It’s pretty cool to be green these days. Much more so than in 1978 when environmental pioneer Horst Rechelbacher introduced the holistic Aveda brand. Back then, possessing a green social conscience was the domain of hippies and a few left wing anthropologists, whilst the rest of Gen X and their baby boomer parents continued trashing the environment – not necessarily intently, but just because mostly they didn’t know any better. Today, more than 30 years later, the Aveda brand is not only an environmental leader in the business of beauty and hair; it’s also terribly fashionable and über cool, even being voted the number one haircare brand by UK ‘CoolBrands’. General Manager of Aveda Europe, Middle East & Australasia, Amanda Le Roux, was in Australia earlier this year and shared with culture Editor Jenny Burns her passion for the brand that proves beauty doesn’t have to be good just for the beholder.
It’s funny, isn’t it, that in an industry such as hairdressing, which is most definitely female skewed, management within most global haircare organisations is dominated by males. Not in the case of Aveda’s Amanda Le Roux, who for the past nine years has been responsible for the growth and development of the Aveda brand in Europe. In fact, for Amanda, the position was a natural fit, giving her an opportunity to blend an enthusiasm for natural beauty with her expertise in management and finance.
Born in London, Amanda’s first job was in stockbroking. “I actually worked on the floor in the stock exchange,” she explains, “back when they had people there, not machines like they do now. I loved the excitement of that environment. There were a lot of ‘my word is my bond’ promises rather than entering deals into a computer. It was a lot of fun.”
This led Amanda into venture capital for the next five years, where she was responsible for raising money on behalf of small start-up retail companies across a number of different industries. One day, a natural skincare and aromatherapy company came across her desk – and she loved it so much she decided to invest in it herself and become a partner. The brand was called Secret Garden and was a pioneer in the UK at a time in the late 80s when the only other eco-conscious beauty brand was The Body Shop. However times were tough, rents were high and Amanda and her partners eventually sold the business.
“Sometimes I wonder about fate,” Amanda ponders. “Every time I went to New York I used to press my nose up against the glass at Aveda because it was the type of place that I wanted to emulate. And here I am.”
After selling Secret Garden, Amanda joined jeans giant Levi Strauss. Starting as UK Retail and Franchise Manager, she developed the Original Levi’s Stores and opened 14 new stores, including the flagship store in Regent Street, London. Amanda was then promoted to UK Marketing Director, then onto the position of Director of New Business Development, Licensing and Strategic Retail Alliances, which she held before joining Aveda.
“What I really loved about working at Levi’s was that I learnt about the power of branding,” says Amanda. “How to really build up your brand and then grow it around the world. I guess this is where I learnt that if you are true to your brand, people will stay loyal to it. People buy brands because they know what they’re going to get in return – and there’s a certain responsibility really for keeping that trust in tact. Levi’s is so successful for that.”
Nine years on and based in Brussels, Amanda was approached by Aveda, asking her to move back to London and be responsible for growing the company’s European business.
“To be honest, I couldn’t think of anything better than coming back to an industry that I loved,” Amanda smiles. “This was in 2000 and at a time when Aveda’s presence in Europe was totally made up of distributors. My brief was to bring the business back from distributors, grow it within the company itself, grow the brand within the markets that we were already in and to develop it within the countries that we were not.”
It was quite a job description, but a challenge that Amanda confidently took on with a passion. Aveda at the time had a business in the UK and very small businesses in Germany, Italy, Belgium and Luxembourg. For the first couple of years, Amanda began the process of bringing the Aveda brand back into the global fold and away from the distributors. She hired management to run each of the operations, as well as their own sales, marketing and education staff. In some cases, the brand had been bastardised, which made the job of re-positioning more like starting over.
