The Wella Co. is taking its most recently acquired brand to familiar territory.
Briogeo, which Wella acquired last year for an undisclosed sum, is going to the professional channel in a 600-door partnership with Salon Centric, the distribution platform for licensed salon professionals, launching Aug. 1.
Though the professional side of the business is familiar to Wella, where it also sells Nioxin, Sebastian Professional and the rest of its Wella Professionals portfolio, it marks an inflection point for Briogeo, said founder and chief executive officer Nancy Twine.
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“We had been an exclusive partner with Sephora for about eight years before going into Ulta in 2021, and then since we’ve had our acquisition,” Twine said. “Wella had this core competency in salon, which was something that we’d never really dabbled in before.”
Though it’s unfamiliar territory to Twine, she said the appetite is there. “Over the past 10 years that we’ve been in business, we have gotten thousands and thousands of inquiries from independent salon stylists, salon chains, independent salons about carrying Briogeo,” Twine said. “I knew it was such an opportunity not only to get Briogeo into the hands of stylists, but also to leverage that credibility and ambassadorship to propel the brand forward.”
Annie Young-Scrivner, Wella’s CEO, contended that the brand’s awareness in specialty retail would translate into the salon environment. “When a retail brand expands to the pro channel, the brand already has built-in awareness from the prestige environment, bringing with it a built-in reputation. It makes point of purchase easily recognizable,” she said in an email. “Without a doubt, Briogeo’s quality and performance credentials live up to its pro ambition and will be well received.”
Nearly the full range will go into Salon Centric, with the exception of products that currently have retail exclusivity agreements, among others.
From a communications perspective, it’s required chief marketing officer Claudia Allwood to start from scratch for a new client base. “We know our products work beautifully, but how do we make it really convenient and easy?” Allwood said. “The content that we deliver has to speak their language, and has to be led by them, so we’re partnering with some stylists who will help us craft our salon menu, and all those different stories we can pull to make sense in the salon chair.”
One of the key differentiators, Allwood contended, was the brand’s “clean” positioning. “It can be a polarizing term, but we do offer a set of products that don’t have some of those ingredients,” she said. “We’re looking at more of those natural ingredients, biomimetic-performance ingredients, skin care derivatives, things like that. And it’s a different story [from professional brands], and that might be what their clients are looking for.”