--- title: "An Interview with Adam Ross, CEO of Heyday" url: https://burnaze.com/article/fac0c0dc-d405-4f65-9d86-37d0f332467d source: "1851 Franchise" original_url: https://1851franchise.com/an-interview-with-adam-ross-ceo-of-heyday-2715598 category: "Beauty & Wellness" industry: "Beauty & Wellness" topics: ["People"] published: 2021-04-29T07:02:05.000Z modified: 2026-11-01T02:25:58.112Z image: https://newimage.1851franchise.com/cdn-cgi/image/quality=85,format=webp,width=1280,height=720/story/featureImage/aea454d4944c6238e3458ff90224bce78301.jpg --- # An Interview with Adam Ross, CEO of Heyday **TL;DR:** Adam Ross, CEO of Heyday, discusses his background in mergers and acquisitions and the skincare industry, and how Heyday is transforming the industry with its people-centric business model. Heyday is a fast-growing skincare company with a goal to have 25 units in operation by 2022. *originally published in 1851 Franchise on 2021-04-29. [Read the original](https://1851franchise.com/an-interview-with-adam-ross-ceo-of-heyday-2715598).* ## Story Adam Ross: I was in mergers and acquisitions for a little over 12 years, focused on companies in the consumer product and retail sectors. One of my main focus areas in banking was beauty. I did a lot of work with big-name beauty and wellness brands including Revlon, Avon, Gillette, L'Oreal and Estee Lauder. Banking provided a great foundation for my career, but it ran its course for me. I reached a point where I wanted to sit on the other side of the table and be the one to help build engaging brands and businesses from the ground up. Ross: There were a couple. The first came when I learned that skincare is the second-highest daily routine in people's lives behind food and beverage, yet there is no single trusted brand. That was eye-opening. The second came when I was asking how a category that is so prevalent in millions of people's daily lives can be so disconnected from what customers want and need. Whereas a facial was once a luxury experience, today’s younger consumers view it differently. Skincare exists within a self-care category for them and they view it as an important component of their overall health. I realized that the skincare industry was ready to be fundamentally transformed in the way that Uber transformed transportation and Spotify transformed music. Skincare services are a $100 billion business, but it just hasn't really changed with the times. To this day, the category still has a very unsophisticated playbook. We’re changing that. Ross: We're focused on getting the right team together with the right set of experiences, which has really helped the business. My co-founder is Michael Pollak, who has a background in architecture, branding and design. He offers the perfect complement to my banking background because he is responsible for shaping the in-shop customer experience. Sean Bock is leading our franchising efforts and comes from a background in developing the franchise growth at Drybar for the past seven years. We also have people who have joined us from Sweetgreen, European Wax and Soulcycle, and our director of skincare is from Dermalogica. Together, our leadership team provides a well-rounded range of experience gathered from a variety of companies within the wellness industry. Ross: For one, Heyday is a people-centric business model if you consider the brand’s estheticians in addition to the importance of the physical space. Our goal is to be the employer of choice for our estheticians and to keep them happy and engaged by providing the growth and the development they require to deliver the best experience to our customers. That's hard to achieve in a company-operated model, and certainly when operating outside of your home market, which for us is New York City. That’s why we need owner partners who we are aligned with and are ready to execute and provide a superior customer experience on a local level. Ross: Being the employer of choice for estheticians is a really important difference. There are an estimated quarter of a million licensed estheticians across the U.S., but they are a reasonably unknown and certainly underappreciated employment class. Most estheticians are independent contractors working in pretty strict conditions: there are no health benefits or a consistent framework for compensation. There is no learning, growth or development available to them and these are all vitally important opportunities to have in a highly skilled craft-based trade like skincare. At Heyday, we hire team members as full-time or part-time employees, and we offer benefits for our full-time staff from day one. We have a rigorous two-week onboarding program as well as ongoing growth, development and education stipends for all members of our team. That creates teamwork and camaraderie in addition to fostering a caring work environment. Our turnover today is less than 10% annually in an industry where annual turnover is generally estimated to be between 35-50%. Ross: We just focus on facials, and we’re more affordable, relative to spas, which offer a lot of additional services that drive up the fixed costs of their business. We offer an un-intimidating aesthetic and a gender-neutral experience. We have spa chairs, not massage benches. We want our in-shop experience to feel like another home for our clients and to also create an environment that encourages customers to immediately relax. We have also created a booking and POS experience that mirrors Uber in the ease of booking an appointment: a customer can come inside without ever taking their phone out of their pocket. Everything is very seamless. Ross: The way we're training our team, the simplicity of our menu and the engagement in the shop are all driving an incredibly healthy rebooking and retention-based business. We're growing with a high number of returning clients, and 80% of new clients that come to us are either referrals from existing clients or have seen us on social media. Once clients come to us our retention rates are extremely high. Our Net Promoter score as a business is around 85, which is world-class, and something we monitor maniacally. Ross: There's no one of scale that's doing what we’re doing. We're seeing a couple of regional players with a few salons here and there but I'm not aware of very many businesses that are also expanding through franchising. Ross: We see ourselves as the number one skincare brand in the U.S. with massive opportunities for growth across the entire country. Our goal for 2022 is to have 25 units in operation and we are setting our sights on larger markets first: Dallas, Houston, Chicago, Atlanta and Miami are all targets for upcoming Heyday locations in addition to continuing to build the brand’s presence in Southern California for the next 12 to 18 months. Heyday is a fast-growing skincare company on a mission to provide expert skincare that empowers everyone to be their best self. Through a fleet of industry-leading physical stores, Heyday has made the facial experience more accessible and helps consumers achieve their skincare goals with the knowledge and care of talented estheticians. Heyday is changing how we take care of our skin redefining the future of the skincare industry for the modern consumer. ## Entities - 1851 Franchise (publication) - Beauty & Wellness (sector) - franchising (topic) - brand growth (topic) - business model (topic) - Uber (company) - Sweetgreen (company) - Drybar (company) - employee benefits (topic) - Heyday (company) - Dermalogica (company) - skincare industry (topic) --- Originally reported by 1851 Franchise (https://1851franchise.com/an-interview-with-adam-ross-ceo-of-heyday-2715598). Summarized by Burnaze (https://burnaze.com/article/fac0c0dc-d405-4f65-9d86-37d0f332467d).