“Our business in Italy was with someone who had set it up with some distributors underneath the main distributor, which was a bit tricky,” she explains, “so when we took that over and set up our own business in Milan, we had to start somewhat from scratch. Then in the UK, the business had been run by a distributor and was in department stores as well as salons. As in Italy, we had to come out of a lot of salons and retail outlets, re-group and start again. In one way, the distributor in the UK was a great entrepreneur, but he had really moved away from the essence of what Aveda stood for.”
The Netherlands and Australia followed, and now, with the exception of Iceland (which is in the process of being returned from distributors), all of the Aveda business within the European jurisdiction is back under head office control. Now her priority is making the Aveda mark in a whole swag of new countries.
“We entered Spain two years ago completely from scratch and did a fabulous launch with a spa and salon model in the centre of Madrid,” Amanda comments, “which we needed to do because nobody had ever heard of the brand there. Considering we didn’t have any profile there, lots of salons were approaching us, which is timely really, as there’s a very interesting green awareness growth in Spain. For salon owners who are saying that they want some sort of natural brand and see that we can provide various levels of business support within their salon, it’s a really great fit.”
Interestingly, when it comes to corporate geography, traditionally most global organisations position Australian offices within Asian or Pacific operations, however Aveda Australia is part of the European arm.
“Most Australian and New Zealand businesses are geographically aligned with Asia,” Amanda says, “however we made the decision to put it with Europe because Australian hairdressers very much look towards Europe and the UK for hairdressing trends as opposed to Asia. I think it makes more sense, because this way we can share a lot of what we’re doing with the Australian market. In hairdressing, the Asian market is quite dissimilar – not just a totally different type of hair but also, different kinds of salons.
“Aveda is a very different brand to any other hairdressing brand, so somehow in a way you need something tangible for it to work. We need to have a salon model so we can show customers, consumers and salons what Aveda is all about.
“We’re not really in the business of owning our own salons unless we have to set them up in a market where we need to launch the brand and show a model of a spa or a hair salon. In Australia, there are some amazing salon models here already, so we don’t need to open a salon model ourselves.”
In 1997, Aveda was purchased by beauty giant Estée Lauder, which also owns other specialist or boutique brands such as Bobbi Brown, La Mer, M.A.C, Jo Malone, Darphin and Ojon. Aveda is the corporation’s largest salon brand, considerably outweighing its other haircare line, Bumble and Bumble, with around 5,000 salons in the US and another 2,000 across the globe. So how does the whole green way of life work under the realm of a corporate giant?
“Personally, I think it’s a brilliant arrangement because Estée Lauder is very much a ‘house of brands’ rather than a ‘branded house’”, comments Amanda. “We are very much encouraged to keep our brand identity and what the brand stands for totally separate. What this sort of partnership means is that back of house, you have terrific support and investment in making sure you have the best logistics, the best finance, the best HR, and the best R&D – although the R&D side is particularly separate within Aveda because all of our manufacturing is done in Minneapolis and our manufacturing is certified by EcoCert. It also means that if Estée Lauder is doing research on a certain subject, we can join in on that particular project. Or if they are developing a new software capability for consumer marketing, we can benefit from that too. But very much the front of house – sales, education, and marketing – is our own.
“I think one of the biggest milestones for Aveda happened in the year 2000 – not because I joined,” she laughs, “but because Dominique Conseil, our president, was appointed. He’s a terrific person and it’s not an easy job to follow in the footsteps of an entrepreneur like Horst Rechelbacher. In Dominique, which is what Estée Lauder found, is someone as passionate as Horst about the whole environmental social conscience movement, and yet what he brought was a certain discipline in the way that we do business. We’ve always been very passionate about what we stand for, but I think there was often just a lot of talking. Now we are very precise on the effectiveness of the products. We now have the research to be able to prove that if you use, for example, our Outer Peace anti-acne products and incorporate the regime daily, you will see an improvement of 93% within your blemishes. If you use our new Scalp Remedy products, you will see a 53% improvement in your scalp flakiness. So you can see, we now have key claims that we can show our consumer, which I think is really important, and I think that’s one of the benefits of working with Dominique as well as Estée Lauder.”
