Sally Beauty is strengthening its private label strategy and getting into the bond-building hair space with the launch of a new brand.
The new brand, called Bondbar, offers four products, including a pre-shampoo, a shampoo, a conditioner and a styling cream, each for $9.99. Bondbar hits shelves on November 1, with window displays and front-of-store displays to promote the product. The products will also be available on SallyBeauty.com and Amazon. According to its third-quarter 2022 earnings call from August, Sally Beauty’s hair-care sales increased 5% year-over-year. However, the company’s third-quarter net sales decreased by 6% to $961 million, and comparable sales declined by 3.6%.
Steve Chattin, vp of global product development for Sally Beauty, said the company could have integrated bond-building technology within other Sally Beauty hair brands, but it was attracted to the idea of a brand focused on a single solution. Its singular focus makes it easier to market to customers, he said.
“We felt like [individual bond-building products] would have gotten less attention or [gotten lost] in the noise of the store. We wanted to pump up the attributes and the visual presentation to better showcase the [hair-care] solution to the consumer,” he said. “It’s so important for us to get behind this type of brand, because [hair] color is the largest segment of business and every color customer that walks in the door becomes a potential customer for bonding treatments.”
Sally Beauty sells other bond-repair hair-care brands, including One ‘N Only, Creme of Nature and Uberliss. Bondbar is made with a proprietary bonding formula and is designed for all hair types.
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As of September, Sally Beauty’s owned and exclusive brands account for 45% of its hair sales. Such brands include hair-care brands Strawberry Leopard and Texture ID, nail-care brand Beauty Secrets, and hair-styling brand Beyond the Zone. Sally Beauty has leaned into do-it-yourself approaches to beauty since 2020, when hair color became its fastest-growing segment as more people began dying their hair at home. Bond-building is seen as a natural next ancillary product offering for those people, said Maryann Herskowitz, gvp of merchandising for Sally Beauty.
“We knew the consumer was coloring her hair with vivid hair color. We knew she was heat-styling a lot. And we also knew she was on the quest for healthier hair,” said Herskowitz.
Over the past two years, the hair bonding-category has seen a dramatic increase in players and innovation, with brands like K18 and Epres arriving on the market. Meanwhile, legacy brands like Redken and L’Oréal have created their own bond-building products within existing brands. Subsequently, Olaplex stock dropped 45% on Wednesday after the biggest bond-building company reduced its financial outlook for the full year, citing competition and economic pressures.
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“[Bondbar] is somewhat symbolic, in terms of how we will handle our brands going forward. We’re putting a lot of time and energy into the formulas and investing in [product] claims,” said Chattin. “It’s a [new] focal point of the company. It provides us with brands found primarily at Sally, and we want to invest in that because it gets us customers returning to repurchase.”
