Leslie Marino, US President of Professional Products Division, L’Oréal, has held a successful career at L’Oréal beginning in the Luxe Division where she served as General Manager of Fragrance. In 2011, she joined the Professional Products Division as the General Manager of Kérastase and Shu Uemura Art of Hair, driving sales and helping Kérastase elevate its profile as a true luxury and service brand.
In 2013, Marino became General Manager of Redken and Pureology, and during her seven year tenure, delivered extraordinary growth, helping Redken to become the undisputed market leader.
Today, Marino and the brands she guides are shaping the future of professional beauty.
Most recently, the Texture Education Collective (TEC), founded by Aveda, DevaCurl, L’Oréal USA, and Neill Corporation, partnering with the Professional Beauty Association, celebrated California Governor Newsom’s signing of a landmark bill into law requiring the inclusion of textured hair education in the state’s cosmetology licensing requirements and curriculums. L’Oréal USA’s dedication to promoting texture education to professionals began years ago through its L’Oréal Professional Products brands Mizani, Redken, and Matrix.
Marino took some time to answer questions posed by MODERN SALON about her vision for “what’s next” from L’Oréal’s Professional Products, US.
An Interview with Leslie Marino, US President, L’Oréal Professional Products Division
MODERN SALON: Can you explain to us how L’Oréal’s Professional Products, US ‘lives’ inside the larger L’Oréal Group?
LESLIE MARINO: Professional Products founded the L’Oréal group more than 110 years ago with the first ever safe synthetic hair dye. A young chemist with an entrepreneurial spirit formulated the hair dye and sold it to Parisian hairdressers. With this, the founder of the Groupe forged the first link in what is still the DNA of L’Oréal: “research and innovation in the service of Beauty.”
In PPD today, we continue the legacy of servicing and reinventing the professional beauty industry with an entrepreneurial spirit.
Our mission is to support hairdressers and develop the industry sustainably, while benefiting all. Thanks to our nine heritage brands and SalonCentric, the leading pro beauty distributor in the US, we’re providing better professional haircare, experiences, and services to 1.4Million hairdressers and 25,000 salons and chains.
Within the L’Oreal Groupe, PPD is the second largest division and a unique division with many incredible opportunities to thrive grow and learn. We’re known to be a people-first and purpose-driven division. We have rigor, we are competitive, we are the industry leader for a reason – dominating in color and Haircare in both Professional and consumer channels, and we do it with emotion, compassion, positivity.
What is most unique about our business model, is that we have close promixity to our #1 customer SalonCentric. We own our pro distribution – giving us this great closeness to our customer – we embody customer centricity because of how deeply we can understand our Pro consumer. SalonCentric is truly a powerhouse partner who knows 100% of the 1.4M hairdressers. They have a sophisticated omni-channel strategy with 600 stores, an evolving B2B site, CRM capabilities and so much more. With SalonCentric as your distributor you can exercise your muscle for storytelling and merchandising, which is an essential skill in today’s environment.
MS: What were your priorities when you first moved into the role of President of L’Oréal’s Professional Products, US?
LM: I have been with L’Oreal 34 years, and the during last 14 at PPD I have seen more transformation in our industry. This a place I LOVE to work while at the same time we are evolving and modernizing to become what we self-proclaim as the “most cutting edge” of beauty in the pro industry and within L’Oreal. The stylist remains at the heart of everything we do, so our priorities are focused on supporting and growing our communities.
From brand innovation and world-class education, to historical legislation-changing initiatives, new sustainable practices and digital acceleration, we continue to transform the industry in record-breaking form while outperforming the market.
Driving our collective growth and keeping the salon at the core, we continue to lead with innovation. Today, we have the largest brand portfolio in the industry. Led by Redken who is now the #1 professional hair brand and Kerastase, our launches from all of our nine heritage brands are reinforcing our commitment to our loyal customers – reminding them why they love our company.
We are also leading with education and focused on the importance of caring for people. Our priority is to expand our world-class offerings both online and off to serve and empower salons, stylists, and consumers. Today, people expect more, they want a stylist who cares for more than just their hair. So we’re creating new and emotional connections between our brands, professionals and consumers in every market to meet the changing needs and consumers’ desires.
Second, our business is built on a foundation of diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. So we remain heavily focused on creating professional beauty opportunities that benefit communities, supporting people who will embrace the profession, helping pioneer the next generation of hairdressing talents. We created our Texture of Change Program, upskilling instructors and students to address needs of textured hair clients and influencing state boards to require texture education for licensing.
