How Kate Assaraf Created Luxury Salon-Quality Hair Care Without the Plastic Waste

In this inspiring episode of Wonder Boldly, host Christine Santos sits down with Kate Assaraf, founder of Dip Sustainable Hair Care, a plastic-free haircare brand that rivals the performance of prestige salon products, without a single bottle of waste.

From endocrine disruptors in plastics to surfing with conditioner bars, Kate shares the deeply personal story behind Dip, including the research that sparked her mission, the rigorous product development process (over 40 iterations), and her refreshing take on slow growth, sustainability, and community-first marketing.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, a conscious consumer, or a haircare junkie, this episode is packed with lessons on building a values-driven brand that solves real problems, while keeping things fun and playful.

Episode Highlights:

00:00 Meet Kate Assaraf, Founder of Dip, trail runner, and sustainability advocate
02:00 How a book about raising boys led to a deep dive on plastics and endocrine disruptors
04:00 How Kate’s own shower exposed the hidden challenge of going plastic-free—luxury shampoo bottles she couldn’t quit
07:00 The challenge of creating a high-performance bar for salon brand lovers, not just eco-conscious consumers
09:00 Understanding your true customer and why Dip isn’t for everyone
10:00 Obsessing over your product, how Kate’s love for hair guided product development
12:00 Real-world use cases, runners, nurses, ocean lovers, and those who shower daily
13:00 Saving $500 a year and ditching non-recyclable conditioner bottles
14:00 Dip’s cult following in the surf community, and how it won’t melt in your beach bag
16:00 "If you don’t live your own product, it’s very hard to sell"
19:00 Kate’s philosophy on community, accessibility, and human-first entrepreneurship
22:00 Shop small, how to find Dip in a local store near you or online
23:00 Final thoughts on purpose, sustainability, and building a happy business

Find out more: 
Website: https://dipalready.com/
Find a Local Small Business selling DIP: https://dipalready.com/pages/store-locator
Instagram and TikTok: @dipalready

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to another episode of Wonder Boldly. Today I am so excited and truly honored to have Kate Assaraf with us today. She is the founder of Dip Sustainable Hair Care, which aims to playfully educate people about the environment while encouraging them to buy better, buy less, and shop small. So obviously when I heard of her and her product, I reached out to her and asked her to be on the podcast because that's what we're all about here. She has been featured in Allure, Cosmopolitan Magazine, and in 2020 she was named Woman of Courage, 

Christine Santos: Celebrating female leaders who think big, confront challenges head on and never ever take the well worn path, which I also think is so interesting. When she isn't behind the scenes branding or climbing trees with her two little boys, you can [00:01:00] find her trail running, skiing, or surfing, and leading a genuinely eco-conscious life to help protect earth's natural playground for future generations.

Love all of that so much. Thank you Kate, so much for being here. 

Kate Assaraf: Thank you for inviting me here. I feel very honored to be invited and then when you read the bio, it feels a little out of body, so thank you. 

Christine Santos: Thank you. So there's a couple of things right in there that I wanna hit on, but before I do that and I get all excited, tell us how and why you developed Dip and I think the conditioner bar was something that was really part of the sort of the foundation, but I'll let you tell the story, but I find that so interesting where we find a need in the market and then we go after that. So tell us a little bit about that story. 

Kate Assaraf: The story starts around 10 years ago when I was pregnant with my first son.

I was reading this book and it talked about. It [00:02:00] was called Boys Adrift, and my brother had given it to me my older brother who already had two sons. And it was like, how to raise a son that ends up being productive. And what's changed in raising boys? it wasn't something I would normally pick up for myself, but my brother gave it to me and I was like, okay, I'll read this.

And you know, it talked all about how kids don't spend a lot of time, boys don't spend a lot of time outside like hunting with their fathers anymore and reading nature signs. It talked about how video games kind of, let boys feel this primal dopamine hit that you'd normally get from accomplishing something, but instead they're just sitting in a chair.

And then one of the things that they talked about was endocrine disruptors and specifically plastics. And the author who's a pediatrician he said that someone kind of tugged on his sleeve and talked about plastics being a problem for children and, boys. And what he said was he went down this rabbit hole and found this study where plastic runoff from a factory was running into a river and it was making the [00:03:00] male fish lay eggs, which is cra like, if you've ever been in any kind of science or anything, like things aren't supposed to evolve that quickly and biology isn't supposed to change like that. And it's one of these things that there I was pregnant basically incubating a boy.

