Jose BRYCE smith O&M

JOSE BRYCE SMITH
FOUNDER AND DIRECTOR OF ORIGINAL MINERAL

WHERE DID YOU THINK YOU WERE HEADED WHEN YOU WERE UP YOUNG?

I think growing up I never, I never really knew what I wanted to do, but my grandmother in particular was always very inspirational to me. she subscribed to Vogue and I can remember going to her house and always being so excited to see the latest Vogue. And she would always talk to me about fashion so that sort of got me started. I was always very intrigued with clothes. I felt that they were like art. Growing up my mother always had us in health food stores and was always talking about low sugar and looking after your body. My father was very sick growing up and he eventually died when I was 17, my mother was always health, health, health. So, I think its sort of a combination of the two. I initially thought I was going to work in fashion and then yeah, I ended up falling into the hairdressing industry and focusing on the health in that area.

"To be honest, it's been an insanely Rocky road for the last 12 years. when you're trying to do something that has never been done before, even though we didn't r realise we were pioneering in our field, we pretty much made every mistake that you can think of along the way, they were all the biggest learnings."

THE JOURNEY

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WHEN DID YOU KNOW YOU WERE ON A NEW CAREER PATH?
I didn't really know I was doing it. I had a background in media and marketing and then I met a hairdresser and came to Sydney with him and I started working in media in Australia. When he opened the hair salon, he thought that people were going to rush in and when they didn’t, I said to him, do you want me to come and do some marketing? So, I started to work there and the first thing that hit me was I couldn't believe the smell and fumes. It was just unbelievable. I mean this was 20 years ago, there were perms, colour and it was all very smelly. I thought people don't understand what they're breathing in and they don't understand what they're putting on their hair and the long term health effects of that. In London, I’d been going to a salon, which is where I met my partner, who then became my husband and now is my ex-husband. so, I knew that there were hair salons where colours didn't smell and fume as much.

So that was where it started. He also had very bad contact dermatitis as did a couple of the apprentices. He would shampoo and their hands would bleed after always being in water and in hair colour. We started to bring over this ammonia free hair colour from a very small factory in Ireland. And that was how it got started. And really, we just wanted it for our own team and our own clients, and it snowballed from there. I did all this marketing around, organic salon ammonia free and at the time we had Mop, which was modern organic products our haircare line. When we first started all of this, natural low chemical products were available in health food stores and they were all green and Brown packaging and I was like what about women like me? I want to use low chemical products, but I want them to look pretty in my bathroom. We really had the first clean luxury haircare line. We started with colour then the haircare, which is all of the shampoos, conditioners, styling products. I wanted them to look clean but also luxury.

UNCHARTERED WATERS
We were pioneering, and that's why the brand is called Original and Mineral because we were the original pioneers of ammonia free hair colour. When we first started selling it to other salons, which was about eight years later, I would walk into a salon and I would say “Hey, my hair is an ammonia free, high lift blonde”. And they would go, “no, it isn't”. And I say, yeah, “it is, and you can try it. You're the expert. You tell me what you think”. And then when they tried it, they'd be like, wow, how does it do that? And so, I was like, "well, you know, it's kind of, that's the secret herbs and spices, but has got no ammonia, no smell & no fumes”.

2010 Launched O&M care and styling line.
Packaged luxuriously, these products have a Free From Five formulation – no harmful sulphates, parabens, propylene glycol, MIT or Triclosan. Certified by PETA (People for Ethical Treatment of Animals) as Cruelty Free, the O&M line with high-performing natural ingredient

2013 O&M did what many chemists said was impossible, when we developed Clean Colour Technology – permanent professional hair colour with zero ammonia, PPD or resorcinol with no smell or fumes while giving results to match conventional hair colour.

