The privately owned CTL specializes in the health and beauty category as well as household. The business centers on sales, logistics, manufacturing, and alternative buying of CPGs in those categories.
While Unilever has been selling off brands and narrowing its business focus for some time now. So the deal makes sense all around.
Done deal
CTL, now having acquired the Canadian right to the Salon Selectives hair care products, has full rights to the brand in North America, according to the company’s press release about the deal.
“We are extremely excited about adding the Canadian rights of this popular brand to our portfolio of personal and hair care products,” Jack Wilkinson, principal of Salon Selectives, tells the press.
“This allows us to provide world class brands to an even broader reach, in which we can offer an affordably priced solution to consumers' needs with a premium quality product,” he says.
Brand stability
Initially a Helene Curtis brand, Salon Selectives was acquired by Unilever in 1996. Fourteen years later CTL picked up the US rights to the product line, comprising shampoos, conditioners, and styling products.
CTL endeavored to define the brand by bringing back the product’s signature green apple scent that corresponds in consumers’ minds with the jingle, “like you just stepped out of a salon.”
Market forces
Hair care is moving gradually by acquisition and innovation where the market allows. Seeing opportunity in the multicultural category, Sundial Brands just launched a new hair care brand inspired by beauty entrepreneur Madame C.J. Walker. And, the Brown Crayon Project is in the midst of a crowd funding campaign to launch its safe-enough-for-kids brand in earnest.
Early this year in the profession hair care space, SalonCentric—a division of L’Oréal USA—acquired Raylon Corporation assets.