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Within days of meeting Hailey Bieber unexpectedly at a Sydney restaurant, Layla Morris quit her job.
The Gold Coast businesswoman seized an unlikely opportunity, one she says she manifested just 20 minutes earlier while buying Bieber’s rhode products.
Egged on by her husband, she gifted the American model and makeup entrepreneur one of her homemade diamond-cleaning pens.
“[My husband] said to me, ‘you asked the universe 20 minutes ago to get Dr Diamond in her hands … and she’s right here … you have to give it to her’.”
So as Bieber walked past on her way out of Neptune’s Grotto restaurant, Morris complimented her beauty line and whipped out her Dr Diamond product as a gift.
“She put it in her handbag … she said ‘thank you so much, I’m so excited to use it’.”
The encounter wasn’t caught on camera, but Morris’ reaction was. A video showing her excitement and explaining what had happened has been viewed more than 6.2 million times.
That split-second decision to share her reaction translated into tangible results. Within an hour of the video going live on February 13, sales were “going crazy”. In just over a week, they had increased by 3000 per cent.
“I used to be able to take all of the orders in my handbag to the post office every day; now we’re taking a big sack of orders to Australia Post. So it has changed the business completely,” she told this masthead.
Dr Diamond, which was launched in July 2025, is now projected to hit $900,000 in sales by the end of the year.
For Morris, who founded the brand with her husband and fulfils orders with family and friends out of a spare room, the plan was always to quit her job. She just didn’t expect it to happen so suddenly. When this masthead spoke with her, she had handed in her resignation the day before.
The viral video and sales boost drove the Gold Coast-based business to expand shipping to international markets. It was initially a test to understand the appetite, but the couple quickly realised the demand was there – even without Bieber posting about the product herself.
“That’s also now shifted our strategy to wanting to expand globally a lot quicker than expected,” Morris said.
Not a chemist by trade, the idea behind Dr Diamond came from Morris’ own $25,000 engagement ring, which jewellers advised her to wash with dish soap and a toothbrush.
The couple then started learning about the ideal ingredients for cleaning diamond products. They had a natural formula made at a local manufacturing facility, and now, each pen is hand-filled and shipped from the Gold Coast.
“Everything is done here: we fill all the pens here, the formula here, packaging, and ship it all from my spare bedroom,” Morris said.
Dr Diamond has no staff yet. The first official employee will likely be Morris’ mum, who frantically went to pack orders the night of the Bieber encounter. As for the brand itself, Morris envisages significant growth – expanding into retailers and becoming a go-to product offered by jewellers.
“We want it to be an accessible product, as it should be in your jewellery stores, and definitely online, so anyone can access it at any time,” she said.
“[We want to be] owning that space and making jewellery care part of people’s weekly routine now – so normalising cleaning your jewellery more than once a year.”
Morris and her husband are the brand’s sole investors, and plan to keep it that way for now. They also want production to remain on the Gold Coast.
“I love the idea of having full control and making sure that we can make it an incredible space where we can move fast,” she said.
But if Bieber were to come knocking as an investor, she would definitely answer.
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