A breath of Newhall Labs commits to revitalizing established brands. S remarkably loyal user base, and maintained 40 Spray November 2013 ome of the U.S.’s most trusted personal care brands are getting a long-overdue makeover. L.A. Looks, Soft & Dri, Dep, Thicker Fuller Hair and La Bella are among the classic brands now owned by Newhall Laboratories of Stamford, CT, a recently-formed company whose mission is to bring relevance and excitement to both loyal users and new fans, and provide support at retail not seen for some time. Newhall’s brand renovation effort began by refreshing the websites of Soft & Dri, L.A. Looks, Dep, Thicker Fuller Hair, Zero Frizz, Pure & Natural and La Bella with clean, contemporary looks and easy navigation. Some of these websites are now stand-alone sites for the first time ever. Other initiatives include launching new products in North America for Soft & Dri, consumer promotions for L.A. Looks, an aggressive Hispanic marketing plan for the La Bella beauty brand, as well as social media development for L.A. Looks and La Bella. The company is headed by Jon Achenbaum, CEO, who was most recently Senior VP for Global Diabetes Care at Bayer. He also held senior U.S. and global posts at Unilever and Helene Curtis over a 30-year career. At the head of marketing is Jocelyn Riddle, who headed the reinvigoration of Luden’s and Chloraseptic for Prestige Brands and directed the award-winning launch of Almay Intense Eye Color for Revlon. “We are brand fans at heart, so Newhall gives us the opportunity to do what we love, and excel at,” said Achenbaum. “The brands under our growing umbrella are distinct on their own, but share lots in common. They have strong name recognition and trust, long-proven efficacy, a solid distribution without strong marketing support or recent new product innovation. The upside is exciting.” “The work on the revitalization started earlier this year and will not be seen by consumers until 2014,” explained Riddle. “It has been presented to retailers and they are very positive about the work and attention we are bringing to several of our core brands…which includes new packaging (design and shape), clearer segmentation/benefit copy, launching new products and overall renewed marketing support.” When asked how the brands compete with some of the much bigger brands in the extremely competitive Personal Care market, Riddle stated, “Newhall plays a key and meaningful role in niche and attractive categories, our brands have strong equity and accessibility on their side. Each of the brands also targets high growth consumer segments and we span three important categories of Hair, AP/DEO and Skin. Our brands are gateways to address specific consumer needs.” Newhall Laboratories is a portfolio company of Brynwood Partners. Founded in 1984, Brynwood Partners is a private equity firm that makes control investments in lower middle market companies over a long-term horizon. The firm acquires companies in a diverse range of industries, including consumer goods. Newhall was acquired by Brynwood VI in December 2011. Several brands from The Dial Corp., a subsidiary of Henkel, were added in April 2012 to form what is today called Newhall Laboratories. Its efforts focus on taking orphaned brands with strong consumer loyalty that were lost in a large corporation and revitalize them. SPRAY Achenbaum
Spray November 2013
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