THE CHANGING MINDSET
The technology has moved on and people have realised that the high chemical products are just really cheap to make, and the more natural and clean products are more expensive to make. So, you kind of get what you pay for. But it is actually coming into line now because there are so many more natural products. The raw materials are becoming less expensive so the product can be more affordable. But yeah, we've been fighting a lot of those myths for years. And that was partly why we made the packaging look so luxurious because we've thought we've got two types of customer. One that just goes, oh wow, I love that brand it smells great and it's great on my hair. And then the other one who's like, Oh, it's free of all these chemicals that I don't want to use and it's Australian. I think we managed to hit kind of both markets and I think in particular the hairdresser was very used to high chemical products. Because our main distribution is through hair salons, they needed to love it first and feel that it was going to work. So, if it works in a hairdressing salon, it works enough to use at home because hairdressers are incredibly picky and critical. I get some of the best feedback ever in hair salons from because they're so opinionated and never short of a word either. I love it.

THE HUSTLE - BUILDING THE BUZZ
I can remember ringing the beauty editor of Vogue every single day who was Caroline Paidasch at the time. And I would say to her, “Hey Caroline, I've got this ammonia free hair colour and I'd love you to try it and I've got the best hairdressers”. And she would say to me, “no, no, no, I've got my own hairdresser. I've been going to her for 10 years”. And I would say, okay. And then I would ring her the next day and she said, “are you going to ring me every single day?” And I said, “yeah, I am actually”. so, she came in and then she did a little writeup in Vogue about this big (very small), about seaweed Lightener, which was a bleach that we had that was seaweed based. And from there we became like the beauty editors secret. They all started coming and that was when it exploded. When she came in, we had no clients in that day. So, we got Alan's mom to come in with a good handbag and put it up on the hanger and we put a colour on her. And then we got Wayne, our colourist to come in with his mum (and a good handbag) and then there was Caroline from Vogue. And then when Wayne put he r colour on, he went outside, and he started to make phone calls to me, and I made fake appointments. Oh my God, we were pretending to book people in. It was so good. You know, you totally just have to fake it till you make it, it's a total myth that entrepreneurs generally have an amazing plan and it's well thought out. Most people do it as a side hustle, I think. And they're just having a go.

CREATING A PRODUCT
I drive most of my team crazy because I get an idea and then I get really excited and I want to do it now. But really, officially, it should take about nine months. we sometimes can do it in about six. Start with the initial idea, see the gap in the range and feel passionate about what we want to do.

The perfect combination of marketing is 60 to 70% looking at what everyone else is doing and then 30 to 40% your own ideas. Because let's face it, we're not reinventing the wheel. You know, there's lots of hair care lines out there, lots of hair colour lines. We're just doing it within our own philosophy. So, it's important to know who your customer is and who your competitors are and what they're doing. There's always that bit of analysis at the beginning. And then it's like, what's the function of the product? What are we leaving out? Does it fit with the brand philosophy. Then start the sampling process
and only when you're one hundred percent happy with the product, we call it the goo which is what goes inside the packaging. Then we do the packaging and the packaging generally takes three to four months. It's quite a long time.

JUMPING THE HURDLES
We were producing in this small factory in Ireland and we had the hair colour and it was really good. And then because we were, quite a small brand, I was very surprised at the amount of phone calls that I would get from people saying to me is the colour PPD free. And I was like, what's PPD? And then I Googled it and there's pages and pages of people having reactions and going into anaphylactic shock to PPD (Para-Phenylene-Diamine). It is basically Brown hair dye, so if you imagine, the highest concentration of Brown is in the darkest colours, right? Hair colour goes from black is number one, nine is number blonde, and it goes in between. The dark colours have a higher concentration of PPD, but 80% of our business is grey coverage. There are people with Brown hair that when the white comes through they need to cover it. I also bet that PPD becomes a carcinogen and later on they say that's going to cause cancer. I made it my mission to take it out. So, I moved our manufacturing from Ireland to a big manufacturer in America who had made a massive