We’re expanding our sustainability footprint in markets and through our Hairstylists for the Future initiative, we are empowering stylists to reduce their environmental impact. We work for the better benefit of the planet, advancing on plastic reduction and pioneering green delivery among other commitments.
Finally, we continue supporting and modernizing the salon industry with an omni-channel approach. Our goal is to be accessible wherever consumers choose to shop. We recognized the strategic importance of Amazon back in 2017, establishing an early presence on the platform, and continuing expand today. We’ve steadily grown our brand portfolio year over year to elevate the premium haircare experience for Amazon shoppers.
MS: Quality education is so important for the growth of the salon professional—but it’s not always easy to access. How are you prioritizing accessibility to education for the stylist?
LM: Stylists are at the heart of everything we do in PPD. They depend on brands like ours to teach them and grow their skillset so they can unleash their artistry –Technical education, application and color theory are all critical to what we do and the products we provide.
Salons and Stylists rely on us to help them be successful. Only 5% salons make profit, 10% break even. They need us!
When looking at the impact, educated stylists/salons buy +10% more than stylists and salons who weren’t touched by education – so when stylist’s business thrive, so does ours.
Summit Salon Business Center, our exclusive partner, offers turnkey systems and strategies for our salon partners to remain profitable and successful.
As a division, we host over 25,000 education classes per year, not including shows and pop-up events with an eye on scaling and efficiency. To further elevate the industry, last year in partnership with Rolfs Global, we launched the first ever university degree which elevates them in all aspects – many of our own Educators and Artists have graduated.
MS: Education around working with textured hair has been improving in recent years, but we do know that understanding needs to start early. Can you please describe your Texture of Change Program?
LM: Hair is deeply personal. It’s inextricably linked to well-being, identity, and how we show up in the world. It’s important that our clients feel confident when it comes to their uniquely textured hair. All individuals deserve to be welcomed, understood, and cared for when they seek out hair services.
For too long, the care of textured hair has been left out of required training programs for hairstylists, leaving over 65% of our US population underrepresented.
We must be a driver of change for inclusivity. In PPD, that means preparing all stylists for all clients and the future starts in education. In 2021, L’Oréal PPD launched the first free cosmetology curriculum program, Texture Mastery, upskilling beauty school instructors and students on cutting, coloring, and styling textured hair.
In 2023, we were proud to expand efforts through The Texture of Change, a powerful movement to transform the stylist community through open access to textured hair education and business resources. This movement encourages participation in the transformation of the entire stylist and salon community, with inclusive and equitable access to textured hair education and business resources.
To advance this commitment, we partnered with the Professional Beauty Association (PBA) to form the Texture Education Collective (TEC), an alliance of professional industry leaders with a shared goal to encourage states to adopt textured hair education as part of their curriculum and state board exam. The alliance issued a call-to-action and petition calling on elected officials nationwide to help create texture-inclusive state standards and curriculum in all cosmetology schools.
As a result four states have made history by adopting this law. It also now mandates that the state Appearance Enhancement Advisory Committee, which governs cosmetology, always includes at least one professional stylist specializing in textured hair.
Our role in passing new, inclusive texture legislation in states is not only a historic achievement, but holds special significance for me in this role.
It’s a major victory toward our goal to ensure that everyone in the US can receive the attention and expertise they deserve in every salon and from every stylist.
MS: How are you supporting sustainability efforts at the salon level?
LM: Early on we became aware of the need to respond to environmental challenges. As a manufacturing company, tackling the environmental impact of our factories and distribution centers was the most obvious first step on our transformation. So we are redefining the way we protect our planet.
We feel responsible to stay at the forefront of eco-innovation with recycled materials, refillables and formulas. We’re proud to share that today 64% of our products are made in plants using 100% renewable energy and 39% of our products are made from bio-based or recycled plastics.
We are committed to not only improving the environmental and social footprint of our products and services, but to also sharing this information with our community.
So PPD is committed to sustainability with the Hairstylists for the Future program, an initiative that empowers our partner hairstylists to embrace sustainable practices in their workspaces and salons. The program focuses on three pillars: waste management, renewable energy adoption and water conservation.
WASTE MANAGEMENT:
We are partnered with Green Circle Salons to provide tailored solution to sort, collect and recycle salon beauty waste. By diverting salon waste from landfills, including plastic, aluminum and even hair, this partnership supports a key target of L’Oréal for the Future to have 100% of waste generated in our sites recycled or reused by 2030.
