Few beauty founders understand the power of a tool quite like Sophia Wojczak. As the granddaughter of Conair founder Leandro Rizzuto Sr., she grew up inside one of the most influential beauty companies in the world—an empire that revolutionized how we style, shape and express ourselves. Now, with the launch of arachne, her own female-founded line of next-generation beauty tools, she’s carrying that legacy forward with a modern vision rooted in innovation.

“Growing up in Conair really meant growing up at Conair,” Wojczak says. While other kids were off at summer camp, she and her cousins spent their days roaming the warehouse floors, helping with small tasks and absorbing the rhythm of a brand that helped define an entire category. She watched her mother work in PR, learned early on never to utter the words “I’m bored” and witnessed a company culture built not on hierarchy, but on family.

What left the deepest impression wasn’t the scale of Conair—it was the soul of it. “Everyone looked out for us like we were their own,” she says. “That came from the love and respect people had for my grandfather, and the love and respect he had for them.” That sense of community, loyalty and shared purpose stayed with her, long before she realized she’d one day create a brand of her own.

Ironically, Wojczak never intended to join the family industry. “I was convinced I would never work in the family business,” she says. She explored customer service, launched her own retail venture and even tried interior design. But the gravitational pull of Conair—and the world her grandfather built—kept drawing her back.

The turning point came over dinner, when she shared a product idea she’d sketched on a cocktail napkin. Her grandfather didn’t hesitate. “Go make it,” he told her. That design became her first patent—later sold to Conair for $1,000—and the moment everything shifted. “Once I started working with the products, I became completely consumed by them. Seeing what my grandfather built firsthand gave me a new appreciation for the magnitude of his work.”

Her years inside Conair became an unspoken education in retail, in engineering, in innovation and in understanding what consumers truly want. “I always had my grandfather in the back of my mind asking: ‘What would he do?’” she says. After changes within the company, she felt a new calling. It wasn’t to step away from Conair’s legacy, but to evolve it.

That evolution became arachne—a brand rooted in Conair’s spirit of bold innovation but designed for a new generation. Arachne’s mission is clear: To create tools that transcend category conventions, merging advanced technology with beautiful design and sustainability as a nonnegotiable core value. “Looking good and doing good should never be mutually exclusive,” Wojczak says.

The brand launched this past spring with an impressive 32 patent-pending products, echoing the ambition and scale that defined the early days of Conair. Among the debut innovations:

• The SCALPOLOGY Series hairbrushes with charcoal-infused bristles—a modern nod to Conair’s iconic tool heritage
• L’UOVO, a sleek, everyday-essentials egg packed with 36 accessories
• Eco-conscious storage solutions like Catch A Case and the refillable BobbyBottle
• A full range of accessory refills made to color-match your unique HairTones

Every element, from materials to ergonomics, has been tested with the same rigor Wojczak watched unfold at Conair, a standard she considers part of her DNA. “That obsessive attention to detail is something I learned from my grandfather,” she says. “It’s the difference between simply making a product and building a true beauty brand.”

With arachne, Wojczak isn’t stepping out of Conair’s shadow; she’s extending its legacy, carrying forward the values she grew up in and shaping the next era of beauty innovation. And just like her grandfather did, she’s doing it with tools that transform.