Drinking out of plastic water bottles few of them a day. Like just ingesting. And I lived in New York City at the time, so I went down my own rabbit hole and saw that eating hot foods and takeout containers was like bad for pregnancy and just, those connections were being made a long time ago.

Now, fast forward 10 years later, this has become a big topic of conversation. But in between these 10 years, everyone has been focusing on accumulation of plastic, you know, but not really the plastic accumulation in the oceans and then in being shipped off to other countries.

And so with all of that information, I was like, I'm gonna try and take plastic out of my life. And I did. I took, not completely, because that's impossible. You can't go to the supermarket without buying something in [00:04:00] plastic. But everything that I could find plastic free, I tried to make those choices.

So. I got rid of plastic wrap and used the Stasher bags instead of Ziplocs. And, I started to make those changes in beauty. And one of the things that really annoyed me the most was the shampoo and conditioner bar. They've existed for a long time, but I couldn't.

I was projecting out that I was going plastic free, but really when I was alone in my shower, I would have a graveyard of shampoo and conditioner bars that I've tried, and then I would, my hands would go for the luxury stuff in bottles. And so I was like I can fix this. This is a problem I can fix.

There are people out there like me that the plastic freeness of the product isn't going to keep them buying it. It has to be good first, and then the plastic free story can be Just an added benefit later. And that's how DIP was born. I did everything I could to solve this problem.

Christine Santos: And so how did you come up with the solution for this product? that is one thing I'm always so fascinated by. So we [00:05:00] see maybe a pain point and like you, you're trying to solve this problem, and then how do you what's the step to say, okay, how do I develop. A conditioner bar, a shampoo bar, 

Kate Assaraf: yeah. 

Christine Santos: How does that happen? 

Kate Assaraf: So I have been in the beauty industry behind the scenes for two, almost two decades. So I had a lot of that. just through living life and experience, you get the right connections and you learn the right people along the way. And so I didn't start this as someone outside of beauty industry and coming in, I think that's important for someone to hear because you can't beat experienced when it comes to starting something. So I had been on the product development side of many projects in the beauty world. I'd been in the marketing teams, I had been in sales, I'd kind of worn every single hat. And when it came to doing the Dip bar specifically, I found a chemist who had never made bars before.

But what he had done very well for 40 years was make salon haircare or and not just for salons, but for some of those really prestige brands you see in haircare. [00:06:00] And he'd been doing it for four decades. And I said to him, I was like, this is the problem I wanna solve. And I don't wanna benchmark any other bars out there.

'cause in beauty industry what you do is you bring a competitive product, you're like, make this and change the marketing ingredients. I didn't wanna take that path. I wanted something very new, very special, and v ery specific to our own brand that solved its own problem. I brought it to him and he was very into the project and agreed to do them exclusively for us.

and that's, 40 iterations later and 400, tests among people with different hair types. Dip came to be. 

Christine Santos: Wow. And I love how you called that out because that's really important I think, for people to know in any industry, If you're an entrepreneur out there or you're just thinking about it or starting out, I think we talk a lot about starting from where you're at.

So I was in corporate for 30 years developing medical software, so now I'm a podcast producer doing tech [00:07:00] for, practitionersit helps for sure. And then there are definitely challenges. this entrepreneurship, is so different than corporate.

Oh my God. Like I had no idea. but. There are so many challenges and you really have to be, I think, in my estimation, excited about it, passionate about it, because. Every day you come up against something, you have to learn something new 

And so my question for you is, so what are some of the challenges that you faced? So you came in, thank you for sharing that with this knowledge, some connections and so forth, but still there are the challenges and what are some of the challenges you faced and how did you overcome them? 

Kate Assaraf: So one of the biggest challenges was creating something new that was not conventionally.

Made for environmentalists. It wasn't really for what environmentalists were used to. the people that considered themselves sustainable product buyers were already buying shampoo and conditioner bars and are happy with them, and that's great. This I approached as [00:08:00] someone who would never touch another shampoo and conditioner bar ever.

I was so tired of buying them and being angry that I wanted to create something that was specifically pull someone away from a very expensive salon brand. And save them a lot of money so that the perception wasn't that it was more expensive, it was actually like a godsend, and the biggest challenge was trying to educate consumers who are used to like much cheaper bars.

 They see the competitive landscape. They're like, why would I buy Dip when I can buy the Trader Joe's one for I don't know, it's like under $10. And it's hard to explain to people. This might not be for you. You're actually not the audience for this. The audience is actually someone who uses something that's like 50 to $70 a month in conditioner and Dip will save that person $500 a year.

