Hayley Williams' Hair Dye Comeback

Business of Fashion

5 days ago

Call it 'pay to hit play.'
On July 29, the US hair colour company Good Dye Young launched a new yellow hue called Ego, plus a tantalizing promise: Buy the $19 tube of semi-permanent pigment and get a secret code for a new 17 track untitled album from Hayley Williams, the beloved indie rock star, Paramore front woman and co-creator of the brand.
Fans freaked. Sales spiked. Access codes for the (very excellent!) music hit Reddit. Five hours after the promotion was announced, there were no more tubes of Ego left on GoodDyeYoung.com, though several boxes are now available on eBay for over $120 — a 600 percent markup. The songs are gone from her website, too; in there place, a message that reads 'Thank you for listening.'
'We kind of just want to see how we can push our limits,' said Williams, who founded Good Dye Young (known to fans as GDY) with her longtime hair stylist and makeup artist, Brian O'Connor, in 2016. 'We don't want it to be a 'celebrity beauty line.' We don't even want it to be a brand, exactly. Really, we want it to be a community. But of course, we understand it's also a business.' Those who purchased the brand's new shade, called Ego, received a link to 17 new Hayley Williams songs. The product promptly sold out. (Good Dye Young)
Williams is choosing her words carefully, because Good Dye Young almost died young. When the brand hit shelves nine years ago, it relied on a big-box distribution strategy with partners Walmart and Target that current GDY president Ashley Floto said was 'choking the life out of us,' leading the brand to cough up more money than they were making on inventory costs and sales margins.
There was also the issue of brand messaging, which Williams said 'was obsessed with the Paramore of it all' at the expense of education around the product's points of differentiation. Williams admits she was humbled by how much she didn't know about the industry, though after a nine-year learning curve, she's finally seeing results. GDY is officially profitable as of this year.
'There is one thing we did right from the very beginning,' Williams shared over Zoom. 'We almost went the route of licensing and I am so glad we didn't. In my music career, I'm independent for the first time in two decades. Seeing both of these parts of my creative life come with real freedom, and feeling like we don't have to give that up, was essential.'
Williams says that her instincts navigating the rapidly changing music industry — which now prioritizes touring, sampling and single-song streams instead of album releases for revenue generation — have helped shape her brand's restructuring.
'Did I understand the beauty industry? No,' she said with a laugh. 'But I definitely understood that.'
Currently, Williams is GDY's majority stakeholder and holds two board seats. 'We have very little outside investment,' Williams admitted. 'The way this company has been funded has been mostly, 'Hey, I made some money on tour. Let me throw it back into GDY.'' Next in the line of succession is O'Connor, who has been a working hair artist since the age of 19. (As the story goes, Williams tried to dye her own hair and it began breaking off. She ran into O'Connor's Nashville salon begging for help, and they've been a glam unit of two ever since.)
'At the heart of it, I'm really a science guy,' said O'Connor. 'I want you to have a high-pigment payout. I want you to have a colour formula that will also protect your hair … I want to geek out about rice protein, even if all you care about is going pink.' O'Connor began revising the brand's product offering 'about a year ago' with a focus on professional-level pigments. He was given the green light by president Floto, along with GDY's current senior-level team, which includes veterans of Sol de Janeiro, Nutrafol and ColourPop.
'I've been dyeing my hair since I was 12. I've worked behind the chair since I was 19,' O'Connor continued. 'I only want to make formulas that are going to work.' Paint It Black (Or Pink)
Along with strict product quality controls, O'Connor is also invested in community building within the glam team community, sending DMs to fellow hair stylists and offering products for future projects. The seeding is working: In January, SZA debuted Starburst-pink streaks by Devante Turnbull, created using two shades of Good Dye Young. In April, stylist Lucas Wilson used GDY to create the striking, Trollish shade of fuschia worn by Addison Rae in her 'Headphones On' video and single art. Williams confirmed that Rae 'definitely drove sales,' and that more collaborations between GDY and culture-shapers can be expected.
'It's becoming this new thing called 'Creator Colors.' We're going to be working with different artists — certainly a lot of music artists — who have their own signature. Their colour will be theirs,' Williams said.
Meanwhile, O'Connor is championing a professional product expansion for salons and glam teams. 'I'd like to create multiple lighteners, permanent colour, demi colour, gray coverage, a spectrum of brunette, blonde and redhead [shades], more vivids — everything.' Co-founders Hayley Williams and Brian O'Connor founded Good Dye Young in Tennessee in 2016. (Good Dye Young)
Can Good Dye Young get a meaningful piece of that pie? Much like a Magic 8 Ball, industry analysts would say the outlook is 'not yet clear.' We still don't know whether music fans are buying GDY because they want yellow hair, or just exclusive music, though it's a good sign that sales spiked after Addison Rae debuted a new hue instead of a new song. What's promising is that the brand understands its promotional strategies need to work hand-in-hand with its infrastructure changes, and on that front, there's movement: GDY reformulated its products to focus on quality and closed its Nashville-based salon, Fruits Hair Lab. (The space transitioned into a new stylist-led collective called Mayday Salon Cooperative that retains some of the Fruits' staff, though GDY are no longer involved. The saga is being discussed endlessly on r/Paramore, though O'Connor and Williams told us via email, 'We are still close to the team.')
The company has also recalibrated its retail strategy, and currently counts just three stores — Sally Beauty, Amazon and Ulta Beauty — as partners, along with key salons nationwide.
These transitions have helped the brand achieve profitability. 'We've worked really hard to get there,' says O'Connor. 'And we credit Ashley for seeing our numbers, getting into weeds, and pulling them out so we could see the beautiful flowers instead of what was killing us.'
The brand is also surging ahead on social media: In June, the social listening firm Mintoiro said Good Dye Young was a top trending brand on Instagram. On July 28, the day of Williams's music release, visits to GoodDyeYoung.com increased over 850 percent.
GDY may still be a scrappy indie label, but its aspirations are bankable. Its goal for 2025 revenue is $15 million, a number the brand confirms it's well on track to meet. O'Connor and Williams have also begun the search for outside funding, which Williams says she hopes to secure within the next year.
'We've taken the past eight to 10 months and had Brian pivot the brand into the pro community in a very meaningful way,' Williams said. 'We're seeing results. We're seeing profit. And now it's time to get on a bigger stage.'
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