There’s passion a plenty at camp Aveda, no doubt about it. And why not, I suppose, when you can be proud of your employer’s ethics and the job the company is doing to help save our planet. In the arena of packaging for instance, Aveda is a pioneer in the use of post-consumer recycled paper and prevents more than a million pounds of plastic from being deposited in landfills each year. In its offices, only 100% recycled paper is used as well as soy-based inks for printing. Even their executives drive environmentally-friendly Prius vehicles. It’s easy to get all excited about the cause, but as Amanda points out, joining the Aveda family is quite a commitment.
“When I hear of people who say they want to come and join Aveda, I tell them up front that there’s certain aspects of the brand that you’ve got to buy into,” she explains. “If you don’t go with our core values or you don’t like the complete picture, don’t come and join Aveda, because we’ll drive you mad with all our criteria that we have to have!”
Whilst Amanda jokes about driving salon owners around the world mad, she does admit that although she always had an affinity for natural products and environmental care, her role at Aveda has increased her passion ten fold.
“To be honest,” she divulges, “when I had Secret Garden we were all into wellness. Everyone uses the word ‘wellness’ now, but wellness at that time was all about using ingredients that made you feel well in a natural way. I guess what I’ve gotten more into now is the whole environmental side of things. I’ve become much more passionate about that since I joined Aveda, because when you see the results, you can’t help but feel that way. For example, Earth Month takes place every year and since 1999 when we became involved, we have raised $11 million within the Aveda network. And when you see what that sort of money can do for small, individual projects, it’s quite astonishing.
“The theme for this year and last year was about communities having access to clean water. The $2.8 million we raised last year, although it might be a relatively small amount, made an enormous difference to groups of people in India, Africa and Morocco. Watching those people on videos and seeing what a difference that money has made to them, whether it’s educating them on pesticides and what it does to their land or on how to build wells and things like that – well without getting too emotional, it’s absolutely heart-rending! And it makes me think how fantastic it is to be working for a company where I love the brand, I love the product, but most importantly, I love what a difference the brand can make for people around the world. I would defy anybody not to enjoy working for a company like that.”
One of Aveda’s core ethics is concerning sustainability and developing associations with indigenous communities around the world. These are relationships where everyone’s a winner – Aveda sources natural alternatives to chemicals and communities benefit from investment, education and fair trade. In Western Australia, Aveda has a strong relationship with the Songman Circle of Wisdom, an indigenous group developed to oversee the sustainable production of Australian sandalwood. It is wild harvested by methods that meet the standards of an indigenous raw materials certification and is used extensively throughout Aveda products. Another example of such relationships is for Aveda’s aforementioned Outer Peace Anti-Acne range. The key oil featured is Tamanu Oil – sustainably sourced from the native peoples of the Vanuatu islands in South East Asia. Aveda’s partnership to source tamanu oil directly benefits the islands’ inhabitants, helping to fund local schools and protect indigenous culture.
Aveda cites that authentic beauty cares for the environment, which we inherited from elders, and will leave to generations that follow us. So how does the whole relationship between the indigenous communities and the corporation come about in the first place?
“Let me take the Yawanawa Tribe in the Brazilian Amazon as an example,” Amanda says, “because that’s one of the oldest tribes that Aveda has had a long-standing relationship with. It started back in 1993, when one of our people in R&D saw that there was a seed within the urukum shrub called annatto that made the same red pigment for colour in makeup that most companies get from crushed beetle, called Carmine. To begin with, we funded the Yawanawa Tribe to plant 13,000 seedlings of Uruku, to organically grow it and over time, with the company’s support, the Yawanawá built a village, called Nova Esperança (New Hope), and planted the uruku on their land. Since 1993, Aveda’s support has helped the Yawanawá recover rights to rich, biodiverse land in their native home. Most recently, the Yawanawá secured rights to 93,000 additional hectares (125,000 acres) of land – bringing their land area to over 400,000 acres – all of which is now protected from deforestation. The partnership fosters economic independence for the Yawanawá and helps them protect their sacred land, which in turn helps promote a healthy rainforest.
