Years ago, I met Paul Mitchell in the flesh – yes the real Paul Mitchell. No I don’t mean John Paul Dejoria, Paul’s business partner who owns and runs the company http://tinyurl.com/88sbjsc and continues to keep Paul Mitchell’s legacy of great hairdressing alive – in a bottle.
But I’ve begun to wonder whether John Paul Dejoria has turned Paul’s legacy in the bottle into a ghost too. Whether even what we’re buying in a bottle is the real deal or is it “counterfeit”?
Sure Paul Mitchell’s a living breathing company. It’s a huge brand, at least as far as professional brands go, so big you’d think you’d be able to easily find. But try buying some of the product here in New York City – at least from a professional salon and you may end up on a treasure hunt like I did.
Yes you can see it around town – as a matter of fact it’s frequently displayed in the window of Duane Reade ( a New York’s largest chain pharmacy) – not the entire line but many of the key products.
But I’m funny about where I buy my professional products. I will only buy them from a professional salon.Why? Not because it’s easier but because I’m part of the professional industry. And I know without a doubt that the professional’s endorsement of these products is key to their success. That’s why these brands promise salons the moon and the stars when they’re starting out. Because they know without salon support they’ll never succeed.
But all to often when they hit it big the lines somehow appear in “non-professional” channels where they compete with the salons for the clients’ money.
Bottom line I don’t know one professional salon owner who isn’t on some level upset about professional product diversion. It’s almost like being in a marriage where one of the partners (the manufacturer in this case) has a “little something on the side” and the other partner (the salon) is resigned to living with it.
Now I’m not saying here that Paul Mitchell directly diverts it products to retail outlets other than salons – but I wouldn’t bet against it.
Why? Because here in New York City, finding Paul Mitchell products, or at least finding them in a professional salon in my neighborhood is a problem. You’d think Paul Mitchell, being the a huge professional professional brand it is, would be carried by a ton of salons. So I did what everyone does today – I Google them online to see which salons nearby that carried the product.
So I punched in zip-code and requested salons that carried the brand within a two (2) mile radius from my home.
What came up was a big fat zero – not one salon within a two mile radius was shown as carry Paul Mitchell!
Considering, according to Yelp, there are 318 hair salons on the Upper East side of Manhattan I thought there had to be something wrong. So I tried again – only this time I asked for salons within a three (3) mile radius. And what came up with a grand total of 3 salons – the closest one 2.08 miles from my home – and none on the East Side.
Since I can look out my window and see a Duane Reade (a chain pharmacy that carries the line ) traveling 2.08 miles for a bottle of “The Detangler” seemed out of the question. But I still refuse to buy professional products from any place other than salons or stretching it what was once called “Phantom” Salons – a place that qualified as a salon because it had a few shampoo chairs and a shampoo bowl somewhere on the premises.
Or I could always buy online from buy online from one of these local salons, buy on line from a non-professional resource or shop at Ricky’s (a beauty store chain, with one or two salons) because Duane Reade or another pharmacy chain like CVS.
But when I went online and tried to find a salon with an online store that sold Paul Mitchell I couldn’t find one. That was not the case with those online shopping sites like drugstore.com http://tinyurl.com/5fhbf But when I looked closely at what they were selling there was a qualifier. It read
Guaranteed only when sold by a professional hairdresser, otherwise it may be counterfeit, old or tampered with.
Additional Product Information:
We are not associated or affiliated with John Paul Mitchell Systems and are not a licensed retailer of John Paul Mitchell Systems. John Paul Mitchell Systems guarantees this product only when sold through authorized retailers, and cannot guarantee the authenticity of any product sold by an unauthorized retailer. We cannot guarantee that this product is covered by any manufacturer’s warranties or eligible for any manufacturer’s rebate. If the
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UPC codes or other tracing codes are missing from any product container of a John Paul Mitchell Systems product, please retain your purchase receipt to assist in the tracing of that product in the unlikely event it is defective.
In other words “caveat emptor” Latin for “let the buyer beware” – if you buy Paul Mitchell online or from any other non-salon you may not be getting the real stuff. But then again, you may.
So who knows the truth – only The Ghost of Paul Mitchell knows.
