Archive for July 27th, 2006
BY ROGER LARSEN
SmartStyle Family Hair Salon, one of the fastest-growing divisions of the Regis Corporation, opens today in the new Huron Wal-Mart Supercenter.
Manager Melinda Salas and five other stylists will provide cuts, colors, permanents, chemical relaxers and facial waxing.
“We’re just really excited to be in Huron,” she said.
SmartStyle is one of the tenants of the Wal-Mart store, which also opens this morning at 2791 Dakota Ave. S.
It is a full-service salon with professional hair care products. Appointments are not necessary.
Hours will be 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Sundays.
SmartStyle has about 1,100 locations around the country, exclusively in Wal-Mart stores.
Salas has been with the company off and on for the past five years, coming to Huron from the Mitchell store.
The other stylists are also originally from the Huron area. Three are transferring here from SmartStyle locations in North Dakota and Watertown.
July 27th, 2006
New salon to provide quick, affordable hair care to Park City
SKYLER BELL, Of the Record staff
Many people who come to Park City as vacationers end up as full-time Parkites down the road, but most don’t have to pull an occupational 180 in order to do so.
Corey and Debra DeCamp did. They went from the aerospace industry in California to the insurance industry in Arizona, and are now opening a hair salon in Utah.
The DeCamps will open a Cost Cutters Salon as franchisees of the Regis Corporation. Regis runs 950 stores nationwide as Cost Cutters, SuperCuts, Trade Secrets and Regis Salons.
“We had been coming here for years as skiers and just fell in love with the area,” Debra said. “We wanted to raise our kids here so we hunted around for a business concept that we felt was needed in the community and that we were excited about. When we found this franchise that has been doing so well in the Midwest, Colorado and California that hadn’t been introduced here, we were excited to get on board.”
The store, located at Quarry Village in Park City, held its grand opening and ribbon cutting Friday morning.
Both Debra and Corey have experience in the business world, but their salon experience culminates with getting their own haircuts. But lack of experience is not slowing them down. Debra said they will focus on what they do well, and get better at the things they don’t.
Debra, whose career has always been in marketing and advertising, will take care of that side of the salon, while Corey will handle the business side. Corey will also continue to run the Farmer’s Insurance branch in Arizona that he’s been running for the last 12 years.
“My job as the owner, since I’m not a cosmetologist, is to find the best way to get our name out there,” Debra said. “So I’m in charge of all our marketing and I feel pretty well prepared to do that with my background. Corey is much more business oriented.”
The other DeCamps, Morgan, 5, and Madison, 7, are just as excited as their parents that Cost Cutters is opening. Debra said the two children started trying to get the chance to be the first haircut an honor the DeCamps decided will go to Park City Mayor Dana Williams.
“Personally I think he epitomizes a strong community and a family-oriented place,” Debra said. “We are very pleased with what he has done with this city and so we are honored to have him be the first cut at our store.
“But the girls are still excited to go get their hair done, I can tell you that. They both want to go in and have up-dos. Morgan has had her dress she wants to wear picked out for weeks.”
The girls might have another chance to be the first cut, because he Decamps signed a deal with Regis to open three stores in the greater Salt Lake area, so they will start two more in addition to the Park City location.
Debra said she and Corey chose Park City as the site for one of their three stores because the area needed a less-expensive, quicker option for hair.
“We’re a value-priced, no-appointment concept that offers full-service hair care for the whole family,” she said. “We do cuts, color and curl. We’re not a day-spa concept so we’re able to offer a high-quality product at a value price. When I want to get my haircut I don’t always have two hours to spend at a spa.”
Debra also said their goal is to have an unparalleled level of service at the store. Service, she said, is the key to any business.
“It’s a matter of how we treat each customer when they walk in the door,” she said. “Any customer who walks in the door should be special and feel that they’re being listened to in terms of their hair care. We’re there to make suggestions, but we’re also there to serve and to listen.”
The level of training provided by Regis, Corey said, was a big reason they chose to franchise with them.
“They really tailor their concept to each region of the market,” he said. “I am very confident it will turn out well. I’m excited about it. There’s such a demand and need out there.”
Cost Cutters, which is located at 3126 Quarry Road, Suite K, can be reached at (435) 645-0603. They are open from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Saturday and from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Sunday. Adult cuts start at $13.95, kids cuts at $10.95, color at $34.95 and waxing at $9.95.
July 27th, 2006
The operator of Supercuts and Regis salons is formulating a new expansion plan. Part of that: hoping long hair goes out of style.
