really important.

And this is one that

I was just organically sharing for so

Long.

So it's cool to like bring it into the world and see people

Respond to it and I think really

Reorient themselves around how they care for themselves. And I've been so lucky to work with a range of consumer brands over the last almost a decade that have really

Introduced,

I think, an audience to new ways to think about the way they through the world. So I love doing this every day. It's like truly the greatest gift

I get to do it.

Oh, I love that. I can totally hear it in your in your enthusiasm. I want to go back to the very beginning. I know you have a really interesting background. And like you said, you've worked for so many amazing consumer brands. So can we get back to the kind of like starting way back when where you were working, what you were doing, what was happening in your life that was kind of leading up to this year?

Yeah.

So we can take it one step back, which is where I'm from and where I grew up. Yeah, definitely. So I grew up in a really small town in South Florida called Lighthouse Point. It's like an hour north of Miami, you know, very suburban upbringing.

I played

Sports. I was a total tomboy for a long time. And sometime around eighth grade, I got like very

Into art

History and was a big Templer kid and was definitely the kid in high school who was ripping off fashion magazines and so passionate about beauty and design. And I knew that I wanted to go to New York.

I had no

Idea what I would do. I just knew that I wanted to be around creative people putting things into the world that could inspire someone like me sitting in my bedroom so far away from where the magic was being created. I came to New York and was really lucky. I do.

I had the

Opportunity to intern at a range of places in fashion. I always joke like you watch The Devil Wears Prada and you're like, I just wanna work for an the condo. But, you know, the years that I was I was in university,

Like the world changed

Quite a bit. I mean, the Internet was obviously a thing for a very long time. But I think the implications

Of how the Internet was

Changing our behavior, especially from a publishing perspective, was very clear and

Well, I'm

So grateful to have worked like every attorney for two semesters during

Like Oscar

Seasons and understanding the PR and celebrity dressing

And really like working with so

Many incredible legacy brands to understand what made them such a great foundation. But I also knew that when the time came to actually look for job opportunities,

That I just

Really loved working at smaller places and startups that had a direct impact. And not that I had the language for them,

But I had

Email just called, emailed this woman who had this beauty website that I was obsessed with.

It had like maybe

Her views on it at the time. And it was Emily Weiss when she first started into the class

And I became an

Intern for her. And this is what it was very much a one room office, that it was purely editorial free, glossy ads, but, you know, moderated the comments section, uploaded things to our social,

Transcribed

All those interviews like it was just a

Total education

In terms of storytelling. And I

Think really, Emily

Pioneered

That connection

To real women. I mean, obviously, a lot

Of the women profiled on the

Glass are incredible and fabulous women.

But, you know, we now

Live in a world where you can go to Reese Witherspoon to Instagram and see what smoothie she is making that morning. But at the time, the only access to women like that

Was through People

Magazine or very filtered through the lens

Of journalist.

And it was just so inspiring to be able to be like, oh, she's a. A span of rose water from Whole Foods, that's like eight dollars

And then the comment

Section

Was just like the gold night.

And I think that that was such

A an incredible

Shift in terms of like consumers really starting to take power and connect with each

Other. And instead of like people sitting in

Boardrooms at major companies, which is still happening and that is still across the world. But I think the last decade

Of really putting the

Power in the consumer's hands, having people like me be able to create a character line, I'm not an explorer that I've never sat in a

Boardroom like these.

This information has come from thousands of conversations and my own personal journey as a

Customer and into the glass

Was amazing. And then after that, I was really lucky to meet a woman named Eric Katz,

Who is the current

Co-founder of a supplement company called Seed.

But she is the greatest

Marketer I've ever worked with I probably will ever work with. And she really taught me everything about grassroots marketing,

Which all of those principles

I use to launch and we still use every day. We had

Our holiday

Launch yesterday and just the entire go to market strategy and thinking about all of these launches beyond just the initial launch, but all of these milestones and moments that you have a surprise that she really brought me under her wing. And she's been a mentor for my entire career. And I just kind of the rest of the career. I was lucky to launch Marmol in about five years ago as a consultant when she after selling Jimmy Choo

And really thinking

About rebranding and repositioning her as

A luxury

Consumer shoe

Company, she

Obviously has such a legacy and working with someone who made truly one of the most iconic brands of the 90s and Twins' was an education, to say the least, and was an early employee at the luggage club, the head of partnerships there,

Denyer

Partnerships.