And so. reeducating cause everyone assumes they know who my customer is and they're usually wrong. The people who are my customers are actually people who are switching from Oribe Kérastase, Olaplex, Pureology. That's [00:09:00] why Dip is on salon shelves. 

It's 

Kate Assaraf: Like,

because it gives people an opportunity or a sustainable option for those brands.

And that, I think, has been the biggest challenge. It continues to be a challenge all the time, but changing the consumer expectation of what sustainability is. It is a challenge. 

Christine Santos: you're very educated. I wanna use the word smart and wise about like marketing and about knowing that and understanding the pain point and knowing who you're targeting.

And it reminds me of a conversation I had. I had this company on the podcast Rapt and basically they have developed, Cloth, like wrapping paper, right? 

Kate Assaraf: Yeah, I know who they are. 

Christine Santos: Yeah. Okay. And it's so interesting because I was chatting with them and I was thinking, okay, there's so many people out there who are like sustainable and let's, reuse our

bags and whatever, and they said that they learned that that's not their audience. 

Those are not the people [00:10:00] that they're marketing to. And I just that, I just love that. I think that's so exciting. 

Kate Assaraf: Yeah. 

Christine Santos: So can you share a little bit, like, how does one identify that, find out about it, research it more educate us?

Kate Assaraf: whenever you launch a product, it has to be an obsession of your own. You have to obsess over it. Like a crazy person. And that is basically what I did. I obsessed over the development and I already knew that there was a solution and people liked bars, just not someone like me, and it's because I. Would purchase very expensive hair because some, some people love bags. Some people love shoes. Some people love clothes. I love hair. I could wear the same white t-shirt and blue jeans every day. And if I have my hair looking amazing it's like the thing of joy for me. And I also have had every kind of hair.

I've had everything. I had a purple beehive at point I had which I just wore with a white t-shirt and a leather jacket every day. I've had platinum blonde hair, I've had silver hair, purple hair. I've had box braids and extensions [00:11:00] I've had, any color, any length, I've done it all except a pixie, I've never done a pixie but everything else.

So hair is something that just feeds my soul. And when I see someone with cool hair color, cool haircut or just like something statement about their hair, it like, makes me, it makes me, I don't know how. It just makes me so happy. I focused really on other people that take a lot of pride and care in their hair.

And I, I know that, it's not fair to say that people that buy the other bars don't do that. But there's definitely, um, a market of people that really buy prestige products. And I know because I'm one of them and I wanted to solve a few problems, likeFor me, I'm a runner and I run every day. And so I wanted to make the shampoo gentle enough that I could do that so I can use it on my hair every day. 'cause conventionally you see out there don't shampoo every day. And I'm like why? What if we made it just gentle so you could. So beyond it just being prestige, it has, its place in the market.

So if you not only if you're a [00:12:00] runner, but if you're a nurse or if you work in a restaurant in and outta the kitchen where you have to shower every day in between shifts like. The Dip bar is there for you. And maybe if you're someone that showers like once or twice a week, it's might not be the right thing for you, but that's okay.

Like I don't need to sell every bar to every person. And then, the conditioner bar for me, like I get very upset when I see how fast I go through luxury conditioner with long hair. So I was going through a 50 to $70 bottle every month. It was unrecyclable plastic. It was very much wasteful and felt a little frivolous. And when I have to look at like price increases on groceries versus like my luxury conditioner, it's just it started to make me feel really weird, 

Christine Santos: yeah. 

Kate Assaraf: And so the conditioner bar solves that problem for someone. You could buy the one Dip conditioner bar, and it can last most people a year. Sometimes it lasts people two years, sometimes it lasts someone eight months depending on [00:13:00] frequency of showers, length of hair. But generally the good estimate is about a year for the conditioner bar. And that saves me personally 500 bucks a year just in my expensive conditioner habit.

And, it is the thing that like surprises people about dip the most. And it Is made for someone who's used to prestige haircare. Some people who are used to, I would say a less intense conditioner say that it's almost like too hydrating. And that always cracks me up 'cause that's what I want more than anything.

Christine Santos: And one other thing I wanna point out is that it doesn't melt 

Kate Assaraf: no. Eventually it will But the idea is I always used to bring a bottle of conditioner to the beach, like even if it was a cheap one, because I surf and I play in the water, you cannot, Keep me out of the water if there's a good time. Like I've never been one of those women on the sidelines. I always like to cannonball in and have fun. And a lot of times I know that my friends don't jump in the water and play because of their hair. They don't wanna deal with their hair after.

