Lauren Ashtyn Guest of TYME Style: Rethinking High-Heat Styling Tools With a Hair-Health-First Approach

Lauren Ashtyn Guest, CEO of TYME Style and founder of The Lauren Ashtyn Collection, shares how she is rethinking high-heat styling tools by focusing on controlled heat, long-term hair integrity, customer education, and beauty products designed to earn trust rather than rely on hype.

Lauren Ashtyn Guest, professional stylist, entrepreneur, and CEO of TYME Style, is bringing a new perspective to the beauty tool industry. After spending more than a decade working directly with women experiencing thinning hair, hair loss, breakage, extensions, and other confidence-impacting hair concerns, Lauren saw firsthand how deeply hair health affects women’s confidence and daily lives.

Before acquiring TYME, Lauren founded The Lauren Ashtyn Collection, a nationally recognized luxury hair brand specializing in premium hair toppers and wigs for women experiencing hair loss and thinning hair. Through thousands of consultations and transformations, she gained a unique understanding of the long-term challenges women face when it comes to hair styling, heat exposure, breakage, and confidence.

In 2025, when Lauren learned that TYME Style was preparing to shut down, she and her husband acquired the brand. As CEO, she is leading TYME’s relaunch with a focus on professional-grade performance, long-term reliability, customer education, and a hair-health-first approach to styling.

Under Lauren’s leadership, TYME is shifting from being known primarily as a single styling tool into a broader beauty and hair-health brand. The company is focusing on controlled, consistent heat; intentional temperature management; even heat distribution; and tools designed with fragile, thinning, chemically treated, extension-wearing, and hair-loss-prone hair in mind.

Lauren’s perspective challenges one of the beauty industry’s most common assumptions: that hotter tools and faster transformations are always better. Instead, she is asking a different question: how can women achieve beautiful styling results while protecting the integrity of their hair over time?

In this interview, Lauren shares why TYME is rethinking high-heat styling tools, what she has learned from women experiencing hair loss and breakage, how beauty brands can market more responsibly, and why entrepreneurs should question industry standards that may not actually serve the customer.

What made you decide that TYME needed to rethink its approach to high-heat styling tools?

My perspective comes from spending years working directly with women who were experiencing thinning hair, hair loss, breakage, and damage. At The Lauren Ashtyn Collection, I wasn’t just seeing hair on a styling appointment. I was hearing the emotional stories behind it.

Many of the women sitting in my chair had spent years doing everything they were told would help them achieve beautiful hair. They invested in products, followed trends, and used the latest tools. Yet many were still struggling with compromised hair health.

When I acquired TYME, I saw an opportunity to build a styling tool company through a different lens. Instead of asking, “How can we create the fastest transformation?” I wanted us to ask, “How can we help women achieve beautiful results while protecting the integrity of their hair over time?”

That shift in perspective influences every conversation we have about product development, education, and customer experience.

The beauty industry often rewards dramatic before-and-after transformations. How has that shaped the way hair tools are designed and marketed?

Social media naturally rewards immediate results. A 15-second transformation video is incredibly compelling because viewers can instantly see the outcome.

The challenge is that most consumers never see what happens after months or years of repeated styling habits. Marketing tends to focus on the first use rather than the thousandth use.

As an industry, we’ve become very good at showcasing instant gratification. I think the next evolution is helping consumers understand long-term hair health as well.

The companies that win in the future won’t just deliver dramatic results. They’ll deliver results that customers can continue enjoying without compromising the condition of their hair.

What do you mean by optimizing for how hair looks after six months of use, rather than after one quick styling session?

A single styling session tells you whether a tool can create a curl or smooth a section of hair. Six months of use tells you whether that same tool supports healthy hair over time.

When I think about product development, I want us to evaluate durability, consistency, heat management, and overall hair condition after months of regular use, not just whether we can create an impressive before-and-after photo. Consumers don’t buy styling tools for one day. They buy them for years. Our responsibility is to think with that same long-term mindset.

What are the business risks of moving away from the kind of high-heat, instant-result marketing that often performs well on social media?

The biggest risk is that immediate results are easy to sell. Long-term benefits require more education, more trust, and more patience.

