Serial entrepreneur David Thurston can now add “author” to his résumé.
The cofounder of both Pulp Riot, which he launched in 2016 and sold to L’Oréal in 2018, and newer hair color brand Danger Jones, has written a book called “The Spiral Staircase.”
“It’s a business book, it’s got philosophy in it, and it’s also a memoir in a way,” Thurston said of the self-published book launched Monday for $19.99. “I like to think about it as a manifesto for creators, rebels and founders who want to build brands and live a bold life.”
Although the book is inspired by both of his ventures, there’s an emphasis on the former, Thurston said. “The entire experience of building a brand and selling it had a profound impact on me. I found myself with a brand but not all the freedom I once had,” he said. “It’s this crescendo, this hustle, an entrepreneur builds and builds and builds and then boom, you sell for a certain amount of dollars to a big conglomerate. What’s the next step?”
That question inspired the title. “It’s not a golden road to some destination. It’s a climb,” Thurston said of entrepreneurship. “It’s a spiral staircase — you can only see one or two steps ahead of you, not exactly where it’s going. And one step leads to another, and every step up is uncomfortable, but the discomfort is temporary.”
Thurston cofounded Pulp Riot with Alexis Thurston and launched it with an Instagram post, and as he put it, “it was building this vivid, niche, purple pink and green dyes that are attractive to the ages of 18 and 26 that wear fishnet stockings and Doc Marten boots.”
The beauty landscape has changed dramatically since then, and it’s why he came to market with a totally different aesthetic. “There’s still this idea of utilizing social media in a certain way, and it’s interesting because the landscape totally shifted under our feet,” he said, noting that Danger Jones is more focused on balayage, blonding and toning. “We had to build this blonding and toning community from scratch rather than try to market to our existing community.”
Since its founding in 2023, the brand is available in more than 1,400 doors, the company said. There’s also a renewed emphasis on the professional hairstyling community. “We’re about to launch our new permanent hair color, called Epilogue, and we are doing our new global ambassadors [for the campaign],” he said. “We selected four hairstylists, we’re putting them as the faces of the brand, and they’re the models, they’re the lifestyle. When they’re zigging, we’re zagging, and I think it’s going to make a lot of waves.”
Though Thurston still sees himself as the same disruptor as he did a decade ago, “What you want to do is differentiate Danger Jones from anything that has come before it,” he said. “That was a different part of my life, and I’m a different person. Now that I’m comfortable with what Danger Jones is, I can write a lot more effectively about what I’m building now.”
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