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Good morning! L.A. fire chief Kristin Crowley is out, Citigroup renames DEI team and abandons diversity goals, and a founder’s much-envied exit taught her not to give up control too soon.
– Exit plan. In 2002, Gail Federici was the cofounder and CEO of John Frieda Haircare. She and celebrity stylist Frieda were all in on the salon-quality haircare brand when they got “an offer we couldn’t refuse,” Federici remembers, and sold for a blockbuster $450 million to Japan’s Kao Corporation, which sought shelf space in the U.S.
But while Frieda enjoyed the fruits of their success (“In Switzerland, at his house in Ibiza, at another house on yachts going everywhere,” Federici says) the sale left his cofounder in a “dark place.”
“I didn’t want to sell the business. We really weren’t ready to sell the business,” says Federici, now 75. “I was at a loss when we sold.” Even her children noticed that she was “very strange” without work to guide her. “I’m not depressed, particularly at all, but I worry about things, and when I’m working, I just focus on what’s in front of me,” Federici says. “That’s what I really like.”
Gail Federici cofounded and sold John Frieda for $450 million before founding Color Wow. Courtesy of Color Wow Federici solved her feelings of aimlessness by, a decade later, founding Color Wow, a haircare brand for color-treated hair that today pulls in about $500 million in annual retail sales. She cofounded the John Frieda brand with the insight that her own frizzy hair lacked products designed for it, and she launched Color Wow in response to the growing popularity of damaging hair dyes and their long-term effects on hair.
Yet she says creating John Frieda was a “cake walk” compared to building a brand in today’s market. There are the obvious changes over the past two decades: the rise of social media and pressure on brands to create content across multiple platforms. Federici says at John Frieda, the brand would typically do one major photo shoot and TV commercial whose content would last one or two years. “The amount of content that you have to create, the amount of analytics that you’re looking at all of the time, the algorithms keep changing,” she says. “It’s much, much more complicated than it used to be.” Then there’s the corporate consolidation. “The drug stores bought out the smaller drug stores, so there aren’t as many retail players as there used to be,” Federici explains. “[Before], you had a lot of different accounts, so you had a lot of options. If one group didn’t take you, there were many other players.”
But Federici isn’t letting the stresses of building a modern brand lead her to sell early, again. Color Wow has “declined some offers” over the past 12 years, she confirms.
“What I learned was, I like to work, period,” she says of selling earlier than she planned. And while John Frieda has continued to grow, she doesn’t pay attention. “Friends would call and say, ‘Did you see this? Did you see that?’ And I say, ‘Don’t even tell me. It’s not ours anymore. I don’t need to know.'”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Fortune’s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Today’s edition was curated by Nina Ajemian. Subscribe here.
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- Fire chief fired. L.A. fire chief Kristin Crowley was fired by mayor Karen Bass, who cited Crowley’s handling of the city’s devastating fires last month as the reason for her removal. L.A. Times
- Bye, DEI. Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser told staff in a memo that the bank is renaming its "diversity, equity, and inclusion and talent management" team to the "talent management and engagement” team. Citi is also dropping its diversity goals. Business Insider
- Female focus. Dara Holdings, the investment firm of Saudi billionaire Lubna Olayan, is increasing its support of female-founded companies in the Middle East. Last year, female-founded ventures in the region received just 1.2% of total funding and made up less than 7% of funded startups. Bloomberg
- Respinning Respin. Actor Halle Berry rebranded her wellness platform Respin to Respin Health, with a new focus on women’s health care. In addition to advice from clinicians and coaches, the platform also provides community with other users, which Berry says is key to users’ success. Fortune
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Lindsay Pattison is leaving advertising giant WPP after 16 years, most recently serving as chief people officer.
IFF, a flavor and fragrance company, named Leticia Gonçalves president of health and biosciences. She currently serves as ADM’s president of precision fermentation and ADM Ventures.
Newsweek appointed Danielle Varvaro as chief revenue officer. She most recently served as head of advertising sales.
Apollo.io, software for sales teams, named Bela Stepanova chief product officer. Most recently, she was SVP of product at Iterable.
Work management platform Quickbase appointed Deepali Bhoite as chief information security officer. She is the founder of Skopos Shield and was previously chief information security officer at Anaplan.
CNBC, First in Business Worldwide appointed Spriha Srivastava as VP and executive editor of digital for international. She is currently international executive editor and U.K. bureau chief at Business Insider.
Bruker, a scientific technology company, appointed Laura Francis to its board of directors. Francis is CEO of Si-Bone.
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As tech’s clout grows, a respected antitrust enforcer heads to the DOJ Washington Post
The women who made America’s microchips and the children who paid for it The Verge
The startup that stepped in when the baby formula supply chain broke Bloomberg
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“I think that the time is now and we are here. And to not take advantage of that…it would be a disservice to ourselves, to the league, to the union, to the history, to the future of women’s basketball.”
—Nneka Ogwumike, WNBA player and president of the Women's National Basketball Players Association, on negotiating with the league
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