And I'm one of those people, that's why I always [00:14:00] had the conditioner with me. But liquid conditioner, curdles, and separates in the sun. So the dip conditioner, I wanted to make sure that it was beautiful out in the wild also. So you come outta the ocean and this is good if you have kids with long hair.

Also, like little girls with long tangly hair that love to play in the pool or the ocean, like you just dip the bar in water. Run it down your hair, air dry and go. When you're done swimming, you don't even need to rinse it out. And that was like a big piece of a problem I wanted to solve too. And it's why Dip has a cult following in the surf community because everyone has this problem of like sticky hair when it's stuck to the back of your neck.

 and that, that was a thing I was like, you know what, while I'm at it, I'll make sure it replaces that conditioner too. 

Christine Santos: Yeah. And you know, it's so interesting 'cause everything you said, I'm sure the listeners hear it and I just wanna call it out, is you were developing this for yourself, with yourself in mind.

Kate Assaraf: Mm-hmm. 

Christine Santos: And they always say that, right? you know, develop [00:15:00] for yourself, like it's what do you need? and you've said that 

Kate Assaraf: Yeah. And I know, it's because I knew I had to talk about it for the, hopefully the rest of my life.

I have to talk about this. You have to make it that it really means something to someone. It solves a problem for someone. And these are very emotional problems for me anyway, not being able to shower every day, which means you have to coordinate your workouts or your runs.

Like If you're training for a marathon or half marathon, like you need to go most days a week and you can't like have a hat on or bun, like a messy bun for, normal life all the time. I guess suppose you can, but it's. For someone like me that just loves to have my hair done, like that's not an option.

And I know that I'm not that unique in that sense. 

Christine Santos: Yeah. 

Kate Assaraf: Like I know there are people that have to show up on Zoom every day and wanna look their best, at least their top half. Yeah. Who knows what pajama pants are, like lurking under the surface, but 

Christine Santos: exactly. 

Kate Assaraf: For at least your top half, you wanna look presentable if you're professional. And I find. I find that if you don't live your product, it's very hard to sell. 

Christine Santos: Okay. I love that. [00:16:00] say that again for us. 

Kate Assaraf: If you don't live your own products, it's very hard to sell. 

Christine Santos: I love that. And so if I may, I'd like to turn us to some of the fun marketing that you do with Dip.

Kate Assaraf: Okay. 

Christine Santos: So right now, in July, it's like the odd days of July. July unhinged. Tell us about that.

Kate Assaraf: Yeah, it's every year we do unhinged plastic free July. Plastic free July is like notoriously a boring time of year, and for me, I see like sustainable content and I wanna yawn because it's, it is way more fun when it feels like a party.

So we've made it a party online, so every odd day we launch a some wackadoodle contest. They're different. Almost every year there, there's a couple evergreen contests but for the most part, I spend the year coming up with different ones for every year, and our customers, we don't like hashtag them or advertise them or anything.

It's just our customer appreciation month and we just give out gift cards left and right and celebrate the very funny people [00:17:00] of, we call it, of Dip land, like our followers. Because honestly, I feel very lucky that someone likes my brand enough to follow it.

A whole year. You already bought it and you're still following and that like I don't take that for granted. Like followers, like they're real people that really love my brand enough to stay with it every day. Like That's a of a big deal. And I wish more entrepreneurs viewed their followers that way instead of.

Kind of just a vanity metric. And so because we don't advertise really the people on our feed are actual customers, and so they're really fun and really engaged on getting these prizes through. 

Christine Santos: Yeah, it's so fun reading some of the comments. I think what is, it's like an eighties, nineties theme.

Kate Assaraf: Yeah. 

Christine Santos: What's currently happening right now? 

Kate Assaraf: Yeah, it's always, yeah, it's always rooted in like millennial, like humor. I was a child of the eighties and, I graduated high school in 2001, so the jokes and references are very much of that time. However, what I do is I make it so that you don't have to know all of the references in order to play, like I [00:18:00] purposely make the games like hard to chat GPT and hard to hard to kind of game. And so the people that enter are all real people and it's just silly. And every even day we announce winners and that's even more fun because, like it's a celebration.

It's just a party. 

Christine Santos: Yeah. Yeah. That's so fun. And I think I know for myself I enjoy watching it and looking at it, but now to hear you talk about it and put that sort of entrepreneurship lens on it, if you will. I love that. 

