Jeroen Temmerman was working as managing director for L’Oreal in Sweden when he first heard of GHD.
“In 2008, a very cool brand popped up on the market and it was so successful in Sweden that everybody was talking about it,” Temmerman remembers to Fortune. “The best hairdressers of Stockholm had it on the shelf.”
He’s speaking about GHD—the hair tech model that was born and bred within the U.Ok. earlier than its straighteners, hairdryers, and tongs made their means throughout the Channel.
The thrill was so loud that he thought L’Oreal ought to purchase it.
“I was on a team looking at the performance of GHD, to see if it could be a good asset for L’Oreal,” Temmerman says, including that he gave his superiors his opinion on the model— “it was very positive”—however didn’t hear again. It was above his pay grade.
The subsequent time he heard concerning the firm, was 10 years later when Coty (GHD’s mum or dad firm on the time) requested if he’d needed to helm it: “For me, that was (full) circle.”
It’s been almost one other decade since he took on the highest job at GHD—or, Good Hair Day—and in that point, he has taken the model throughout Europe’s borders to Asia and the U.S., doubled the finances for R&D funding and in consequence, launched new wet-to-dry stylers which have taken the sweetness world by storm and outperformed the corporate’s personal expectations by over 34%.
Now, in keeping with the corporate, over 3 million GHD hair styling instruments are offered yearly throughout 30 nations, almost six merchandise are offered each minute, and hairdressers use them in additional than 45,000 salons. Final yr, the enterprise raked in $380 million in internet income.
GHD’s feat is much more spectacular when you think about that, at 23 years previous, it didn’t exist when Temmerman began his profession.
GHD’s CEO has solely ever had two employers
Temmerman’s entry into the sweetness trade within the 90s was uncommon, to say the least.
“I was studying in Holland and there was a game that L’Oreal organized called Brandstorm, which was a competition between universities,” he remembers.
The duty? To go towards 80 faculty groups to provide you with a cool solar safety model. Temmerman’s staff made it to the finals and received to pitch to the bosses in Paris.
“We didn’t win. But after that, they offered me a job,” he says, including that “it was not the typical thing to do—everybody in Holland goes on to Unilever, Shell, big banks or whatever.”
He took the product supervisor job and that’s the place he ended up for the subsequent 2 a long time. Promotion after promotion noticed Temmerman transfer around the globe—actively working throughout greater than 20 nations and relocating to 5—from the Netherlands to Paris, Sweden and Mexico.
He says the expertise set him up for fulfillment in his present position as GHD’s chief, which has formidable plans for world enlargement. “Obviously, when you jump into a global job, that helps a lot.”
Does he assume he may have gotten to the place he’s at the moment (at 52 years previous) faster if he had left L’Oreal sooner? “Not sure”—however he has zero regrets over solely ever having had two employers.
“I see your career as a backpack. You climb a mountain and you fill your backpack with tools on the journey to get to the top,” he says.
Primarily, whether or not or not you modify employers incessantly, the secret’s making certain you’re always studying. However don’t overthink it.
“Don’t think too much about career [trajectory],” he says, including that he was “most unhappy” in his job when he was specializing in what’s subsequent as a substitute of having fun with what’s now.
“You have to live in the now, do your job that you have at hand as good as possible, and trust the people around you,” he says. “If you excel in what you do when you’re young, you will get the next opportunity. It’ll come by itself.”
“It’s good to be ambitious,” he provides. “But don’t get over overly obsessed by it.”
Ideas for bagging a CEO gig? Community, community, community
Though Temmerman had his eye on GHD whereas at L’Oreal—the hair tech model, after all, had no concept. As an alternative, he says, the decision to take its helm got here due to numerous networking on his half.
“Honestly, I was not actively looking outside,” he says. “It was purely thanks to all the relations that I built in the 20 years that I was working that put me in connection with this opportunity because curiosity will drive opportunity.”
His high networking tip? Cease humble bragging on LinkedIn and get on the market. Meet your friends in actual life and get actual about the place you fall weak.
“The big thing is that you have to be authentically interested in what you do and then network will draw by itself,” he says, including: “As a leader, you need to talk to people that are in the same kind of situations that you are in—not with a double agenda—just like, how did you solve that problem? Because I have this problem.”
“I don’t believe too much in showing off that everything is perfect,” he stresses. “The most interesting part in a discussion is how you deal with very complex situations at work, because everybody has them.”
Persevering with on the theme of being trustworthy, Temmerman admits that the bounce from being a L’Oreal veteran to helming an “entrepreneurial” firm was arduous—and never with out danger.
On the time, he was managing all of Latin America for L’Oreal and, on common, acquired a promotion each two years or so.
“To say goodbye to something that you know and to jump in a new adventure is always scary,” he says.
However when weighing up whether or not it was time to go away the corporate he had spent his total grownup life at, he remembers trying forward at what he needed from the second act of his profession.
“I’ve run the half of the marathon. Now, I still have the other half of the marathon in my career to go and this was one of those golden opportunities that I that I had to take.”
Ultimately, it was time to replenish his backpack some extra: “Sometimes you have to push yourself out of the comfort zone that you’re in and this was one of the opportunities to really take me back out of the comfort zone and put me in the stretch zone again.”
No relaxation for the depraved (or relatively, formidable)
Now that Temmerman is within the high job at GHD (now owned by Wella Firm), he’s nonetheless not sitting comfortably or resting on his laurels.
“We are building the brand in the U.S.,” he says. “I think that is a fantastic challenge we have ahead of us. We don’t have the awareness yet. But we will get there.”
Already, he says that the State-side enterprise has doubled within the final couple of years, GHD is now stocked in Ulta and Sephora, and it’s “creating a professional footprint” with SalonCentric, one of many largest wholesale salon and wonder provide distributors {of professional} magnificence merchandise within the nation.
“I’m a strong believer in having good products, because then products will do the job,” he provides. “So we are set up for success, especially with the innovation pipe that is coming in the years ahead of us.”
Talking of innovation, in contrast to Dyson—which pivoted from vacuums into hair tech with roaring success—don’t count on to see GHD side-step into different heat-related merchandise exterior of hair care, like radiators or irons.
Or, throughout Temmerman’s tenure, at the least.
“I strongly believe that the brands of the future are the brands that are focused,” he insists. “In the beauty industry, I learned that brands with a clear focus and a clear DNA are the ones that can travel very fast.”
“So we will be focusing on a good hair day where GHD stands for—making women’s life easier, more beautiful by creating a good hair day.”
As for getting GHD’s merchandise within the fingers of girls in all places, as a substitute of their many opponents? “There are more than 240 million consumers in the U.S., so the one that has the best products and the best value proposition and solves problems is the one that will win.”
