Salon Success Ltd

PAUL MITCHELL^® DIVERSION
Boots Stocks Diverted Paul Mitchell^® At the beginning of this year it came to our attention that nine Boots flagship stores around the UK and Boots.com were selling a limited range of diverted Paul Mitchell^® products alongside two other professional hair care brands. These products were not supplied to Boots by Salon Success. As a company who only endorse the sale of our products through professional hair salons, we immediately contacted the beauty buyer at Boots, explaining that the products they are selling are from an unauthorised source and requested they remove the products from their shelves immediately. Boots declined to cooperate.

In an official press statement a spokesperson from Boots said: “We do stock Paul Mitchell, [along with other professional brands] in a small number of our stores. Buying products via other reputable suppliers is legal; however, it is our preference to deal with the brand owners direct where possible. We are keen to forge a relationship with Paul Mitchell; however, so far, our attempts have not been reciprocated.”

Since January, the dedicated team at Salon Success and its sub-distributors have been raiding Boots stores up and down the country and bombarding Boots.com with orders to ‘buy back’ the diverted stock. This has resulted in members of the team being marched out of the stores by security, orders being cancelled and addresses blacklisted on Boots.com.

“Salon Success has spent significant sums of money to recover this diverted product,” explains Simon Tickler, Managing Director for Salon Success. “We believe we have cut off the supply of product going to Boots, and we are committed to keeping our brand in the professional market only. Where it is possible to do so, we will use the law to maintain our professional only stance.”

Paul Mitchell^® is one of the last remaining privately owned, truly professional hair care brands in the marketplace, with no consumer arm in retail outlets such as Boots.

Founded in 1980, two friends Paul Mitchell and John Paul DeJoria had a vision - to create a company by hairdressers for hairdressers - one that would provide tools of success for hair care professionals, their salons, and the entire beauty industry. John Paul DeJoria and Paul’s son Angus Mitchell continue to steer the company according to the original vision. Despite hugely lucrative offers from public corporations to purchase John Paul Mitchell Systems^®, they refuse to sell the company because of the initial vow Paul and John Paul took to stand by the professional beauty industry.
Since no public corporation has guaranteed it will market Paul Mitchell^® products exclusively through salons - selling has simply not been an option.
Salon Success is a long-established company with a proven history of working in partnership with salon owners and their teams. We believe in supporting the true professional and Paul Mitchell^® Luxury Hair Care is a brand conceived and developed in line with this philosophy.
“The support we have received from salons and consumers alike has been overwhelming,” enthuses Jennie Baldwin, Director of Corporate Sales for Salon Success. “We support the professional in this industry, and the fantastic people that we have the pleasure of working with understand
this and respect our philosophies as a business, and are behind us 100% in this matter.”
The only customer of Salon Success is the beauty industry professional. They were the original reason for the dreams of John Paul and Paul Mitchell, and today hairdressers are the reason for the success of Paul Mitchell^® Luxury Hair Care and our pride in this industry. We will never sell our products over the counter.
With this in mind, John Paul Mitchell Systems^® CEO John Paul DeJoria has included the company in his Nevada family trust, which dictates that per the instruction of the trust, none of the family members and generations to come are to sell part of, or the entire John Paul Mitchell Systems^® company under any circumstances. This is a legally binding document and is valid for 360 years.

Paul Mitchell^® Luxury Hair Care has always, and will always be under the ownership of the DeJoria and Mitchell families, where it started, and where it will stay; at the heart of the families that created it.

At the time of going to press, Boots had removed all stock from their website. We see this as a step in the right direction, but the issue of the stock in-store continues.