Name: Philip B., founder and
CEO
Employees: 60
Address: P.O. Box 15341
Beverly Hills, CA 90209-1341
Phone: 1-800-643-5556
Web site: philipb.com
Products at select Costcos
and Costco.com:
Peppermint & Avocado
Shampoo (Item #474766),
Rejuvenating Oil (#474803)
Comments about Costco:
“I’m looking forward to being
in Costco. All my neighbors
keep asking, ‘When’s it going
in?’ Everybody’s a Costco
member. I’m more excited
about this than I’ve been in
a long time.”—Philip B.
SUPPLIERPROFILE
Philip B. makes
hair better
supplier profile
recipes they found in magazines, using ingredients such
as honey and oatmeal.
“I remember being the
little assistant in the kitchen,”
he says. “I was always formu-
lating something for our
skin, for our hair.”
At 15, he procured an after-school job at
a salon.
“I started sweeping and cleaning … and
just what I basically did when I was 3 and 4 and
Philip moved to Los Angeles at the end of 1987
and immediately clicked in the hairdressing business, with a little help from his friends. But he
needed a California license.
“I ended up going to a California hair school,
and I did 10 months of schooling,” he says. He found
most of the techniques and procedures they taught
woefully out of date—citing styles and techniques
that fell out of favor decades earlier—but really
sparked to the “chemistry aspect,” creating products.
B as in business
Philip did extensive research into natural hair
and skin care. He studied the hair and lifestyles of
clients and developed solutions for their problems.
“Once you start applying chemicals like ammonia and peroxide, which is the base of hair color, or
bleach, which is even more harsh, you chemically
alter the hair. It becomes very thirsty and porous
and starts sucking up everything that it would not
normally take in.
“I did a lot of testing,” he adds. “I wanted to
wow me, because if I can wow me, I can wow you.”
Starting with Hollywood celebrities and socialites, his creations sold out before he officially began
manufacturing them. Philip B. solutions are 100
percent natural, using ingredients such as olive,
almond, walnut, peanut, sesame, jojoba, gardenia,
geranium and lavender, and are all made in the
United States. They are all pleasantly fragrant,
incorporating principles of aromatherapy.
“My products truly rejuvenate and beautify hair
in a way that no other hair products do,” he says.
Philip B. products started selling at an upscale
department store in January 1992, and within a
week had sold out. Soon after, Vogue magazine did
a story on him and the orders kept growing.
The little endeavor he started to help his clients
now has worldwide appeal. His entire family, whom
he credits as being inspirational to him, is now
employed in the business. The demands for interviews and personal appearances are nonstop, but
Philip enjoys his success. He recently ran into a
childhood friend, who said to him, “You did everything that you said you were going to do.” C
The mane event
In our digital editions
Click here to watch a short interview
with Philip B. (see page 14 for details).
Clockwise from left:
Philip B.; with Dyan Cannon;
with Paula Abdul.
By Steve Fisher
FROM CHILDHOOD, Philip B. knew exactly what
he wanted to do. The renowned Hollywood hairdresser (who asks The Connection to refer to him as
Philip B., saying, “I like to keep the magic!”) has
found fame around the world through word of
mouth, press coverage and appearances on television, most notably on Lifetime’s Project Runway.
Two of his natural hair products are available at
select Costco warehouses and on Costco.com.
Starting out
Growing up as the youngest of five children in Brookline and Hull, Massachusetts,
the future celebrity stylist found himself visiting hairdressers often.
“My mom went to the hair
salon twice a week for a wash and
set,” he explains via Skype. “And
from the time I was born, I was in
that salon on her lap under that
dryer, and when I could walk they
had me sweeping the floor and set-
ting the rollers.”
Philip often would help his two
older sisters make face masks from
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