Neal St. Anthony, Star Tribune
It’s been a bad hair year for Regis Corp., the nation’s biggest barber, despite a $50 million breakup fee it received when a merger partner backed out this spring.
Regis, which operates under the Supercuts, Regis Salons, Cost Cutters and other shingles, also continues in what CEO Paul Finkelstein calls a “long-hair cycle” of late. That’s cut mature-store sales increases to less than 1 percent annually, compared with the plan of 2 to 4 percent.
The aborted merger and tough business climate have slowed the Edina-based company’s growth and caused it to refocus on the basics — and a belief that short-hair styles will come back in fashion.
“At this point, Regis had better come up with a plan to increase customers at their existing salons,” said Mariann Montagne Kotas, an analyst at Thrivent Asset Management, a Regis investor. “They’ve got to increase traffic. On the Academy Awards, nobody had short hair. They’re in quite a long-hair cycle.”
Regis, a successful consolidator of ma-and-pa shops and regional chains and barber schools, profitably grew from a stock worth about $5.25 when it went public under Finkelstein in 1991 to $45 per share in late 2004, when it peaked.
The shares have sold off to about $35.50 in the past 18 months amid slow business and the calling off a courtship with the retail hair-products unit of Alberto-Culver. The stock of Regis topped $40 in January on the news that it would pay out about 54 percent of its stock to Illinois-based Alberto as part of a $2.6 billion merger that would leave Finkelstein in charge and give Regis an important growth business.
But the deal fell apart in April because of waning results at Regis, which hurt the stock price. That had Alberto-Culver demanding more shares of Regis to get the Sally Beauty Supply deal done.
“We were going to have to reprice and give away 65 percent of our company, probably, ” Finkelstein told investors at a Chicago analyst conference on June 30. “And we didn’t want to do that. Not in a down cycle. We took their 50 million bucks.”
That will give second-quarter earnings, to be reported this month, a nice one-time pop.
But it doesn’t help Regis with its stalled-growth issues.
Meanwhile, Alberto-Culver, the maker of Nexxus and Alberto V05, is having a better hair year. It decided to sell a minority stake in its Sally Beauty distributor for $575 million and spin off the company on a one-for-one-share basis to shareholders, on top of a special $25 special dividend. And Alberto-Culver’s stock has trended upward since the Regis deal dissolved.
Alberto-Culver cited the pricing issue and “corporate governance” as the reason for pulling out of the deal at the time but declined to specify.
Jack Nielsen, director of finance at Regis, said the issue was more one of culture: Alberto-Culver has a hands-on board while the board of Regis is content to give veteran Finkelstein and his executives a lot of rope and autonomy.
Finkelstein, 63, a workaholic millionaire who happily plans to work another decade or so, told analysts at the Chicago conference that he and the company are up for the challenge.
For one-thing, Regis believes the long-hair trend is dying out after several years. “Thank God,” he told analysts.
Regis has put through some price increases that should result “over time” in sales at stores open at least a year returning to increases in the 2 to 4 percent range, Finkelstein said. “Over time, we feel we can generate high-single digit revenue growth and [double-digit] profits.”
Regis, with 11,000 company-owned and franchised stores nationally and an expected $2.4 billion in revenue this fiscal year, also will continue to open several hundred shops annually.
Bottom line, Finkelstein told the analysts that the market is coming to Regis in two ways: Regis is the largest chain operator, albeit with only about 5 percent of the market, and offers the best deal for solo operators when it comes time to sell their shop or small chain. Moreover, older heads get cut more often.
Sharon Zackfia, an analyst at William Blair & Co. in Chicago was persuaded that the general hair trends are starting to favor Regis again. She also cited an aggressive stock-repurchase plan as a positive factor. Zackfia believes that Regis can get up to 9 percent earnings growth over the next several years from a modest revenue increase at older stores, which will be supplemented with Finkelstein’s proven success at acquisitions.
Similarly, Harrison Grodnick, a principal in the Minneapolis Portfolio Management Group — a Regis shareholder — said investors are still disappointed the Alberto-Culver deal fell through. Regis has become a “show-me” stock, he said.
However, with the stock trading at under 15 times estimated 2007 per-share earnings, Regis is cheap, Grodnick added. “The problems they have right now will make for great opportunity if you have patience.”
Neal St. Anthony • 612-673-7144 • nstanthony@startribune.com
July 27th, 2006
The European Commission has banned 22 hair dye substances following research by its Scientific Committee that links certain product to an increased risk of bladder cancer.
