Good morning, Broadsheet readers! JetBlue’s incoming CEO encounters an early challenge, a new bill could make it easier for women in Congress to vote after childbirth, and Wella’s CEO explores new opportunities without a parent company. Have a wonderful Wednesday!
– Hair to stay. Wella Company is a 144-year-old business with a complicated corporate history. The company was founded in Germany in 1880 as a producer of material needed for wigs. (Its name comes from the German word for “waves.”) At varying points over the past century-and-a-half, its biggest brands—like hair dye Clairol and nail polish OPI—were bought and sold by new owners. In 2003, Procter & Gamble acquired the core Wella business and later sold it to beauty giant Coty in 2016.
In 2020, Wella Company divested from Coty, establishing a new beauty business devoted to the hair and nail categories. Private equity firm KKR bought a majority stake in the business in a deal that valued Wella at around $4.5 billion. Annie Young-Scrivner, a former Starbucks exec and ex-CEO of Godiva, became Wella’s CEO that year.
As she led Wella through its spinoff, she’s pursued opportunities that wouldn’t have been possible under its prior owners, she says. Many of Wella’s brands are geared toward beauty professionals rather than consumers. Under P&G, Wella wasn’t permitted to sell those products online or outside salons. Then at Coty, the corporate owner “had a lot of focus on CoverGirl and a lot of focus on Sally Hansen” rather than Wella’s OPI brand, Young-Scrivner says.
Leading Wella without a parent company’s competing priorities has allowed for new innovations, the CEO says. OPI has a new nail-strengthening product whose technology came from a hair product—a cross-category collaboration that wouldn’t have happened under Wella’s past corporate owners, she argues.
Annie Young-Scrivner, CEO of Wella. Courtesy of Wella Young-Scrivner spent her early career in PepsiCo’s management training program, where she drove and unloaded a Frito-Lay truck around Seattle before she could take on an executive role overseeing that team. She says that her PepsiCo experience—working with restaurants to develop their beverage business, alongside supporting consumer brands—prepared her for Wella’s relationships with 500,000 salons. She sees Wella’s professional business as “almost a SaaS business because once you train someone on the color, they keep coming back.”
After PepsiCo, Young-Scrivner joined Starbucks in 2009 as global chief marketing officer; she led the coffee giant’s tea business as it expanded further into iced drinks to combat a summer slump in revenue. Then she served as CEO of Godiva, leading a “premiumization” of the chocolate brand. She says she always wanted to be a CEO; she sold perfume made from Red Hots candies on her cul-de-sac at age 10.
At Wella, she plans to lean into what she calls the “skinification of hair.” She sees haircare growing as a category the way skincare has for years, with customers adding scalp care and all kinds of other treatments to their routines.
With Starbucks, chocolate, and now beauty on her resume, Young-Scrivner has spent her career in industries that consumers are passionate about. (A passion she understands; Wella is based in New York, but Young-Scrivner flies to Seattle to see her hairdresser of 20 years.) “When a brand can emotionally connect or make the consumer feel better—that’s when you get the delight,” she says. “I mean, if you have a bad hair day, it’s not good.”
Emma Hinchliffe
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@_emmahinchliffe
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