“The leaders of the Yawanawá came to Minneapolis and presented on stage at our Master Jam in 2001, explaining what this relationship means to their people. Half of the audience had tears in their eyes, it was very moving.“
Whilst Amanda speaks so passionately about the amazing work that Aveda does for the environment and indigenous communities around the world, she never forgets that Aveda is also a business. And working with individual businesses is something that really pushes Amanda’s buttons.
“One of the things we say, when we talk about ‘wellness’, is also financial wellness,” she explains. “And making a good profit for your business is just as important. We talk about sustainability – if a salon isn’t making money, there won’t be any salon. It won’t be sustainable if it’s not making a profit. That’s one of the things that we feel very passionate about.
“Having had my own business, I know what it’s like to worry about paying people at the end of the week and the end of the month, then paying that rent bill. I think it’s amazing that these salon owners go out on a limb; sometimes they put their house on the line, because they have a vision for their salon. Our Aveda Business College we’ve just launched is a way of helping salon owners build up their business and become more profitable, plus have the added advantage of learning about and being part of the whole green movement.
“We’re not about pushing product, we’re about growing businesses. We remunerate our SDPs (Salon Development Partners) if the salons they are responsible for increase their turnover. So I’m not interested if you sell in six more shampoos. What I’m interested in is finding out what you need. Do you need help with getting more clients through the door? Do you need help with staff retention? Do you have pricing issues? By helping our clients, as a consequence they will buy more product anyway, because they will do more business in their salon. So that’s a done deal. But we concentrate on getting the business owners to improve their salons. And I think we’re unique in the way that we do that.”
In 2009 it’s definitely fashionable being green, but it’s fashionable being fashionable too. Aveda makes a point of supporting award-winning, creative artists such as their international creative VP Antoinette Beenders and eco-chic designer Phillip Lim, and marry their hip fashion messages with a cool environmental edge. Accordingly, Aveda is a prominent fixture at New York Fashion Week, partnering with designers who have a similar green ethos, whether it is the use of recyclable fabric or manufacturing with organic materials such as cotton – and reinforcing that green fashion message even further.
On the subject of fashion, Amanda talks enthusiastically about her three children and how one of her daughters has just been accepted into the London College of Fashion with, you guessed it, a complete passion for environmentally-friendly materials.
“My children are 18, 19 and 21 and they’ve grown up not only with my interests, but also the whole younger generation’s interest in the environment,” says Amanda proudly. “They are absolutely ahead of things when it comes to recycling, and although the girls love shopping for fashion, they are very conscious about what they are going to do with their old garments – vintage fashion and op shops are a great way of recycling. Our generation has not been very good at looking after the planet, so it’s almost up to their generation to save us all.”
Still on the homefront and keeping things all in the family, fortunately Amanda’s husband doesn’t mind too much if she takes her work home with her and talks shop. He has a group of organic cafes in London, so the topic of natural or organic something or other is most often on the agenda when it comes to dinner table chatter. In fact, Amanda says she finds it difficult to ‘switch off’ – but since work is one of her favourite subjects, she doesn’t mind too much.
“Horst was a pioneer and I think over the last five or six years, we’ve not only had the benefit of his knowledge and ways, but we’re benefitting from the way the world market has now gone when it comes to environmental awareness. Our products are very clear about what benefits they perform compared to previously, we’ve got more relationships with indigenous people, our packaging has become better, we’re the first beauty company to manufacture out of wind energy (and that’s very cool) and our green agents are improving our chemistries time and time again. We’re always trying to find a natural way to replace a chemical. We are on a mission!
“Anthropologist Margaret Mead said something like ‘never doubt for one moment that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has’. So as long as we do, and we keep chipping away, bit by bit, then we’re making a difference.”