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56 June 2014 | beautystorebusiness.com I was very familiar with Fromm Shears; I knew that they were made in Germany and had an excellent reputa- tion. I knew a bit about the André and Diane brands too. But the other eight brands were entirely new to me, though none of the brands were new at all. Before I came on board, I interviewed everyone I knew in the industry about Fromm. I was pleasantly surprised when I didn't hear one negative comment. The respect for the company was refreshing. Fromm was clearly operating on a set of values that it held near and dear, and while there was great input about its shears, most people—including me—were unaware that Fromm owned other brands. The 11 brands were confusing. We were set up as a house of brands when really moving to a hybrid branded-house model made a lot more sense. We looked to the fashion community for inspiration: Ralph Lauren, Vera Wang and Michael Kors are examples of a "good, better, best" model [that's] successful and takes these designers to the next level. We knew that Fromm had to be our best brand and that the good and better brands would be branded "by Fromm." We also knew that we had to keep Diane, which has been a known and loved brand for more than 50 years. We just needed to give Diane a makeover, changing the look on the outside to reflect the progress we've made on the inside. So the "good" and "best" categories were easy, obvious choices. But after a lot of research and hours of conversation, it became clear that our "better" brand simply didn't yet exist. How did you create the "better" brand? During this time, I was also building a new team, and in July 2012 was fortu- nate to bring Liz Hagopian on board as our marketing communications manager. She is one of the most talented marketers I've ever had the opportunity to work with, and she immediately jumped into the project and served as my co-leader of the project throughout the duration. Liz and I built storyboards to deter- mine what we wanted our "better" brand to look and feel like, but we just couldn't get the name right. We resorted to hiring a branding firm to help us with coming up with a new name, but none of the names it suggested resonated with our testing of stylists. We brought our executive team together to give them an update, and our vice president of operations, John Cox, asked us, "What about 1907? You always talk about 'Fromm, since 1907.' Why not make that the brand name?" We looked at each other and knew we had a winner! The best ideas often come from the least expected places or people. John, while a brilliant operations execu- tive, would be the first to admit he is not a marketer. But he saw something that no one else did—and we now predict, after only four months in the market, that 1907 by Fromm will soon become one of the best- selling beauty tool brands in North America. What was the next step during the rebranding? Now that we had the brands identified, we needed to identify our core categories that would comprise our good, better and best products. We identified five: cutlery, salon apparel, styling appliances, brushes and combs. We will continue to manufacture all other categories of beauty essentials, but as of now, all essentials such as towels, paper, etc., will live in the Diane brand. We then moved to the design phase. After many hours of storyboarding, discussion and passionate debate, I approved the new logos and creative materials for 1907 and Diane, all created by our talented internal design team. Fromm, however, took a little longer. Changing an iconic logo and brand cre- ative in a third-generation family-owned business is no small task. We engaged a fabulous firm that cre- ated our beautiful new logo and pattern, and after many months and many late nights, we had final creative approved. How did you decide what products or brands would make the cut during the process as well as what products would be added? In phase two, I hired a team of experi- enced product/category managers, and we sorted through more than 2,000 existing products. We determined if the product should stay in our line or not and then deter- mined its brand. Our amazing in-house design team then repackaged all of the products we decided to keep, and our team of managers went to work creating hundreds of new products for 1907 and Fromm. We put together a team of some of the best stylists in Chicago—our Salon Advi- sory Board—and worked with members "We looked to the fashion community for inspiration: Ralph Lauren, Vera Wang and Michael Kors are examples of a 'good, better, best' model [that's] successful." Images courtesy of Fromm International A R e v o l u t i o n a r y R e b r a n d . i n d d 5 6 A Revolutionary Rebrand.indd 56 5 / 2 / 1 4 2 : 4 4 P M 5/2/14 2:44 PM