BRIGHT STAR

YOLANDA COOPER IS CHANGING THE GAME OF ELECTRICAL STYLING WITH HER REVOLUTIONARY SUPERNOVAPRO HAIR TOOL

It was when she was at an airport in 2016 that Yolanda Cooper had her idea for her electrical tool, the SupernovaPRO. She was checking in for a flight with overweight baggage, mainly because of the number of different hair tools she was travelling with.

‘There’s got to be an answer for this’, she thought. It turned out there was. And it’s a game-changer.

The SupernovaPRO is the world’s first three-in-one hair styler combining a fully functioning straightening iron, curling tong and wave wand in one ultra-sleek, beautiful-to-behold tool. It comes with a whole host of first-to-market patented features, including revolutionary SmartSwitch technology that makes it the only hot styling tool with three independently powered functions; premium grade ceramic plates infused with Trionic technology that softens, smooths and hydrates the hair; and a patent-pending ergonomic DoublePivot system, which relieves pressure on the median nerve to reduce the risk of carpal tunnel syndrome – a condition especially prevalent in stylists.

“We realised that we had to make each of those tools incrementally better than what’s on the market”

Not bad for a young female entrepreneur from Belfast designing her first electrical tool! “I think going in blind to something allows you to be completely free of fear,” says Yolanda. “If you knew what you were getting into before you did these crazy things, half the time you wouldn’t do it because you've no idea how complex it is, how long these things take and how many reasons there are for it to fail. Some of the best entrepreneurs are the ones who just have no clue what they’re doing, they just go into it and commit to figuring it out later.”

Armed only with a sketch of what she felt the tool could look like, Yolanda set about hiring industry-leading industrial designers and engineers to turn her concept into a reality. It took five years to refine the tool mechanically and aesthetically as she constantly challenged her team to come up with the technology to match her ideas.

“Very early on we realised that if this is going to be a professional tool, then three-in-one is brilliant but it can’t be a compromised experience – we have to make each of those tools incrementally better than what’s on the market,” says Yolanda. “And I think that’s what we’ve done. So, straighteners have always been symmetrical and rectangular, but what if you need to get right into the baby hairs at the root? We made our straightener narrower at the tip, so that it allows you – for example – to detail short fringes and work with Type 3 and 4 hair. Ceramic technology provides great negative ions into the hair, but how do we take that even further? I’m a trichologist, so that’s why I came up with the idea of taking a heat protection formula and infusing it into the plates to give superior shine. When it came to the tong, we changed the tip to a rubber material so that you can literally hold onto it, even when the temperature is set at 200˚C. And we spent a long time perfecting the exact torsion of the spring and the double-pivot system to make the tool more comfortable to use. Consumers might not notice that benefit, because they’re only going to use the tool for 20 minutes at a time, but hair pros, who are styling nine hours a day – they’re really going to see the difference.”

Proud that the SupernovaPRO is designed, engineered and manufactured in Great Britain, and fully aware that she is competing against some industry heavyweights, Yolanda is putting her experience as a former marketing director to good use. “Core to our communication and marketing strategy is a grassroots approach,” she says. “We have a programme called The Salon Spotlight, where we send our film crew into a salon to shoot collaborative content, including interviews with the stylists and footage of them styling their client’s hair in different ways. “We can also create an event in the salon, where I and our head of engineering will come along and talk to guests. And the content we create can be used for a salon’s own social media campaign to drive awareness. We may not have the budgets that some of the big brands have, but what we do have is passion and agility and the desire to go and partner with salons on a one-toone basis.”

And finally, why the name Supernova? “I’ve always been fascinated with astrology and stargazing,” says Yolanda. “And with SupernovaPRO we’re trying to create the biggest shining star in the industry. In space, a supernova is a cataclysmic explosion. And so I thought that was a cool name, because we are

“Hair pros who are styling nine hours a day – they’re really going to see the difference”