L'ANZA Healing Haircare - 30 years in the Benelux
How it Started...
My first introduction to L’ANZA was in 1993 at Salon International in London. It was a nice, compact line with a completely different philosophy on hair care than I was used to. There were two ranges: Curls & Color and Rebalance. Both lines consisted of a few care and styling products, and the names spoke for themselves. After 5 successful years at Goldwell, during which we had grown to become the market leader, I was ready for a new challenge to start my own business. This coincided with the opening of Kappers Groothandel Apeldoorn in 1995.
From day one, a conscious decision was made to distribute L'ANZA exclusively with one salon per village or per 30,000 inhabitants. The mistake my previous employer made after we left, selling their exclusive line to anyone who wanted it, would not be repeated. This had led to a doubling of customers but a halving of turnover. No high-end hairdresser then, or now, appreciated a competing neighbour working with the same brand, especially if there was a large price difference between the salons. We were able to prevent this from day one by simultaneously offering a non-exclusive haircare line under the name Kappers, now known as KIS.
The initial training sessions for L'ANZA were a revelation. Until then, we didn't get much further than offering a perm shampoo to a perm client just because it said so on the bottle. Now, we suddenly received lessons on how hair is structured and the molecular weight of active ingredients that determines whether it forms a film layer around the hair or can deeply penetrate the hair. A whole new world opened up for us. We could now guide the consumer through every step of a treatment and explain why and how we did what we did to achieve the best result.
We went out on the road with the story that we could turn 'sour cabbage' hair back into healthy hair in 15 minutes. With Ben Groenberg and Rob Rooze, who are still working at Ministry of Beauty, we went from door to door. The opening line was invariably: do you know the brand L'ANZA? When the answer was 'no,' our entire spiel followed. I'll never forget the first salon that said 'yes,' and I completely lost my train of thought. There I was, speechless.
Once there was interest, a demo would follow in the evening. "Give us your clients with the worst hair, and we'll make it healthy again." That was easy for Rob, but Ben and I had no idea, so there were often water fights behind the sink. What we quickly learned, though, was that we had to pay close attention during blow-drying. There was always an employee who didn't want change and could, with the blow dryer, do more damage than we could fix with our products.
Nearly 80% of demonstrations were followed by the purchase of the starter kit. That was 4000 guilders and had to be paid in cash. Everything we had was invested in inventory, and we didn't have a red cent in the bank either. So, the invariable answer to the question of whether we would still be around next year was: if you pay cash, that will certainly be the case. When a sale was made, it was crucial to deliver as quickly as possible the next morning before the customer could change their mind or have a conversation with the current representative. It sometimes happened that I had to turn back halfway through the journey in my old converted flower bulb van because the salon had been reprimanded by the representative and decided against the change after all.
Besides old-fashioned legwork, there wasn't an event or trade show where we weren't present with L'ANZA. The Day of the East, the Limburg Cup, or the Nokada, to name a few. We were everywhere with our own stand featuring the American Statue of Liberty that we were allowed to borrow from the Harley Davidson dealer. At major trade shows like the Gouden Tulp, we really pulled out all the stops. Our stands excelled by being as tall as possible, very wide, and as shallow as possible so that the stand area remained as inexpensive as possible. We had the local Quonset hut builder bend corrugated iron sheets, which Ben and I, under my father's guidance, converted as best we could into a stand that no one could ignore. And we often succeeded with simple but effective actions. For example, we once gave away a few thousand inflatable hammers, printed with L'ANZA, which all visitors used to playfully hit each other. The big shoppers were always a hit too. Their size was such that all competitors' bags fit into ours.
In our 30 years of L'ANZA, many product innovations and packaging variations have been introduced. A consistent theme has always been the quality of the products and our involvement with the hairdressing industry. I can still get agitated about how hairdressers were treated during the COVID period, which at the time led to a full-page advertisement in the Telegraaf with an open letter to Mark Rutte.
I could fill another three A4 pages with innovations and anecdotes, but the greatest asset of L'ANZA Benelux is our customers, our partners. Without our partners - many of whom have been with us from the very beginning - we are nothing. I am very grateful for the trust that all our partners have placed in us over the years and I assure everyone that we are far from finished. At the end of next year, a complete restyling will commence, but before that, we are celebrating our 30th anniversary with a different L'ANZA bestseller each month, offering, how could it be otherwise, a 30% discount.
Ad L'ANZA 1995
