Success Came Naturally for ABBA Partners : They scratched their heads over criteria for ‘the perfect shampoo.’ Five years later, their company is among the fastest-growing in field.
If you were to create the perfect shampoo, how would it work? According to Jim Markham, chief executive of ABBA Products Inc. in Irvine, such a question five years ago prompted him and his partner Alan Benfield Bush to develop a natural hair care products company.
Markham’s criteria for shampoo perfection? It had to clean without removing color from treated hair, lather well, rinse well, be hypoallergenic, leave the hair untangled and shiny, not irritate the scalp and have a pleasant smell.
“Once we have the concept of what we want, we go to our chemist and tell him to come up with a formula using only natural ingredients,” said Markham. Through testing and formula modifications at their Irvine headquarters, the partners arrive at the final product.
After a formula has been approved--there are 11 separate ABBA products, from shampoos to hair gels to hair sprays--consultants in marketing, packaging and even how it should smell (aromatherapists) are brought in to help launch the product. The company has a manufacturing plant in Riverside.
Each ABBA product is made of oils and natural ingredients derived from flowers, plants and trees. None uses animal ingredients or is tested on animals, he said. Other than a synthetic preservative added to to give them shelf life, the products are otherwise natural. Recycled paper and soy ink is used in the packaging, along with biodegradable containers whenever possible.
A recent issue of the Oppenheimer Report, a monthly trade publication, said that ABBA--an acronym for Achieve Balance of Business in Art--is one of the fastest-growing hair product lines in sales to beauty salons. Markham said that ABBA’s sales in 1992 were $4.5 million and he projects sales of $7.3 million this year.
ABBA is just one of the many companies cleaning up on the back-to-nature trend in beauty products. Minnesota-based Aveda Corp. is a pioneer in this field. Aveda is a privately held company that doesn’t divulge its gross sales, but a company representative said Aveda has grown 30% each year for the past five years.
Besides Aveda, Nexxus, Paul Mitchell, Estee Lauder and others have come up with natural product lines, and that’s not counting additional brands sold in health food stores. According to Ellen Cohen of Aveda, “The beauty industry is being transformed lately with products that use plant essences and (require) no animal testing.”
Markham and Bush were prominent hairdressers before starting ABBA, which now has 11 full-time employees and 44 distributors. Markham worked with the late Jay Sebring, who was killed, along with actress Sharon Tate and two other people, by Charles Manson’s followers one night in 1969. Markham’s star-studded clientele in those days included Johnny Carson, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward and Robert Redford. He bought Sebring’s fledging hair product company from Sebring’s father and created his own line, called Markham Products, which he sold in 1980.
Bush, who is ABBA’s president, trained with Vidal Sassoon in London in the 1960s and has since trained stylists for Paul Mitchell Systems, Joyco Laboratories and Redkin Products, before joining with Markham to form ABBA, which was financed initially on $200,000 from Bush, Markham and Markham’s father-in-law. Markham said he believes his company has been successful because of a growing number of consumers who want products that are both environmentally safe and that perform well.
Carol Hall, owner of Carol’s of Huntington Beach Salon, said: “Fifty percent of the products we use come from ABBA and they’re great. I’ve been in the business for 30 years so I’m always looking at new products. What I especially like about ABBA is that the whole line is good. With most lines you usually find only one or two products that you like. We’ve been using ABBA since they started.”
A primary way ABBA gets its products into new outlets is through demonstrations it sponsors at local salons on how to cut the latest styles and, of course, how to use its products. This combination-education and marketing tool, called the ABBA Stylist Affiliate Program, is headed by Bush and includes more than 150 hairdressers nationwide who provide education to other stylists on how to build their artistic, technical and business skills.
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