Profound Beauty is undergoing a face-lift this fall as it reinvents its hair care collection in an attempt to save the brand.
The company — and brand — offers personalized hair care products to independent salons, while custom packaging allows salons to communicate their best selling points to consumers.
Profound Beauty was launched in salons two years ago with 22 hair care products ranging from shampoo and conditioners to styling items. Back then, products featured the Profound brand name, as well as contact information of the salon that sold it. But little else.
“The feedback we got said that salons loved the products but wanted an upgrade in imagery, packaging and communication to the consumer,” said Bob Salem, who cofounded the Long Island City, N.Y., company three years ago. “We found that Profound was dedicated to the original concept, but was not interpreted well at the salon and client level. Profound was often mistaken as private label. And, consumers and stylists said they wanted shampoos to have more lather and conditioners to be more emollient.”
Listening to users, the company has repacked and reformulated its product range to better suit the needs of consumers, to better describe what each item does and to better tell a salon’s story. There are now 42 items, including 80/20 shampoo, best for those with normal to dry scalps and medium to course hair. Shampoos will retail for $18, conditioners for $19 and styling items for $18 to $28. The $28 styling item is a mask that is intended to be used once a week to moisturize hair and eliminate free radicals with vitamin E.
Packaging colors have been changed from white to a mix of chocolate brown, cappuccino and white. Each product carries a signature paint stroke “expressing that all Profound Beauty products begin from the vision of a hair dresser,” said Salem, adding that each item communicates its features and benefits organized by color.
Two new items under the Hush brand are designed to stop frizz before it happens. Hush consists of a cream ($26) and a spray ($26), each of which contains Amino-Fusion, a proprietary technology developed by Profound Beauty. There’s also Curl Glaze, a glaze that is applied to towel-dried hair and is meant to take volume out of curl and increase curl’s definition without weighing it down. Curl Glaze is $26.
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An area on the back of containers allows for a message created by the salon to advertise the best points of its business.
“By putting salon information on containers, we help them develop a brand identity,” Salem said. For example, if a salon is best known for its spa services and wants its hair clients to know about them, it can customize a message to talk up its spa business.
To get the message out to the potential 2,000 to 3,000 salons Salem believes Profound Beauty would be perfect for, the company has hired a public relations team to get consumers talking about the brand. Beauty editors are being approached, and regional direct-marketing efforts are in place.
“The professional community places tremendous credibility in consumer beauty magazines and the demand they create for consumers,” Salem said.
By the end of 2007, Salem expects Profound Beauty to be sold in 600 salons, and generate $30 million in sales. The company expects to post $10 million in retail sales by the end of 2006.
All the new hair care items will ship directly to salons by the end of November.