It’s much easier to market a dramatic transformation than it is to market hair integrity. But I believe consumers are becoming increasingly sophisticated. They’re asking better questions. They’re researching ingredients, materials, temperatures, and long-term outcomes.

How do you balance performance with hair health when customers still want fast, polished styling results?

Consumers should never have to choose between performance and hair health. Our goal is to engineer tools that deliver professional-quality results while being mindful of the cumulative effects that styling can have over time.

That means looking at factors such as heat consistency, material quality, user technique, and overall design, not simply increasing temperature and hoping for the best. Performance matters. Hair health matters. The future belongs to brands that can deliver both.

What have you learned from working with women experiencing postpartum shedding, autoimmune-related loss, thinning, or hair damage?

I’ve learned that hair is incredibly emotional. People often assume hair is a vanity issue until they experience losing it themselves. I’ve had women cry in consultations. I’ve had women tell me they stopped dating, stopped taking photos, or stopped going to social events because they didn’t feel like themselves anymore. When you hear those stories over and over again, it changes your perspective. You realize that the products you create have a real impact on how people feel about themselves.

How has that experience changed the way you think about product design and customer education?

A good product matters. It’s made me much more focused on the customer’s entire journey. They want clear information that helps them make the best decision for themselves. Sometimes the biggest difference comes from technique, expectations, and education. I’ve found that customers appreciate honesty. They don’t need exaggerated promises. They want clear information that helps them make good decisions.

What specific changes is TYME making in its engineering, product development, temperature strategy, materials, or usage guidance?

One of the biggest shifts is that we’re evaluating decisions through a hair-health lens. Instead of automatically assuming hotter is better, we’re asking more questions about consistency, heat distribution, usability, and long-term performance.

We’re also spending more time thinking about how customers actually use these tools in real life rather than just how they perform in a controlled demonstration.

Are any TYME tools being redesigned, relaunched, or repositioned as part of this shift?

Yes. As we’ve listened to our customers, we’ve found that women are looking for styling tools that deliver consistent results while supporting the long-term health of their hair. As part of this shift, we’re repositioning TYME to emphasize controlled heat, ease of use, and versatile styling without compromising hair health. It’s less about reinventing the product and more about aligning our messaging with what today’s consumers value most.

What should consumers understand about the difference between hair loss, hair breakage, and heat-related damage?

A lot of people use those terms interchangeably, but they’re very different issues. Hair loss usually starts at the scalp and can be connected to hormones, genetics, health conditions, medications, or stress. Breakage happens when the hair strand itself becomes weak and snaps. Heat damage can contribute to breakage and can make hair appear thinner even when the follicles are healthy.

Understanding the cause is important because the solution depends on what’s actually happening.

How can beauty brands market responsibly without creating fear, shame, or unrealistic expectations?

I think brands need to remember that there’s a real person on the other side of every marketing campaign. The brands I respect most are the ones that help customers make informed decisions instead of creating insecurity just to drive sales.

What can other entrepreneurs learn from challenging a profitable industry norm?

Just because something is common doesn’t mean it’s right. One of the biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make is assuming that an industry standard exists for a good reason. Sometimes it does. But most of the time, it’s just the way things have always been done. The best opportunities often come from questioning assumptions that everyone else has accepted.

How do you build trust in a category where customers may already be skeptical because they have experienced damage or disappointment?

You earn it by listening, by being transparent, and by delivering on what you promise. You also have to be willing to have honest conversations, even when the answer isn’t what someone wants to hear. I’ve never believed trust comes from perfect marketing. I think it comes from consistency over time.

What does this TYME pivot say about where the beauty industry is heading?

I think consumers are becoming much more thoughtful. They’re paying attention to ingredients, materials, formulations, and long-term outcomes in a way they weren’t ten years ago.

People still want products that perform well, but they’re also asking whether those products align with their broader wellness goals. I think that’s a healthy shift for the industry.

What advice would Lauren give to small business owners who realize their industry’s “standard practice” may not actually be good for the customer?

Listen to your customers more than your competitors. Most of the important decisions I’ve made in business came from paying attention to what clients were telling me, not from watching what everyone else was doing.

If you’re hearing the same frustration over and over again, that’s usually worth paying attention to. The easiest path is often following the industry. The better path is usually solving the problem your customers actually have.

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