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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024

Walking Beauty

CEO and President of Newhall Laboratories, Inc. Lee Feldman, 45, knows the health and beauty industry. He has been working in the industry for 24 years, and for two years at Newhall Laboratories. Just as much as he knows his industry, he knows the power of marketing to a particular niche. His company Newhall Laboratories in Santa Clarita is the parent company of the popular beauty lines La Bella Hair Care, aimed at the Hispanic consumer, and GroWorks, aimed at the African-American consumer. Sales marketing, and distribution are conducted on-site. He attended Baruch College in New York, before he started in the industry at Dell Laboratories, Sally Hansen’s parent company. Most recently he worked at Vice President of Sales at Advanced Research, helping to build the company to a sale point of $170 million. He knew founder Cuban-American Al Rodriguez who approached him to be executive vice president. He started part-time after his non-compete clause ended with his previous company. “I like the ethics of the company and the relationships,” Feldman said. “Quite candidly it reminded me exactly of ARL, a smaller company I built to a larger company. I thought ‘I can do this one more time.’” Question: What are some of the tools you bring to the table? Answer: My style has always been to analyze my business, understand where numbers are at, know what my voids are and be able to diagnose and determine where the opportunities exist. You’re the size of a Procter & Gamble which is several billion dollars you’ve got to find your niche. What I think a lot of companies make their mistake is that they try to play in the same area and be a Procter & Gamble when they don’t have the $300 million dollars to advertise. Also, constant competition is what I’ve learned. The last part I’ve learned is problem solving. We all make mistakes. If we’re not making mistakes we’re not trying hard enough. Q: A lot of your products seem to appeal to a particular niche. How do they do that? A: The original niche was the Hispanic side of the business. Al Rodriguez recognized that the Hispanic consumer was ignored. I recognized that the African-American was another consumer that was underserved. The way you determine niche markets is to try to determine in other categories where other people’s weaknesses are and how we can build strength. I believe we have the best looking packaging coming out. Besides packaging you need formulation. Packaging will get the customer to buy it one time. Formulation will keep them coming back. With the GroWorks line we tested 450 African-American consumers in 7 months. Also I am recognizing trends and recognizing the market. There’s also the opportunities. Being a small company we’re able to be nimble and go to market quickly when we have to. Q: How would you say the economy is affecting your industry? A: The general market is extremely difficult. When the economy gets tough the consumer will trade down from buying their $20 Sebastian items and they’ll go to the mass markets and buy the $5 retail price points. The biggest challenge in this industry is the consolidation. If you do well your cost of sale is lower. At least you don’t have to visit as many retailers. In a bad economy the upside is women don’t want to spend $30 to $40 to get their hair done. They’ll go to a mass market and spend $10 to $15. Q: How would you describe your leadership or management style? A: I believe in leading by example. I believe in doing each person’s job maybe not as well as them but be able to jump in. I’m the kind of guy if there’s filing that needs to get done I’ll help. I do not have an ego. I do want total participation. I want an open door policy. I want to know what I’m doing wrong more importantly than what I’m doing right. However, I do reserve the right to make the final decision. Being with a smaller company you need to be involved with every area of the business. I call it management by walking. I’m not the type of person that sits behind my desk. I like to roam the office. I pop into offices and offer my help. Q: Your target audience started off being the Latino consumer and now it is also the African-American consumer. What is your main target consumer? A: I don’t want to forget the heritage of our company. I believe we need to stay focused on the Hispanic consumer. My goal is to focus on the general market with the Caucasian and Asian consumer. That’s why we’ve introduced the new forms. We have the 22-ounce bottles of gels. That’s why we’re coming out with pomades. I want to keep our heritage but expand our focus to the general market consumer, and expand to the African-American market. Prior to us there was no health and beauty company that concentrated on the Hispanic market. But now the giants are looking to come out with Hispanic positioned items. Q: How has the company grown since Al Rodriquez started the company out of his garage 30 years ago? A: We stand behind our products. We do not look to be a home run hitter. You strike out a lot. By getting singles and keeping the ball in play we just grow. We don’t grow at a 50 percent level but we grow consistently each year. We’re building our reputation and adding innovative products and looking for new products. We’re penetrating the mom and pop beauty supply stores. We opened up Mexico, we opened up in Ecuador and Trinidad. Q: How else are you growing? A: We are planning on adding a bunch of new people the next year both in the sales and on the internal side. We’re looking to expand to have more marketing help and outside sales. We do about $25 million and I believe we will have a 20 percent growth this year.

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