I learned a

Ton. And actually this is why every experience matters.

I mean, at

Crownover now, we actually just did a partnership with MEANWELL, which partnerships with Violet Gray, like so many of those relationships, came from

Three and

A half years ago when I was in a way. So every opportunity really does make an impact, even if you can't see it at the moment.

And then, yeah,

I started an agency

Between leaving away

And launching Crown

Affair, which I had for

Two years

Called Levitate,

And we did Brand Strategy Consulting. We launched

Harrys, the razor

Company at our women's line Flamingo. I worked with the wing. I worked with our voices for two years on their influencer ambassador strategy and a number of other clients, mostly in L.A., New York.

And that was a really fun time.

I got to create my own schedule and work from home. So I pop into the clients offices, but I'm very much here for the like 70 30 remote an office culture. So I'm a big fan of kind of where we are today. And yeah, I launched ten months ago in January. I had no idea I would be in the middle of a global pandemic.

But I think rolling with

It and just waking up every

Day, I think, like all

Entrepreneurs, just need absolute resilience and passion. And I are so grateful I get to do this every day with my team. It's really

A joy.

Well, firstly, what a journey. Oh, my gosh. So many cool things build it in there that I'm like, oh, I want to know about this. What's she like? Oh my gosh. Cool. So many things to unpack. I really want to come back. I'm going to circle back around in a little bit about the grassroots marketing that you really learned when you were with her. So we can kind of understand better, like what you were bringing into your launches now with Crown Affair. But I kind of want to stick with the launch moment and the light bulb moment around Crown Affair. I know that you had this document that you were sharing with people and you were talking about your hair care rituals and people were always asking you about your hair. But when did it kind of switching to you thinking, hang on, maybe the agency is good for right now, but maybe I'm going to launch my own brand.

Yes, so first and foremost, when when launching levitate the agency, I always knew that I didn't want to build an agency as much as I

Love levitating

Innovators, I just I wasn't trying to build a whole team around it. So I kind of always knew that in the back of my mind, even though I was doing it in real time, there were a couple of moments. One was the Google Docs.

So I

As I

Mentioned, I like a full haircare

Nerd. I invest in quality tools and products.

I treat my hair

Like it is so like at night. So you should see my fiance laughs me like the way I position my hair on the pillow, just how I like shampoo it in the shower, like I'm so delicate with it and I and I'm mindful of it and respect it.

And not everyone was doing that.

And I would tell friends like I was traveling a lot and they'd be like, wait,

What are what are you doing? Great.

Like, why do you have this random kov or like how do you get your hair to Erdreich like that? What's happening? So I finally put it into a

Google doc, like

The 16 things that I just do. And it's not necessarily like Stass, but and it varies by week. This is what I

Brush and this is a certain

Oil that I use. And here's why it's important. I kind of wish that I didn't have this ingredient in it, but it's best when I found it, I shared it out

And it was a Sunday.

And like I said on a Friday night, that's Sunday,

I had like dozens

Of people in it. I had no idea who they were. It was like people requesting

Access there was

Commenting on it. And I was just like, this is so crazy.

How how there is

So much content. Right. You can go to YouTube and look at your tutorials or like how to get Chrissy Teigen ponytail at Coachella, but

Like nothing about

Like how to actually care for your

Hair in a way that

Felt really accessible and relatable.

And it was just so

Clear, a little guidances in this category. And then, you know, the other thing to like during when I was traveling a lot for for when I was consulting,

Like I would stay at a

Hotel and I'm like, I would never expect the hotel to have my skin care. Like, why am I doing that for haircare? You know what? I'm here for like two weeks. Like, why am I not honoring that? And really, it doesn't make a difference in how I feel and it does make a difference. So, yeah, those were kind of the two big moments.

And then, you know,

My my friend, my fiance's best friend

Is in such a

Part of this journey. He's a bioengineer and terrorist. And I actually sent him and his wife to Google doc

And they saw their

Hair transform over time after they started to take care of

It. We just started

Working on stuff. We're like, OK, can we take like our favorite two hundred dollar hairbrush

And like, reverse engineer it and like, well, can we

Make better about it and how do we find vendors that are like sustainable and can do this in a more accessible price point. And the truth is, is like the category is just a really dated, it's very Cirlot driven, it's very wholesale driven. There hasn't been a ton of innovation on the ingredient side

In the way that

Skin care and color cosmetics have be