In this exclusive interview with Hairdressers Journal, Shane Wolf, President Global Brands at Aveda, reflects on a transformative first year in the new role and his deep-rooted commitment to putting hairdressers at the heart of everything. We spoke to Shane about how hairdresser-led leadership is setting a new standard for sustainability, performance, and community in the industry...
Last year you were appointed President Global Brands at Aveda, tell us about your first 12 months?
This first year has truly been incredible. I could not have anticipated what it would mean, I'm pretty sure I'm the only hairdresser running a major international haircare brand in the world, which is crazy when you think about how many brands in the industry today were started by hairdressers – including Aveda. I was only here a few months when I realised that there were a few key opportunities and that we had to pivot in our relationships with our salon partners. We put together an initiative called Empower Eight. And it started with the first project - Hair in Chairs. This was an initiative to drive guests into those Aveda salons to ensure their success. We also did a few other things within that including reorganising our teams to ensure that we put resources back out into the field through education, we looked at our support programmes like the back bar - I'm shocked to realise that some companies think that hairdressers can successfully sell products that they can't use in the salon, or that salons should pay retail price for products to use in the salon to then sell through. We reinitiated the Aveda Business College and have built on our lifestyle salon programme, to create an immersive experience for guests, bringing the entire lifestyle of Aveda into the salon environment. It feels like a year and a day all at the same time.
Has it been rewarding?
I have never been more fulfilled or engaged in my entire life - and I've been at this a while. When I made the decision to come back and work in this role, I had been 20 years in another major company in the industry and had stepped away from that thinking maybe it was time for me to change the direction of my life and maybe retire. I was living in an Airstream that I had renovated - I stripped it down to the shell and renovated it with all sustainable materials - as a nomad, driving around the country. I was in 36 states in one year, meditating on mountaintops and writing poetry on the beach thinking that this was going to be the rest of my life. Then one day I said to my husband “I can feel that I need to be engaged intellectually again, and I need to give back more than I have so far in this life to the community that has given so much to me”. I didn’t know what that was going to look like. I didn’t know how it was going to happen, but I knew it needed to happen. And then as if the universe was listening to that conversation, the next thing you know I have a phone call and a request to consider coming back into this role. It’s such an honour. It's such a privilege. I'll be honest, it's also a tremendous responsibility and weight because I feel that responsibility to the salon community who built Aveda in the first place, as is the case with most brands in the salon industry today.
Looking back at the start of your career as a hairdresser, what did the future look like to you?
I've been so fortunate in my career from the time I went to beauty school, through to the time I started working in the salon and then working in education and marketing and product development. There has been this parade of extraordinary humans who have encouraged me along the way who have seen that there was something inside of me bubbling, dying to get out to somehow enlarge the scale of the impact that I felt the responsibility to make. Almost all of them, with the exception of a few, were women who said there's more in there and you won't be satisfied until you give it everything you've got.
I'm very grateful for where it began. I'm proud to be the only hairdresser running a major global professional brand now and I'm even more grateful for the lens through which I'm able to look at every decision we make. It’s about compassion and understanding that when you are standing behind the chair and giving all day, every day, you're giving physically, you're giving emotionally, you're giving in every possible way. Having been a salon owner I have an empathy with what it means to finish working behind the chair and then begin your day as the Head of HR. The Bookkeeper, the Facilities Manager - every role that you have to do as a salon owner, you start that at the end of the day.
How important is the salon community to you?
I have to be really transparent here. Historically Aveda has been a network that the salon community has revered, has respected, has admired, and yet has felt in many cases unreachable. It’s my preoccupation to say, no. We are for everyone. Of course there are specificities about the Aveda model that may not fit with everyone else's business model and we acknowledge that. But for everybody in the industry today, for the 450 or so salons that we have in the UK and Ireland, and for everyone who looks at those salons and says “I find that really interesting, but I don't know if it's attainable for me” I would like to say to them very clearly, you have a home with us. We're not an elitist organisation. We are a community of people around the world who support one another, who are here to ensure the success of one another.
What makes Aveda’s latest launch, Miraculous Oil, so special?
Our process for product development begins with our 50,000 plus artists around the world. I'm much more interested in what our artist community has to say than I am with a boardroom of marketing executives. I've always believed that true innovation is an act of bravery. It’s too easy to use data to look at the market to say, you know, X, Y, Z brand is doing this and we need a better version. Or, this category is growing, but I'm not interested in being the best. I'm interested in being the only. Our community of salon stylists very clearly said to us: performance, performance, performance. I was reminded by them that we will never compromise on performance. We have such a responsibility to ensure that every product that comes to life in the hands of the hairdresser puts performance as the first priority.
What’s does the future look like?
I am somebody who is so firmly committed to building a foundation of the principles that Horst (founder of Aveda Corporation) laid out for us and building the future on those principles. I believe innovation is an act of bravery, I also believe it's the case not only in innovation of formula, but of your business model, of the way you go to market, of the way you express yourself in the market and the way that you partner to ensure the success of every hairdresser that we touch around the world and of every salon owner who we have the privilege of partnering with. So, I would say that the future looks like innovation. I would say it looks like inclusivity, and I'd say it looks like bravery.