Kate Assaraf: Yeah, it's my most fun time of the year.

It's where I get to know the most about our customers. We always are accumulating more customers over the year that kind of jump into our social media and don't really know what to expect. So it's really fun to see someone, there are people that are like certain names I see every year they always win something and there's always new people winning that are like, oh, I didn't think anyone actually won these things.

But we, yeah, we do. And I love interacting with customers because I'm so thankful for them being here. there's a weird culture like [00:19:00] of business owners wanting to keep a huge canyon between themselves and their customers, and I like being accessible to our customers on Instagram.

I only keep myself truly accessible there and obviously on email, but I think. If I buy something from someone there should be a human way to interact and celebrate what you've purchased. You know what I mean? 

Yeah, I gotta give that some thought. 

That's really fun and interesting.

So tell us about, you had mentioned on another podcast, you're not wanting to be the Amazon of haircare. I forget, I might be butchering it, but 

yeah, 

Christine Santos: it gave me this impression you're meeting a certain market and you're not looking to have this in everybody's hands, like you said earlier.

Can you,

Tell us more about that. 

Kate Assaraf: so I think about someone, imagine someone in your town that opens a pizza place. And they do really well with it, and they service that one community. Just say, this is like location based, right? They service that one community. No one's [00:20:00] pressuring them to be a franchise and you need a pizza place in every town and you go go and run your, run yourself ragged. And I find that it's weird with a beauty brand, people often misunderstand when they're like, what's next?

What are you gonna do? And I'm like, I'm just gonna. I'm just gonna keep servicing the customers that really love what we do. I'm not on this like global expansion path because I am able to pay my employees well. I'm able to spend time with my family and I'm able to wake up with a sense of purpose and not a sense of dread about my company.

And I don't need to be in an Ulta, Sephora, Amazon, all these places in order to consider myself successful. Do you know what I mean? And I think there's a lot of pressure on people when they start businesses. They're like, when are you gonna, and fill in the blank. 

Christine Santos: Yeah. 

Kate Assaraf: Like big, lofty thing.

And I don't know if that's what everyone wants. It's certainly not what I want. I know many brands that get into Target or Ulta or Sephora and that becomes like the death of them because it's very difficult to manage those accounts [00:21:00] without the right team. And I don't have the team for that.

nor the passion. Like I'm not that passionate about sending someone to Amazon to buy our products. What I am passionate about is getting someone into their local Refillery or their local hair salon or their local surf shop, which are generally independently owned, so that when someone makes a purchase, their money works for them in their town.

So, if you, purchase Dip from a store in your town, that store pays taxes, that pay for, you know, your sidewalks, your EMTs, your firefighters, your libraries, your teachers. And that to me is a much bigger badge of honor than having quick add to cart on some other, retailer site. 

Christine Santos: I love that. Okay, so I got there because I wanted to say, and now is a good time. Where can people go and find it?

Kate Assaraf: Sure. If you're interested in doing a deeper dive, you can go to dipalready.com and there you can purchase products if you want, or if you're a little bit curious, click on the store locator and [00:22:00] you can find a place in your town that carries Dip.

And if you're lucky, it's very close to you. We're in about four or 500 stores in between there, somewhere around the country, and we really encourage you to shop with them. But if you can't find everything you're looking for or there's nothing close enough to you, of course. Of course shop online and it come right to your doorstep.

And if you are curious about, our plastic free July or any of those things, just go to @dipalready. And that's the same handle for TikTok and Instagram. But Instagram is really where like the party happens you can find us there and interact however you want. 

Christine Santos: Awesome. Thank you so much, Kate, for being here.

I really appreciate it. You're just a wealth of knowledge and I'm just so inspired by you, honestly, like I think,

Kate Assaraf: thank you so much. 

Christine Santos: Think you can also offer like business classes, but anyway. 

Kate Assaraf: Yeah. I don't know. I don't. Feel, and maybe it's a little imposter syndrome. I don't know if I'm in any kind of position to do that, but if someone was like, Hey, do you wanna own, own a business that like leads to a little bit more happiness than the other [00:23:00] route, like maybe I can help with that.

Christine Santos: Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I learned so much in just this short time together. I'm like all inspired now. 

Kate Assaraf: Thank you so much. 

Christine Santos: Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate it. 

Kate Assaraf: Thanks for having me. Thanks really so much, and thank you everyone who listened to the end.