We sat down with Wella’s president, Yannis Rodocanachi, for the first time since he joined the company to discuss how the past few years have been, Wella’s The He(Art) of Hair event, and how they’re continuing to support hairstylists and beauty pros.
You joined Wella as president at the end of 2021. As someone who wasn’t from the professional beauty industry, what would you say have been some of your key lessons, and how does this role compare to your previous ones?
It’s interesting because they are different but there are some [common] threads. For example, in my last role at L’Oréal [Consumer Products Division], I was in charge of NYX Professional Makeup. Of course, they are two very different categories and different worlds, but you have the same [goal] to celebrate artistry and to recognize the craft and the professionals who are experts in transforming people’s lives.
[At this event], we had a meeting with some key partners, and I was saying that one of the reason I am in this industry is the positive impact we can have on people. I have to say, I don’t know of another industry where you can have such an [effect] on people’s lives.
Hair and makeup can have the big impact on people. The pro artistry and the celebration of the craft are pillars that remain the same because I think they come from the same place.
What has it been like for you to lead Wella Company through the aftermath of the COVID pandemic?
There were both fantastic and good things, as well as very challenging things [that emerged from the pandemic]. I’m stating the obvious, but two or three things were very interesting. The first one is the way Wella has been able to adapt to the new world, because there were things we learned during COVID. For example, education is a key piece of what we are doing and is what I think we are the best at. During COVID, we discovered some advantages. For example, you can scale more; have more people getting the learnings at the same time. Also, we had some feedback that it’s easier to see the details [when learning virtually, compared to] when you’re among several people in a room. The idea was to take the best out of what happened during COVID and create a hybrid approach when going back to what we love to do, which is face-to-face, in-person education. That’s absolutely crucial. [Virtually], you can learn the concepts and theories, but you really need the in-person [component] to touch the hair and apply the colour and products. And that’s still true, even if we send the materials to people’s homes.
Back to your question, what was really interesting was that moment of integrating the best during that tough time. It required us to be more nimble and more objective on what was needed, and to create a new approach.
What would you say that hairstylists and beauty pros are struggling with the most right now? How is Wella Company helping to support them through these challenges?
I think the difficulties that our industry knew before [the pandemic] are even more vivid now. We’ve been meeting with some key leaders of the industry, salon owners, schools and so on and so forth, to see how we can help and impact the industry—how can we help schools to recruit better? How can we help the industry by communicating better? How can we bring more awareness to how fantastic it is to be a hairstylist and to bring this to the new generation, so they see it’s cool or interesting to be a stylist? We’re participating in these campaigns of recruiting talent. I think we need to invest in helping recruiting talent to bring more awareness. Some other industries have done it extremely well. For example, in the food industry, it’s so cool now to be a chef. There’s absolutely no reason why that cannot happen for hairstylists.
So we’re doing our part. It’s never enough, but we’re trying to do our part for the long term of our industry. How will we bring people back to our industry and how do we bring new talent to our industry?
As for education, we are investing in it and that includes this event [Wella’s The He(Art) of Hair]. It’s been almost three years and we’re back! We’re back to investing in education, events, shows, innovation, you name it. We’re really trying to invest where we believe it makes sense to help the industry.
Tell us more about this year’s event, The He(Art) of Hair. What inspired the concept?
As I was saying, it’s been two and a half years since we’ve had an event in person and been all together. I think it was important for us to do three things: The first one was to commit, as a company, to all the topics we discussed before on what we’re doing for the industry. We want to reiterate how important it is to us to be perceived as a partner and to “walk the talk” as a partner. The commitment part is very important.
The second key aspect of this event is all about the community. How do we nurture this community? We talked about education, but also how to provide access to education from world-class artists. [At this event], we have six world-class, top artists on stage. So if you’re in the room or if you attend a workshop, you can have access to these stylists. Nurturing, inspiring and engaging the community are very important.
There’s commitment, community and the last one, which is create. As I was mentioning when talking about the artistry and celebrating the craft and art, I really believe that stylists are artists. I’m always so impressed every time I see them creating the transformation, the colour, texture and shine. It’s amazing! I’m always blown away. It’s very important for us to be a partner to re-inspire and give access to trends and insights for the community and for the stylist to be able to recreate and be at the forefront of these trends.
Commitment, community and create are the root of this event. And of course, showing the skills and a fantastic show!
With this year’s show being the first in-person event you’ve led as Wella’s president, what have you been most looking forward to?
It’s the togetherness, where there is this natural feeling that Wella, as a key partner for stylists, is back. With more than 100 years of history and through the transition of being an independent company, we’re back! I’m looking forward to everything and creating this sense of belonging together and being in it together.
It’s been a big year for Wella as it was named “the number one* salon colour brand” by Kline. Tell us about that and what that means to you.
Being an independent company now, we’re still quite young even though we have a century of history. I think it’s interesting to observe that the change has already happened in the last few years. We are number one because we are number one in several key countries.
We can already see that the decision to be a key partner and support the industry is starting to be in motion. I think that’s what we want to achieve more than just being number one. We want to be the key partner for the industry and stylists.
*According to Kline’s Salon Hair Care Global Series report
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