The ban, which comes into effect on 1 December, is part of the Commission’s strategy to establish a list of hair dye substances that are considered safe for human health.
As part of this effort the Scientific Committee has submitted 115 files from manufacturers on hair dye substances that will be evaluated by the EU’s Scientific Committee on Consumer Products (SCCP).
The European Cosmetic, Toiletry and Perfumery Association, Colipa, said that it fully endorsed the Commission’s move but hinted that more work is still to be done in order to fully establish which hair dye substances are safe.
”The Commission strategy foresees a ban of the remaining hair colouring ingredients,” Colips said in a statement. ”Although this does not necessarily mean that theses substances are unsafe, the cosmetics industry fully supports this regulatory measure.”
Colipa added that the hard work of the European Commission and international scientific bodies had made hair dyes one of the most thoroughly tested, and consequently, one of the safest consumer products on the market.
European Commission vice-president for industry policy, Günter Verheugen, said of the decision, ”Substances for which there is no proof that they are safe will disappear from the market. Our safety standards do not only protect EU consumers, they also give legal certainty to the European cosmetics industry.”
The ban will come into effect for any permanent and non-permanent hair dyes for which either no safety files have been submitted or else the SCCP has an unfavourable opinion of.
The study included a public consultation demanding manufacturers to product safety files for their hair dyes proving they did not pose a health risk. The SCCP is now considering the 115 files, which should lead to a response by October.
The Commission added that since banning the 22 substances it has had no reaction from the cosmetic industry, leading it to believe that ‘the ban will not significantly impact the competitiveness of the hair dye manufacturers’.
The 22 substances that have been banned are listed on this pdf document, published by the Commission.
According to the Commission the EU market for hair dyes was valued at €2.6bn in 2004, of which 70 – 80 per cent account for permanent dyes. In the general population 60 per cent of women use hair dye, whereas 5 – 10 per cent of males use it with a frequency of 6 – 8 times a year.
July 27th, 2006
By Simon Pitman
Herbal Works, a producer of all-natural bath and body aromatherapy products, says it has installed a newly
automated processing system that has helped to boost its production nearly twenty-fold.
The company has experienced huge growth since its inception in 2001 - growth that has come off the back of significant consumer interest in natural-based products.
But off the back of this growth came a significant problem for the company – how to keep up with the demand. Basically the company was struggling to keep up with production demands, which led it to seek out a solution.
A visit to last year’s Pack Expo show in Las Vegas gave the company a number of ideas concerning automated solutions, which eventually led to the purchase of a Vol-A volumetric filler from New York-based Kaps-All Packaging Systems.
“All of our packaging operations at the time were manual, which impeded our ability to increase production. I knew that we needed new automated equipment to help grow our business,” explained Nadia Gross, president of Herbal Works.
The company produces herbal body lotions, massage oils and body scrubs with ingredients such as ginger, lemongrass, rosemary, grapefruit oil, chamomile and bergamot, which are carried by major stores throughout the United States and distributed in international markets including Europe, Canada and the Caribbean.
But recognizing the limitations of the company’s manual packaging operations, Gross realized that it was time to upgrade the production facilities.
The Vol-A is said to have a company design that saves floor space and is capable of handling a wide variety of bottle sizes containing both liquids and semi-liquid forms. On top of this flexibility is a key design feature, with a microprocessor allowing the machinery to be programmed according to fill volume and fill rate, thus limiting changeover times.
The company also purchased a 48” unscrambling turntable and a 48″ accumulation turntable from Accutek Packaging Company, based in California. The equipment is designed to load containers onto a filling line and to collect filled bottles respectively.
According to Nature Works, the combination of the these two pieces of equipment has helped the company to increase production 1,900 per cent, in turn unlocking a production bottle neck and giving the company room for further expansion in the future.
“Before we attended the Pack Expo show, we were only able to produce 5,000 bottles of product in one month. With the Kaps-All and Accutek machinery, we now produce over 100,000 bottles per month,” said Gross.
“Thanks to this new equipment, our business more than doubled in 2005, and it doesn’t show any signs of slowing down in the near future. We’ve already increased business by 78 per cent within the past few months.”
And further expansion is certainly on the cards. The company says it will be attending this year’s Pack Expo event, to be held in Chicago in October, to conduct further research into machinery that has the potential to further increase production efficiencies and continue to meet the still increasing consumer demands.
July 27th, 2006