Two DC Women Are Trying to Disrupt the Newest Trend in Women's Hairstyling ...

If you're a guy, (like me) you've probably never given a thought to many female beauty needs or ever heard of a blow out. Becoming a growing trend in women's haircare maintenance, the blow out is quick fix for women looking for a great hairstyle from blow-dry treatment rather than a full haircut. And with that trend have grown new salons offering nothing but blow dry services. For instance, one of the more popular blow dry shops is DryBar, which has locations in Georgetown and Bethesda. But for just a temporary blow-dried hairstyle, it costs a whopping $40. Some women might be willing to pay that, but others aren't, and that's an obvious sign for needed industry disruption. Enter: blowdrynow.com.

Founded by self-described D.C. hair tech-preneuers Margo Sadow and Sarah Picot, blowdrynow.com is a web portal that aggregates information about salons offering blow outs. Sadow noted that while the hair-drying phenomenon is years old at this point, she found accessing blow dry salons as difficult and expensive, though it shouldn't be. She was visiting Santa Monica, Calif., years ago and wanted to get her hair blown out since she was close to the heart of the blow dry movement. 'It was this big production and I ended up paying way more than I should have to get my hair done,' she said. 'I came home and I told Sarah (Picot) someone needs to aggregate salons and have it by city, by zip, by price and by reviews so people, while traveling, know where to get their hair done.'

This wasn't Sadow and Picot's first entrepreneurial venture, though. These women are 'always looking to fill a need for something,' Sadow said. They had met 12 years earlier than that - Picot was Sadow's Pilates instructor and both were pregnant. 'I wanted to continue doing Pilates while I was pregnant, but there was nothing out there. And this is back when VHS was still being sold,' Sadow, who is also a documentary filmmaker, said. Picot was writing a book about just that, so Sadow quickly convinced her to adapt it into a video. 'We were the first Pilates for Pregnancy DVD in the world, really, and it snowballed into a success beyond what we had anticipated.'

Because they worked well together, they decided to further the concept as technology advanced. 'We went onto to create a whole video series with 11 videos,' Sadow said. 'They started out on VHS and quickly moved on to DVD, and then after that we decided to reformat it into iPhone apps.' The Pilates for Pregnancy app is just one of the eight apps Sadow and Picot sell on the iTunes store, but their bestseller by far.

After discovering the need to disrupt the blowout industry, Sadow and Picot initially set out to design another app. But after months and months of extensive research they decided that because of the freshness of the idea, a responsive website would be better for SEO purposes. In October, they launched blowdrynow.com. 'We really talked to salon owners and found out how they felt about all these new niche blow-dry bars opening up and taking away their regular customers during the week for these blow-dries when they have absolutely every ability to give those customers those blow dries,' Sadow said. 'They're just not marketing themselves that way.' But with a revolution led by salons like DryBar, there's a huge opportunity for any salon with the skill and some hair dryers to grow from this new market. 'It's become sort of a weekly maintenance and ritual for women, much like manicures are,' Sadow said.

In addition to making blow-dries efficient and well-marketed, blodrynow.com also aims to make the service as cheap as possible. 'What we've done is we've partnered with Paul Mitchell salon schools, where people go for their cosmetology and hair licenses,' Sadow said. 'But what those students need in order to practice is real people.' These Paul Mitchell salon schools offer heavily discounted blow-dries for the likes of $10, compared to the $45-$55 upper-tier pricing of other blow-out salon. While some women might worry about having their hair in the hands of an inexperienced trainee, it's a lot less risk than a full on haircut from a student. But this way, Sadow said,'It doesn't have to be socialite beauty maintenance - anyone can do it.'

But what might be most telling of blowdrynow.com's aim to successfully disrupt and innovate a growing market is that without them, the mainstream, male-dominated tech probably would have overlooked this need. For instance, while Sadow and Picot outsource for their software needs to integrate with the featured salons' real-time online booking of 600 salons throughout the country, they are the visionaries for this model. In fact, it took some persuading to get software companies to join in on the business model.

'I think it's always difficult getting a startup going, whether you're male or female,' Sadow said. 'But what I do think is interesting about this is that because we're female, these software companies didn't realize the jewel that they had with these hair salons and this blow dry inventory because the CEOs are all male. But we're women and we understand that quickly, a woman wants a blow dry without having to call around or wait on the phone forever and for the best price possible. We helped them understand how the technology can help women.'