An 18-year veteran of P&G, Kevin Otero joined the professional salon industry in March 2006 to provide strategic focus to the business, and to create a set of integrated strategies across the different businesses utilizing P&G's scale to benefit the salon customer. As General Manager with responsibility for overall market development, Kevin is leveraging his experience in retail beauty to strengthen sales and marketing initiatives in the professional category. The P&G Professional Care portfolio in North America includes the exclusive-line brands of Wella Professionals, Sebastian Professional, Graham Webb and Belvedere, and the open-line businesses of Clairol Professional, Wella American Classics and Johnson Products.
P&G Professional is committed to the growth and success of the salon industry by leading game-changing innovation that will create and drive demand for salon services, and that will bring newness and excitement to the salon through product, technique and commercial innovation. Furthermore, through our "joint value creation" and "joint business planning" models, we are dedicated to meeting your needs and the needs of your clients.
We know that the heart and soul of the professional industry is artistry and education. In the past six months, our flagship Studio NYC has been joined by two new full-service professional education Studios-one in Los Angeles and another in San Francisco, with The Studio Chicago slated to open before the end of the year. These facilities, as well as our comprehensive curriculum of in-salon and local-market education offerings and our incredible Future Vision events, are dedicated to inspiring stylists as well as growing technical skills, which ultimately lead to increased service revenues.
"The heart and soul of the professional industry is artistry and education."
We are committed to servicing the needs of the total salon industry by offering a multi-channel distribution model that includes distributors for salons and stores, a full-service direct sales organization, a national teams organization and a wholesaler team. Our distributor partners offer the broad reach, scale and expertise to best service salons outside of our direct coverage area. A multi-channel distribution model allows for flexibility to better serve the needs of the salon and the stylist.
Our Direct Sales Organization (DSO) Sales Consultants are full service partners with salon owners and stylists focused on what we call "Joint Value Creation" by bringing new tools, products and insights to salons and their clients. We believe that by focusing on our portfolio of top brands that our Sales Consultants are the perfect partner for salon owners and stylists. We can bring a core competency of P&G into the salon industry: deeper understanding and insights of our client needs that can drive new product and service opportunities. By having a dedicated selling organization, we can work on sharing this knowledge with our partners in a more seamless fashion. Our Sales Consultants can use their "toolbox" to work the right partnership plan. A good example of this is our Colors of the World program, where we bring new techniques and education to the stylist for new color applications that drive higher-dollar service revenues.
P&G Professional Care is excited and optimistic about the future of the professional salon industry. I felt that one of the most important contributions I could make to the industry was to get more directly involved by joining the Professional Beauty Association. In addition to supporting the goals and objectives of the association, I hope I will be able to bring P&G's expertise in areas such as market research and segmentation study to better understand and meet the needs of the stylist and salon client, as well as our shopper experience to help create a better salon retail environment for salon clients to drive salon retail.
We continue to see diversion as a major challenge to the industry. As a manufacturer, we have taken major steps to address this issue, including state-of-the-art coding and tracking systems on our products, comprehensive salon agreements, a watchdog network and hotline, as well as a four-stage escalation process when diverted product is traced to a salon that can ultimately lead to account termination. But we cannot win this fight alone. We need salon owners and the salon industry to educate stylists to recognize and report diversion, to promote the use of professional products and to educate clients.
We believe that P&G's knowledge of women's beauty wants and needs can be viewed through a stylist lens to better understand the professional salon client and her purchasing behavior to drive more salon visits, increase salon services and build salon retail. We are very excited about these opportunities and believe that they will lead to accelerated growth in the industry.