RENEWABLE ENERGY ADOPTION:
To address energy consumption, we collaborate with community solar vendor Ampion to facilitate the transition to renewable energy for salons. Through community solar programs, salons can access solar power generated locally, reducing both their environmental impact and energy costs. PPD is currently piloting this program with 10 salons and 10 Salon Centric stores and will be expanding to all stores and partner salons in participating states this year.
WATER CONSERVATION:
Starting in 2025, L’Oréal USA will launch the L’Oréal Professionnel Water Saver, powered by Gjosa, the Swiss start-up and water tech pioneer that was formally acquired by L’Oréal earlier this year. This innovation, launched by the L’Oréal Augmented Beauty Team at CES 2021, supports salons by providing a solution to reduce water their consumption by up to 69%, compared to standard salon showerheads. As water scarcity concerns rise, this technology equips salons to adapt to changing environmental conditions while reducing operating costs.
MS: What are some beauty tech innovations that we see salons and stylists tapping into today, and what might you be offering them in the future?
LM: Salons and stylists are looking for solutions that are durable, sustainable, but also fulfill their needs as pros to provide the best experience for their guests.
Keeping that in mind, L’Oreal Professionnel, the Group’s historic professional brand which has always leveraged science and tech to advance knowledge of hair and advance stylists’ expertise, has partnered with tech companies to offer devices that can offer the best solutions for pros and their guests.
As I mentioned earlier, Gjosa, the Swiss Water Saver, was launched at CES in 2021 and will be launching in the United States soon.
And most recently, at 2024 CES, L’Oreal, we unveiled the AirLight Pro infrared hair dryer. This new generation of hair dryer was co-developed by L’Oreal Professionnel and technology company Zuvi, and leverages infrared light, which can generate heat similar to the sun’s rays, to dry the hair. Air Light Pro dries hair with no damage while drying hair faster and with less energy used – responding to needs of both hairstylists behind the chair and of their guests.
MS: And following on this, are there innovations related to retail and/or ecommerce that will offer advantages to the salon/stylist?
LM: In today’s beauty market, being a digital expert is essential. In PPD, we are digitally native and have an agile content strategy at the core of every brand.
Consumer and pro centricity drives our agility to create content that connects. We have a fully operationalize content center that produces media and Ecommerce content that has been deemed as best in class by retail partners like Sephora, Ulta and Amazon.
We are successfully capturing the consumer and driving significant retail revenue. Our brands are winning the attention, engagement, and ultimately accelerating sales fueled by our digital initiatives and increased media investment (60% of our media investment is in social media).
Also contributing to the foundation of SalonCentric’s omni-channel business, SalonInteractive provides a complete end-to-end solution for salons and independent stylists by enabling e-commerce of retail products and a suite of CRM activity. And recently launched is SalonCentric loyalty program, ProRewards, a seamless customer experience where professionals can earn points that turn into savings.
And in back half 2024 we are introducing storyteller roles – where we will go from insight to content in market in under 7 days – ensuring our brands are relevant in the moment.
MS: Having been in the industry for some time, what excites you about the future of professional beauty? Where do you continue to see opportunities?
LM: With a forward looking lens, future of beauty is exciting, there will be an increase in digital and personalization. We have a strong mission to continue bringing pro beauty to all by pushing the boundaries, scaling and offering an even broader range of solutions through our devices and services.
Through digital and data, we also now have the opportunity to change the way we look at our $70 billion professional market in order to create performance advancements to our products and services.
We will be focused on scaling services – serving our stylists more personalized options enabled by data and tech, since we can measure customer satisfaction digitally. In the very near future, we also have the opportunity to increase our reach and value proposition by using AI as an extension of our network, and help boost personalization and quality of education that salons and stylists need for the evolving client.
Also, I mentioned earlier, a number of trends will impact the success of salon industry and our business. As a leader in the industry, we have been embracing these trends the last several years , but the industry is soon following with: Inclusive Beauty (salons expanding their range of services to meet the needs of all hair types/skin tones); Sustainable Beauty (eco-friendly initiatives, cruelty-free products, no ‘nasties’ in product ingredients); Technology-Enhanced Services (on-demand education; ecommerce buying/selling; online booking; virtual color simulations); Social Media for Marketing (building awareness, disseminating messages, driving traffic, enhancing client engagement); and Wellness (higher-end salons creating a more holistic wellness offer to the client; beauty + well-being; detox treatments; aromatherapy massage).
In partnership with our salon owners and stylists, we must continue to adapt and invest in these trends in order to increase growth and the success of our professional community.
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