Horst Rechelbacher sold his first company, nature-based hair-products maker Aveda Corp., to Estee Lauder in 1997 for $300 million cash. His second act is Intelligent Nutrients in Minneapolis, a line of plant-based beauty and body products that he believes is poised to take off, with a store opening in New York this year and distribution through 65,000 Regis Corp. hairdressers. (Regis is a 50-50 partner in Intelligent Nutrients.) He says he’s doing it to transform the cosmetics industry. “I don’t need the money,” Horst says.
“I always thought cosmetics ought to be one thing we made at Aveda. At the beginning there, I didn’t have the distribution behind it. They were hairdressers. We decided to take those products off the drawing board.
But I’ve always studied herbal processes. My mother worked in an apothecary. That was our primary lifestyle. We always took what she gave us.
I knew I was going to reinvent myself. I was seven years with Estee Lauder, after selling. I made a mistake with the contract. Being with a company you owned, and still being there — you cannot work for a company you owned. I was stupid.
I believed that changes would happen, at Estee Lauder. I believed that the whole sale would help to influence the cosmetic industry, to do cleanup.
We always did these things at Aveda, things like planting 250,000 trees, sending people to beauty school. We were taught by great ethnobotanists and anthropologists how businesses should behave.
The mission wasn’t the problem at Lauder; it was the style. I was used to making decisions with teams, and what Estee Lauder is — it’s a dynasty. You have the king and the queen and the queen’s brothers, and all the children. It’s a beautiful dynasty, but I’m a street kid and I don’t do well in that environment.
It’s been three years since I quit. I do not want to be a 49 percent owner because you cannot make decisions.
We need to reinvent, because there’s so much confusion among the cosmetics consumer. This recent cover of Forbes magazine, there’s a story about the green madness and then the ripoffs. They buy because they think it’s green, and it’s not, 100 percent. The only way it’s green is if it’s nontoxic, and if it’s grown without pesticides and insecticides, and if it’s tested so there is no toxin recognizable.
What I’m telling you, I said 20 or 25 years ago, that I know one day there will be warning labels on lipstick like on cigarettes. In California now, on the Web sites you have to list the toxic ingredients in cosmetics.
To be 100 percent pure is not easy. When you make a cleanser, it is to clean your hair, to clean your body, to brush your teeth, and that’s how clean, pure toothpaste has to be and it’s not.
Plant chemistry is really the chemistry that will save the planet. We only use those elements that are recognized as a food.
I just want to build a paradigm. I will build a company that only sells pure, organic, nontoxic products. I will force the rest of the industry to take on the paradigm, like we did with Aveda. It’s a re-invention.
I tried to create it at Lauder, after I sold Aveda. I became actually a troublemaker in my own compamy. There were two groups, one group called the Horsties and the other the Lauders.
We are opening a store in New York this year, called Intelligent Nutrients. It is a modern retail environment, where you will find the sensory products, and then get the salon treatments. It will have a hair color like no one on the market. You’ll be exposed to light therapy, water-purifying agents, air combustion chambers. We’re trying to create a new paradigm of service and responsible product sales, which professionals and consumers need to use.
I’m reinventing myself, only this time I’m not doing it for profit. We’ll pay taxes. The government needs taxes. I’m very glad to pay taxes.
When you read all the papers now, there’s a race to save the planet. Unfortunately when there’s a race you’ll get a lot of people telling you what to do.
I’ve got 65,000 hairdressers available to spread the word about my products, with Regis. Regis has 50 percent. There’s a distribution network built in.
Not like when I started Aveda. I went out weekends to hair shows, and helped people use the products. It took me 20 years to build Aveda to be taken serious. It will take me four years with this company. Year Three, I call the takeoff.
Saving the planet sounds corny. I want to assist nature to function. We have a 10-year window. The bears are drowning on the North Pole, there was a picture in the New York Times. That’s SOS. Save Our Society. We are the bears. In fact soon there will be one global religion: Save Mother Earth.
We are right now in 1,000 salons in Regis, also in our salon network that we built before, with Aveda. I’m known by the hair care industry.
I want to raise a lot of money for the foundation. I want to reinvest for sustainable production, and get to the point where we even restore the planet.
How big will the company become? I’m not a mathematician. I just need to get the engine growing, running.
I ordered a new car, all-electric. It goes from 0 to 60 in four seconds. That’s the company I want to create, 0 to 60 in four seconds. It could be a billion-dollar company. How long would that take? God knows, and he’s too busy to tell me.
I don’t need any money. I don’t need to work. So it’s my worship to you and to each other and to nature.
I’m a hairdresser. That’s what I know. The rest is all learned from other smart people.”
-As told to Beth Ewen
[contact]
Horst Rechelbacher is founder of Intelligent Nutrients in Minneapolis
and the author of Alivelihood: The Art of Sustainable Success:
800.311.5635; customerservice@intelligentnutrients.com;
www.intelligentnutrients.com;
www.alivelihood.com
