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Revco bringing 'high fashion' hair care into the drug store - Revco D.S. Inc - column

Revco bringing `high fashion' hair care into the drug store

How would you like to have a "high fashion New York hair stylist" who cuts hair for people like Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward launch a new line of his own hair care products available "exclusively" in your drug stores. A hair stylist who also has a reputation as "a hairdresser to the stars," who can charge $200 a haircut, and who has authored a book about hair care with recipes for creating natural hair care products.

Then what would you give if this phenomenon agreed to visit stores in your top eight markets, make personal appearances autographing his book and doing styling makeovers while simultaneously appearing on local television and radio talk shows to promote his line which is only available in your stores or in his own two New York salons.

It would be pretty neat if you could arrange something like this, wouldn't it?

But it doesn't sound possible, does it. This is what department stores like Bloomingdale's and Macy's do all the time, but you never hear of a drug chain doing it, and you never would expect a self-service discount drug chain to pull this off, would you?

Well, I would never have expected it anyway, but I'd have been wrong, because a self-service discount drug chain has pulled it off, and even as you read this, that New York stylist, whose name is Richard Stein, is flying around the country popping in and out of Revco drug stores promoting his five SKU Bio-Logics line of natural hair care products which in September became available exclusively at Revco.

As one editor from New Woman magazine said at the press event in New York which launched the line, "Now when I write about this as something new and interesting, I'll know my readers in Cleveland or Toledo will be able to buy it. And even afford it."

This was also, the first press event that I've attended where the retailer commanded and deserved as much attention as the line that was being launched. Yes, it's nice that there's a new salon-style line on the market that is the first to be formulated with flower ingredients, extracts of rose and lavender blended with aloe, oils of eucalyptus and jojoba in the gentle formula shampoo, for example. And it's also nice that each of the five items in the line will be affordably priced at $4.99.

But it's even nicer that a drug chain has been able, in one fell swoop, to upgrade its image so dramatically.

This unusual pairing of fashion and mass clearly makes the point that the consumer is now being introduced to a brand new Revco.

The old Revco was not known for forcefully making "beauty statements" or as Revco's management puts it "look good" statements.

Thanks to what executive vp-marketing Jim Adamson describes as Stein's warm and open nature, which freed him from the snobbery and pomposity which might make some "hair stylists to the stars" shun a mass environment like Revco, and thanks to a friendship between Adamson's wife and Stein's wife, a fashion designer, Revco was given this opportunity and they are out to make the most of it.

Ads advertising the line "exclusively available at Revco" are breaking now in fall regional editions of top magazines like People and Seventeen.

To make the line stand out in the store, Revco has created a special fixture that will go into the professional section of the hair care planogram. It will include Stein's picture and information and brochures about the products.

And from now until the end of the year, Stein will be spending his Mondays (his salons in New York are closed on Mondays) making personal appearances in Revco stores, autographing his book and styling hair while local news media play up his personality and his products in their talk shows and on print.

"He'll go from city to city to introduce the product," says Bob Newmark, head of marketing services for Revco. "He'll appear on radio and television shows locally, and in every city on the tour, he'll be in one or two Revco stores."

Given all the hoopla Stein will create, whatever volume his line is able to generate in Revco is almost unimportant. The real value from the line is in image and it sounds to me like Revco's got that win in the bag.

PHOTO : Stein works with client Mary Stuart Masterson.