Kimmy on building girlbosses through COCOdry

05 November 2021By Elna Ismail

How would you describe COCOdry in one sentence?

Meet Malaysia’s first blow dry bar, a happy place that uplifts & makes women feel confident inside out.

What was your inspiration and motivation to start COCOdry?

I’ve always wanted to start a business that resonates with the values that I believe in – women empowerment, community building and sustainability. Starting COCOdry was really by chance. I came across ‘drybar’ from listening to the Girl Boss podcast on Spotify - which I highly recommend to any budding female entrepreneur who wants to start a business. After a year of research, I found that there was a gap in the market back home. Being able to impart those values by creating a new category in the Malaysian beauty industry is quite rewarding.

The first thing that we see when we walk into the store is the ‘coco confidence’ wall. Tell us more about that!

When I was conceptualising COCOdry, all I imagined were the big smiles on customers’ faces and walking out of COCOdry confidently ready to take on the day. Hence, we coined a term called #COCOconfident and put it on our wall!

You always take extra effort to make each customer feel special (like giving out roses to customers for Valentine’s day before!) - why emphasize on these personalised details?

That’s because we genuinely love & care for our community. It is about going the extra mile to make their day and it’s the customer experience and little things that matter in life. People may forget what you say, but they will always remember how you make them feel.

You have a recycling container with @davinesmyofficial where visitors can send in their empty shampoo and conditioner bottles to be recycled! Why is it important for you to have that container in the store?

Being a sustainable brand has always been one of our core values ever since we started! Though we are not perfect, we're striving towards being greener for the environment and we hope to do our part & use our reach for something greater & encourage more people to make a difference in the environment together.

You recently opened up your second COCOdry outlet & getting tanned at Publika. What were the challenges while opening the stores, how did you overcome them?

There were so many! From picking the ‘right’ location to MCO affecting the timeline of our plans! However from the previous 2 lockdowns, I’ve learnt to adapt fast and well, after all every crisis comes an opportunity and there’s always blessings in disguise. For instance, we were supposed to launch tanned in June & get croissant supplies from the local bakery. With the lockdown, we were able to launch our own pastry kitchen!