Good Hair Day
Posted on January 19, 2007 by Richard Beddard
Filed Under Investing, Ramblings |
I bought my wife a pair of hair straighteners for Christmas and inadvertently stumbled upon the latest marketing sensation. Typically, Rachael doesn’t let on to what she’d really have liked until Christmas Day, or at least until the shops run out of stock. Instead, she prefers to dash my hopes with a wan smile when she finally gets around to unwrapping the increasingly forlorn-looking apology of a gift I’ve bought her.
But this year she was not only early with her advice, but also specific. She wanted straighteners. GHD straighteners. Naturally I went to Boots.com but, of the 69 pairs they stocked, not one was made by GHD. When I found them on GHD’s own website they were three or four times the price of the straighteners I’d seen made by, say, Remington or Vidal Sassoon. Tempting though it was to return to Boots, I thought better of it and bought the GHDs.
Then I forgot about GHD until I read yesterday’s Financial Times on the train, returning from work this morning (I don’t work a night shift; it’s a complicated story involving gales, a police cordon around the Great Eastern Hotel, ‘overhead line problems’ on the King’s Lynn line, and a blackout at King’s Cross Station). The newspaper had profiled Martin Penny, GHD’s founder and, escaping from surely the nation’s worst hair day since 1987, I discovered that I am one of 1.2 million ‘Good Hair Day’ customers.
GHD’s Dysonesque emergence is only partly because its straighteners are better, says Mr Penny in the interview. A critical decision was to sell through salons and not retailers. Stylists recommended the straighteners to customers, some of them celebrities, and customers became advocates for GHD. A friend and schoolteacher told Rachael about GHDs. She’d heard about them from her pupils. I’m telling you about them now. You know how it works.
Apart from being a case study in how to market a good product, sadly there’s not much of an investment angle. Mr Penny’s ambition is to export the brand with the backing of LDC, the private equity arm of Lloyds TSB. For now the rest of us can have our hair straightened, but not our fortunes made, by GHD.
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3 Responses to “Good Hair Day”
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Hello. I too am a GHD fan, it is the only one to have. Definitely word of mouth and being a bit pricey helps make the product desirable. Oh and that it’s the only one that doesn’t singe your hair off.
Happy hair straightening Rachael!
I enjoyed your message about the straight irons, I have been researching them and I figured marketing was a large piece of the puzzle.
Hopeful for happy hair straightening
GHD straighteners are the best on the market - but to most people they may seem over priced. But how many salon do you see using babyliss or remington? None. If ghds were just a run of the mill straightener then salon would use the cheaper version to cut back on there costs. But the facts is when ghds were first launched they had no big budget. They were left in salons for hairdressers to try and the response was great - hairdressera and stylist loved and there versatility.
Only now in the past 3-4 years have ghd began to put the marketing machine to work to further develope the brand. And why not. If you have great product that people want then go for it.