Paul Mitchel Systems and John Paul Dejorio came after Vidal Sassoon, Inc. I started and ran the Vidal Sassoon product divission and product in fact the company as CEO.. I sold professional only for 2 years and couldn’t stop the diverters from selling to the other ( as you describe them), outlets. Also the trade the same trade that loves Vidal in major cities wouldn’t buy his product because it bore the name of a competitor, big city Salon as we were in all the big cities. Proposition: Stay professional and cut out 60% of the future for a trade who in fact didn’t support us or go reatil when we had established the legs to do so and cut out the diverter . The diverter is the dirty little secret of profeshional lines. Any line with legs will get diverted. At Sassoon’ we conciously chose to have a retail and a professional line packaged differently and many items wouldn’t be sold only in the profession. The hair dresser naturally dropped the line and the retail sold it into the number one line at reatil.
John Paul Mitchel systems has protested for many years the diversion and created the language that you choose to mention in your article as his defense. John Paul is himself a Billionaire many times over when Paul Mitchel died his estate was worth maybe $100,000,000.00. JP is and aways has been the creator of magic and managed to be professional at all costs. For decades he sought out and punished diverters and counterfiters and advertized doing so.
J P is a modern Day entrapreneur worth billions. Paul Mitchel systems is and or was the leading selling Professhional line / Retail line in $ volume at least domestically You figure it out???
It is no secret that diversion is a huge problem in our industry. I am a graduate of a Paul Mitchell School and now a Paul Mitchell Stylist and know very well that Paul Mitchell products are not diverted by the manufacturer, it is the distributors that sell the left over stuff out of the back door. In the future, visit paulmitchell.com and use the salon locator there, you shouldn’t have any trouble finding a salon that carries your fav product. Also, New York has a Paul Mitchell the School. They carry the entire line of Paul Mitchell products.
If you would like to become informed on how Paul Mitchell the company and John Paul feel about diversion, give youtube a search, there are TONS of videos that will set your mind at ease that Paul Mitchell, the MAN, is still alive! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3hxjT8xNaE
If the ghost of Paul Mitchell lives in a shampoo bottle – his heart and soul doesn’t.
It lives in the hearts and minds of people like you and the rest of the Paul Mitchell “family”…people who stand steadfast behind
the brand and by doing this show their love and care for this great industry of ours.
You’re 100% right in saying diversion’s a big problem for our industry. Unlike many other problems that are
that you can put in dollars in cents terms diversion’s a special problem. Why? Because it transcends the money.
So how can I say such a thing? How can I say diversion a “special” problem? After-all isn’t diversion just another form of business?
And isn’t business all about the money?
Sure the money plays major role in the professional beauty business – as it does in every business.
But just like there’s so much more to business than just the money – there’s so much more to diversion than just the money.
In the professional beauty business, where the lives of professional and professional product manufacturers are intimately intertwined on so many levels – the physical (we actual touch the product), the emotional (we believe in and market the product), the financial (we actually pay for and make money from product sales) and the spiritual (a brand’s identity and heritage is built upon the professional stylist)…
In this supremely interdependent world of the professional salon business – the act of diversion is nothing short of an act of betrayal.
When a manufacturer diverts, and believe me some do, they’re behaving just like a cheating partner in committed relationship. The cheating
partner not only tramples on trust of the other party but they’ve stabbed them in the back.
That’s why I hate diversion. I hate seeing professional salon brands on display in the windows of Duane Reade (NY’s largest drug chain).Because I know how much blood, sweat and tears professional stylists like you put into your craft…and I know that as crazy as it may
seem to people outside the industry many professionals fall in-love with the brands they work with and recommend to clients. I hate diversion because it
breaks my heart to see betrayal – to see other people’s hearts broken – to see brands built on trust descend into the depths of deceit.
The brand a salon professional’s affiliated with means a lot more to them than just a vehicle they use to put money in their pocket…a professional
brand can hold a big place in a salon pro’s heart and soul – and it’s the heart and soul, energy and imagination of the salon professional that keeps the business alive…not the sale of another bottle of shampoo.
Sure Paul Mitchell’s ghost lives in a bottle – but it’s his heart and soul that lives in each and every professional who passionately believes in
his brand and in our business.