Blake Lively launched her haircare brand, Blake Brown, in July 2024. Since then, a lot has happened.

When the actress, 37, introduced the line a year ago, she told PEOPLE that she wanted to create “clean formulas with incredible performance at a mass price point with a fragrance that I would spray on my body.” The line was an immediate success, quickly becoming the biggest haircare launch in Target history, according to the retailer. Videos of influencers having their hair styled with Blake Brown products by Lively herself dominated TikTok for weeks and Target customers hoping to get their hands on the line reported that their local stores were consistently sold out.

However, Lively made it clear that she had remained focused on her haircare brand when she sat down with PEOPLE on May 8 for her first conversation focused on Blake Brown since it launched in July. The transcript below has been edited for length and clarity. 

You have three new hair and body mists. Was this launch always on the Blake Brown roadmap? 

: What was important to me is that our hair fragrances layer well. I always, always, always layer my fragrance. Every single day, when I put on perfume, I layer different fragrances so that even if it's a familiar fragrance, it still has a twist on it. It's like what they call umami in food.

I also wanted our hair products to double as also your fragrance. While different hair lines have beautiful notes and scents, they were never something that lined up with what I would buy if I went to go buy perfume. It was always two very different experiences to smell. And when we teamed up with one of the top perfumers, I asked, “why is that?" They said, "Well, it's much more expensive." The notes that push through formulas of products, it's easier to get citrus and floral to push through. Getting those woodier and creamier and then also more gourmand notes to push through the product, it's harder to do, and it's more expensive. And so, I was very excited to have that as a differentiator because I love when I take my hair down and [I get] that waft [of the scent].

I also wanted to make sure that they look special and beautiful. I wanted them to look like a retro perfume bottle. So to have an elegance to them and sort of a glamour, but also be easy to throw in your bag.

: It was less about consumer feedback and more about consumer learnings. People don't use hair masks. They know about them, but they really treat it like a specialty, highly concentrated thing. They think, "Oh, well it's more concentrated, so if I'm going to use a big handful of conditioner, I'll use a dime size amount of a mask.” I want to wash everyone's head for them and say, "No, use as much mask as you would conditioner."

I'm somebody who uses a lot of product, so I like products that are user-friendly that you can build and you can get your hands on. And I think that getting people comfortable with being able to really use a higher quantity of product, because I think that when it's something that people aren't as familiar with, people don't use mousse as much anymore. They don't use masks as much anymore.

Speaking of the mousse, has it been a hit with consumers? 

I think people who love mousse they're like, "Oh my gosh, this is so exciting." And then people who don't know mousse as well, there's definitely, there's a bridge in educating people on how to use it. I think people, when they think about mousse, they think about scrunching curls or they think that it can be crunchy. But for me, how I get volume is mousse. I mean, it's everything to me. And I use so much mousse, I use absurd amounts. It quadruples my hair and then some.

So I think the biggest thing is just, yeah, I wish I could be in people's showers and in their homes because I like that we have products that aren't everything that you see on the shelf because why create a company just to create another company? If they exist out there and someone else is doing well, I have no reason to do it. 

What's one of the biggest lessons you learned this last year as a beauty brand founder?

I mean, you learn so much all day every day. It’s something that we knew intuitively, but something that's just an important reminder, is just that we never planned to do hair and body fragrances because we thought that we had captured that in the product. If we're already serving this great fragrance experience, people aren't going to want to buy something else. But seeing what people love and leaning in and responding is always really important.

We're always, in everything, because I'm in a few different professions, and even within my professions, there's different facets of my profession. There's the creative department, there's the business part. But always listening to your community and responding is the most important thing, because it takes you on paths that you didn't always expect to go down, like this.

: There are a lot of entrepreneurs in your life. Who do you look to for business guidance? 

: Well, you have to have a conviction in your heart, no matter what. So if you don't feel it and you don't believe it, don't do it. I have a great team of people. So the people who work with Blake Brown or people who work with Betty Buzz and Betty Booze, love it. And everybody has a feeling of pride and ownership and passion. So I think that when you find your community or you find your people who believe in a common goal or a common pursuit, that's everything.

There's so many entrepreneurs out there across so many spaces that I look to as role models and inspiration. And I think what they do is there's an authenticity to all of them. I think that's where there's something consistent across them, it's different brands and different ages and different types, there's an authenticity, there's a passion, there's a fire.

You’re known for being very deliberate with the fashion you wear and using your outfits to tell a story. But what about your hair, what message have you been sending with your various hairstyles during your Another Simple Favor press tour? 

: I like styling. And so I like that you can have an outfit that could be interpreted many different ways just by your hair. So for example, the Chanel outfit I wore in London, depending on what hair you do with that outfit, it would go a million different places. It's really the hair that defined it. I wanted it to look a bit more '60s. Then, that night, I wore a leather David Koma suit fringe dress jacket and I wanted to feel a little bit more modern, a little bit more '90s, and the hair tells that story. 

To me, no matter what you wear, it's ultimately hair that defines the time period and tells the story and tells the mood. With the half up, half down curly one [worn on 'Late Night with Seth Meyers' on Thursday, May 1], I think it was the last thing that I was doing for press. I hadn't done a big curl. It felt playful. It was just doing something we hadn't done.

PEOPLE: What does your summer look like? What are you looking forward to?

Lively: Just some time off sounds so nice with my babies and my husband. I mean it's always busy, but when the kids are in school, I miss them. I'm that parent who just genuinely really loves spending time with my kids. My husband too, we're like, "I wonder if they can miss school today so we can spend time with them." We just really like them. Which is important. If you have so many kids, you have to like them. Because they will drive you insane if you don't (laughs).