How Crown Affair’s CEO took the brand into Sephora and beyond to capture more of the hair-care market

This year, the brand aims to do around $30 million in revenue, up from $20 million last year. 

And one of the people who has been instrumental in helping Crown Affair hit bigger and bigger milestones is Elaine Choi, who joined the company shortly before its launch as its founding president and COO. Recently, Choi was elevated to CEO, and she joined the Modern Retail Podcast to talk about her vision for Crown Affair this year. 

Dianna Cohen is the founder of Crown Affair. The company’s goal is to help people redefine their relationship with their hair and build new hair rituals with high-quality basics, like “the oil” and “the dry shampoo.” Many of the Crown Affair’s customers were introduced to the brand through Cohen’s videos on TikTok and Instagram, where she has amassed tens of thousands of followers, and shares everything from hair-care tips to behind-the-scenes looks at product development. 

“[Cohen is the] creative, visionary founder, and she needed an operator to come in and work with her and launch the brand,” Choi said. “So we got connected through a mutual friend. … It was just, like, an instant kismet connection.” Choi ended up joining the brand four months prior to launch, moving from her hometown of Los Angeles to New York to work on Crown Affair. 

In the more than five years that she’s been with Crown Affair, Choi has been responsible for the operations side and, overall, making sure the brand is moving where it needs to go. Choi, a former cross-country athlete, likened the process to preparing for a race.  

“You know where the finish line is, but how are you setting those milestone markers to keep you going?” she said. “I remember I would practice for a race, and there was always, like, a tree at the one-mile mark. And I was like, ‘OK, cool. So I just have to get to that tree in this amount of time, and then I’m on track.’ And that was kind of like the beginning stages [of building Crown Affair].”

Now, as CEO, Choi said she’s focused on a few key markers: helping the brand grow through increased distribution as Crown Affair launches in more Sephora stores, honing in on what marketing tactics are working, and keeping Crown Affair’s employees happy and focused as the business continues to evolve. Here are some highlights from the conversation, edited for clarity and length.

Bringing the brand to life 
“I love planning and strategy, and Dianna knows I love Post-It notes. Knowing that we wanted to launch in January 2020, we were thinking of anything and everything we needed to do for it to be a successful launch. And [my role] was just looking across everything, [including] marketing and ops. … And it was like, ‘What do we want to accomplish within the next year?’ And this is where Dianna has such clear vision. She was like, ‘I want to be in Goop, I want to be in Violet Grey, and I want to be in Sephora,’ because we all know what Sephora means for a beauty brand. And I just love coloring in the lines. So for Diana to set that framework for me, I was like, ‘okay’OK, cool, what do we need to do to be able to hit those milestones?’ You will learn that I love analogies. I was a cross-country runner. So for me, it’s very much like running a race where it’s like, you know where the finish line is, but how are you setting those milestone markers to keep you going?  I remember that I would practice a race, and there was always, like, a tree at the one-mile mark. And I was like, ‘OK, cool. So I just have to get to that tree in this amount of time, and then I’m on track. And that was kind of like the beginning stages. And now we’re just checking things off one by one, and making sure that we’re getting close to where we want to go.”

Lessons from Crown Affair’s Sephora launch 
“We were like, ‘We’re going to bring this zen, beautiful brand that’s all about taking your time and ritual into Sephora.’ And we launched in Sephora. We forget that we know the brand really well, but no one knows what Crown Affair is. So instantly, we went in store, and one, Sephora is a very loud environment, so to have something quiet and minimal is not going to stand out. And then the second thing we learned was that, when people don’t know what your brand is, they’re literally asking, ‘What is Crown Affair? Is it even a hair-care brand?’ … Someone was shopping our shelf, and we had our oil, which is called The Oil, on the shelf, and someone asked if it was face oil. I was like, OK, we have a lot of work to do to educate the customer on not only what the brand is, but also to assert ourselves as a hair care brand.” 

Priorities as CEO 
“On the distribution side, we’re really focusing in and doubling down on Sephora. We have some pretty massive expansion this year, and so that’s my main priority. Also, last year focused on doing a lot of testing, in terms of marketing, so we saw what worked and what didn’t. And, as we build in more efficiency toward profitability, we’re leaning into what’s working on the marketing side. And then my third priority is team. There are so many people on our team that have been with us from close to the beginning — so we’re just making sure that they’re happy. We’re going through some pretty big shifts, especially as we scale. So we’re ensuring we’re staying close to them and making sure they feel they have the resources they need to be supported and grow and to be able to hit their metrics.”