multinational haircare line colour line as they said, “we can take it out.” I worked with them for years and we had so many product problems. We had a hundred thousand units of colour and they went off, they oxidized. So, the tube, the metal, when they crimped it over, the glue wasn't tight enough, and air starts to get in and they oxidize. We literally had everything that could possibly happen. All because we were taking out PPD, resorcinol and ammonia and trying to get the same result. It was a very tough time the business nearly went under three times. In actual fact, I had a business partner at the time who multiple times took me into a room and told me that I was unstable and unfit to run the company and that I didn't know what I was doing. And it was mainly because we were having all these product problems, but every time it happened, all I felt was that the universe was sending me a signal to re-strategize. I don't know why, but I always believed that it was going to be possible. And I thought, why not me? Why couldn't I do it? Why not? And I just genuinely believed that hair colour would become a health choice. Like food. I think that the trick is, is that when you, when something sort of negative happens, if you see it from ‘what do I need to learn? What could I do differently? If I knew then what I know now, what would I do?’ I just always saw it like that. I didn't beat myself up even though other people were beating me up. I would go, well done. Jose you tried really hard even when you're failing, you try. And then I also think, you know what do girls have? we do have hair and makeup and clothes, and I used to use that a lot. I would just pick myself up, dust myself up, put a cute outfit on and come out in front of the team and tell them what we were going to do next.

SUSTAINABILTY
We are working on our timelines at the moment, we feel we will achieve these.

Gender equality
Decent work and economic growth
Eco products and biodegradable products
Ocean waste recycled packaging
FSC certification on all of our paper goods

With Covid, we might be slightly pushed back, but we are
moving towards sustainability goals and that's what's really important to us .

JOSE'S MORNING ROUTINE
I think what I would like people to realise is that people like me with a great business, it just doesn't happen easily. Every day, I say it takes me at least an hour to get over myself. You know, I have to do my morning routine, which is, I meditate, I do EFT tapping, which is a clinically proven technique. They're tapping points that unblock any blockages basically. And you can follow it on YouTube. There's a very good guy called Brad who does a whole tapping channel, but just tapping Brad tapping, tapping, he'll come in, catch up for money. Money flows easily into my life. I've always got money. People shouldn't be afraid to ask the universe. It goes back to your beliefs, you’ve got to believe that you're worthy of success and money or whatever, and it's not gonna make you into a bad person. In fact, there's a lot of good you can do with it. So, it takes me about an hour to get over myself and then get myself going for the day. Well, my psychologist, who I speak to every week says to me, it's all about the morning routine. It's all about how you start your day. And that she had a client who was a billionaire and she said it was all about the morning routine, and then also she calls it mapping your day. Like in the morning you wake up and you go, right, this is what I've got to do with my day, but what, what you need to do is put some positive stuff in there as well, not just, you know, all of these chores that you've got to do and then meditating. The great thing about meditating is you're basically allowing space for new experiences because your mind is constantly full of, I've got to do this, I've got to do that. But when you meditate, you clear everything out. And I find that when I meditate, always good things happen to me because I've allowed the space for other, other information to come in.

A LITTLE WISDOM
Blaming anyone, including yourself, never got anyone anywhere. Fear is the opposite of action. So being too afraid, you just can't, you've just got to be your own best friend. If you boil it down to one thing, cause I've done a massive amount self-development, a lot of tree hugging & various courses. It really all comes down to your beliefs. So, I genuinely believed that hair colour was going to become a health choice and that I needed to do something about it. I believed it was possible. So, we're all fulfilling our beliefs. if you believe that life's hard, you're never going to have any money, then that's what will happen. If you believe that you must pay your rent and you know you must do certain things, then you'll just do whatever's on the list. I often say to people, the trick is to get out of your own way!

A LITTLE FAITH
I’ve listened to a lot of other entrepreneurs as well and every entrepreneur has had massive ups and downs. If you spoke to Richard Branson, he would have a list of failed companies. I mean, you look at what's happening to Virgin Australia now, it's just that they have faith in themselves and keep going and they re-strategize.