Others never left the track. Paul Mitchell had grown up in England during the war years (his father was chief engineer at Buckingham Palace), later becoming, under mentor Vidal Sassoon, one of Swinging London's hottest hair stylists during the early '60s. He had the marquee name, and the reputation among his peers, thanks to the dozens of traveling clinics he conducted each year (some of which Tennyson's company helped design and mount), for being an indefatigable showman. He also cultivated an appetite for Eastern mysticism -- and an aversion to working for somebody else.
"All the times I had partners before," he says with a sigh, "their idea of making money was me earning it and them counting it. John Paul is totally different. He approaches work with the same energy and enthusiasm I do. And he's easily the best salesman I've ever seen."
John Paul Jones De Joria has indeed been that. A Los Angeles native, he got out of the navy in 1964 (Vietnam, the worst fantasy of all, was right on the verge of exploding), thinking he'd enroll in dental school. Unable to find the tuition money, he started selling encyclopedias, then copying machines, insurance, you name it. He tried publishing, and by 26 was a sales manager for Time Inc. De Joria then slid over into beauty products; after just 18 months with Redken Laboratories Inc., he was appointed national manager of Redken's schools and chain salons. Life in the beauty-industry fast lane was proving to be a far cry from pulling teeth. While many of his service buddies were becoming war statistics, De Joria was tasting the American dream, a fruity concoction filled with hot cars, pretty women, and rock 'n' roll.
"It's a show-business industry," De Joria allows, "and Paul and I crossed paths often. Still, it wasn't until he dropped out and moved to Hawaii that we talked about starting a business together. Paul had a small salon in Honolulu then and was tinkering with his own product line. Most hair artists aren't businesspeople, though. He had no clue how to market his product. So it became clear from the outset what our roles in such a company would be: I wouldn't tell Paul how to cut hair, and he wouldn't tell me how to sell shampoo."
A couple of other things were clear from the beginning. One was that normal channels of capital weren't going to be available to them (too flaky for the marketplace, the bankers said, too "free-spirited," too avant-garde). And the other was that, as Tennyson posits, if you want to run lean and natural, design a way out of the overhead and minimize the moving parts.
Applying that blueprint to the environment they knew best, Mitchell and De Joria came up with an ingenious scheme. Instead of underwriting the cost of a production facility, they approached Star Laboratories Inc., a small Los Angeles-based hair- and skin-care products maker, and worked out a deal to subcontract all their manufacturing. Mitchell, inventor of the technique known as hair-sculpting, collaborated with Star Laboratories president William Boyd on developing a line of setting sprays and lotions that would unleash the creativity of his fellow hairdressers -- and be easy for their clients to use at home. Once dismissed as a passing fad, hair sculpting is now the industry's hottest trend. Star Laboratories, meanwhile, has grown into an $18-million-a-year, 200-employee operation, a large chunk of whose business remains John Paul Mitchell Systems.
Mitchell and De Joria had also been told that, to market and distribute their product nationally, they'd need a huge sales staff and a host of divisional managers. Not so, they reasoned. Relying upon industry contacts instead, they set about building a network of regional distributors and salon-owner associates. Mitchell, Mr. Inside, went on the road to do training seminars and demonstration shows. De Jora, Mr. Outside, concentrated on keeping the distributors happy by visiting them regularly, rewarding their efforts lavishly (the first to reach $1 million in sales got a Rolls-Royce as a symbol of gratitude; the first to hit $3 million, a new Ferrari), and supporting the product with heavy advertising money. Overhead was obviously overrated. Today, the company has 34 distributors in the United States, 7 international distributors, and 350 John Paul Mitchell Systems associates -- none of whom are on the full-time corporate payroll.
Seven years later, in fact, the company that was too weird to bankroll and too lightweight for its drivetrain boasts more than $5 million in monthly sales, a staff of just 27 employees, zero debt, and a profile even higher than its 40%-plus pretax profit margin. Whole divisions are in the hands of 25-year-old ex-hairdressers. Employee compensation is twice the industry norm, and several recent buyout offers in the $125-million range have been politely declined. Furthermore, although no formal mission statement has circulated internally, a succinct one might be this: if you're not having a really, really good time working for John Paul Mitchell Systems, you're probably just not trying hard enough.
"John Paul sets the tone around here," says Dawn Warmuth, 24, vice-president of international affairs, "and John Paul's pretty loose. There isn't any plan -- or problem -- you can't take into his office. He definitely works hard, but he plays hard, too. The rest of us take our cue from him."
As if contravening every known law in the managerial universe, moreover, the faster this vehicle goes, the more easily it seems to operate on autopilot. Mitchell, who used to do upward of 100 road shows a year, has settled into semiretirement on Oahu and conducts most of his business from the porch above his hot tub. "I don't really take the company very personally," he confesses. "I mean, my name is on it, but it's not me. Having that kind of attitude -- which John Paul shares -- not only leaves me a bit more ego free, but it also allows me to be more objective about what's good for John Paul Mitchell Systems. And most days, all that requires from me is a few productive minutes on the telephone."
De Joria, who bears the heavier managerial burden of the two, is hardly chained to a desk, either. Figuring he once spent 90% of his time working and the rest on more sybaritic pursuits, he has now brought the ratio down to roughly 50-50 -- even as sales continue to double with each fiscal year. The key to management by remote control is "having bright, motivated people; setting up simplified [accounting] systems that can be evaluated easily; staying close to the distributors; and not being afraid to let others make their own decisions."
