Gail Federici knows hair. As co-founder of John Frieda and founder/CEO of Color Wow, she has a sunny disposition but an iron-willed determination and is a fearless leader with a heart for her family, whether blood-related or in her day-to-day business. A mixture of both pragmatism and unconfined ambition, the mother and entrepreneur has proven her ability to launch and sustain a best-selling business over decades in the industry.

When she and Frieda founded the haircare brand in 1989—in response to trialing a thickening lotion at UK retailer Boots the year before, which immediately received a 20,000 bottle order in response—they could not have  anticipated the impact. One bottle of Frizz Ease All-in-1 Original Serum is sold every 30 seconds, and the frizz control market is expected to hit over $4 billion by 2034. Sheer Blonde was another successful outing and a standout at the time when mass market haircare was rarely tailored towards specific hair tones. In 2002, the John Frieda company sold for $450 million.

Color Wow, her next adventure in haircare, was founded in 2013,  again looking (and succeeding) to fill industry white space. From its debut product of Root Cover Up, which uses reflective mineral powder for a natural finish, to Dream Coat Supernatural Spray, which harnesses heat-activated polymer technology to create a “raincoat” that keeps hair shiny and smooth over days, Federici proved her magic touch in creating product hits. One bottle of Dream Coat Supernatural Spray sells every 12 seconds, and Color Wow’s net sales in 2023 were $176 million, a 136% increase year-over-year.

When she isn’t busy running the business, Federici also hosts the annual HAIRraising event,  a one-day cut-a-thon with proceeds benefiting the Boston Children’s Hospital. To date, the initiative has raised over $1.9 million.

In the following conversation, Federici reflects on the making of a best-selling brand, building a family business, and making fear your driver, rather than an obstacle.

Given your incredible track record in creating hero products, what is the magic recipe for creating a breakthrough hair product formula?

For us, it's just down to identifying an issue out there from the very beginning. I had very frizzy hair, and there was absolutely nothing in the market, not one single product for my hair type. Back then, manufacturers thought that the difficult hair type was very fine, limp hair that needed body, so all of the styling products catered to that. They had alcohol in them; styling resins, and they built body into the hair. I had too much body, too much frizz and I thought this was crazy. I was working for a company called Zotos, and I was spending a lot of time with its chemists, and reading, really out of self-interest. I thought maybe silicones could coat the hair strand and that's what led to the first product for frizzy hair, Frizz Ease. It was out of my own need but then, in the case of Color Wow, I had been wondering why when my sisters went gray they weren't covering the stripes. They said there's nothing out there that they liked: the sprays went all over the place, wet the hair; there were markers, but they looked very opaque. They didn't look natural. I started noticing in malls how many women had their roots showing, and I thought if there was something out there, that this wouldn't be the case. So I started to think about it, and it led to the development of the powder [Color Wow Root Cover Up]. It’s always out of a need, my own or someone else's, that I see is not served at all, like in the case of Frizz Ease, or not adequately served in the case of roots.

How has the haircare industry evolved since your first beginnings in it?

It's like night and day. In the days of John Frieda, even though we felt busy all the time and were working hard, it was much simpler. Back then there was no internet and no different social media platforms. We would create one campaign every year and a half for print and TV. Now you're creating every single day for all the different platforms. It's much more complicated; you have to understand all the algorithms, and they change all the time. Every platform has a different way  you put forth your advertising; different strategies you have to develop for each one.

But there's also a lot more technology. When we developed the Frizz Ease serum, it's the best that we could do at the time, but what always bothered me about it was that I could feel it in my hair, and it also didn't protect against humidity. I remember I went to an Aerosmith concert and my hair was great. Then when I went into the ladies’ room and looked in the mirror, it was a completely different face I was looking at. The hair was huge because it was an outdoor concert by the water. We'd always been looking to figure out a solution. I've worked with the same chemist for over 30 years, and on his list of many things that we hadn’t cracked was a frizz product that smooths the hair; you didn't feel it on the hair, and it protected against humidity. I was always pushing, every year that we work together, until about eight or nine years ago when he was introduced to a new type of ingredient that could work. That's how we developed Dreamcoat. But it was impossible to do that back in the early days of Frizz Ease.

It speaks to the importance of finding like-minded collaborators and having a solid working partnership. In terms of ingredients, in recent years, there has been more talk of silicones and sulfates, depending on who you speak to, either being great for the hair or things that shouldn't be in the formula. I'm curious to hear your thoughts on that.

It's too bad. In some ways, social media is great, but in other ways, there's a lot of misinformation out there. People get on the bandwagon and think something like parabens are terrible. There are parabens that are not good, but there are others out there that are perfectly fine to use. We don't happen to use them because we want to avoid all of the social media noise, but there are plenty of other very good companies that use them. With silicones, too, it's a matter of really understanding ingredients because there are different types of silicones. Some are water soluble and they rinse off your hair; they're not going to dry it out. You've got to know the difference. People don't; they just paint them all the same and that's not true.

Surfactants are the same. There are a big range of sulfate-free ingredients from cheap to very expensive. The very expensive sulfate-free ingredients keep your cuticle really tight, which is good if you put hair color in, but then there are others that aren't that different from a sulfate shampoo. The difference with a sulfate-free shampoo is you don't have to put conditioners in it because they're not harsh, but they will clean your hair. The thing that I don't like about putting conditioners in a shampoo is that you massage them into your scalp and conditioners are engineered to stay behind; they stick to your scalp. You want your scalp completely free of any ingredients, because it can cause hair loss, bumps, bacteria.

Speaking about the need to identify a gap in the market, what have been the keys to success for John Frieda and Color Wow?

With John Frieda it was a huge white space; there was not one single product [available]. The penny dropped, and I said to John, “It's very weird because hair types are very different. People that have straight, fine, smooth hair have completely different needs than I do. It's like skincare; people with oily skin have very different needs than people with dry skin, and skincare companies build a whole range according to your skin type.” Whereas haircare companies back then didn't do that at all. They had shampoos for dry hair or oily hair, but every other styling product out there was for fine limp hair—until Frizz Ease. The success of that was seeing this whole underserved market of 65% of the people, at least, who have frizzy hair or dry fragile hair, and formulating products that address their specific needs instead of building body. You want to smooth it and contain the body. We wouldn't ever put alcohol in any of our products or any drying residence. That was the secret behind the Sheer Blonde.

With Color Wow, when we developed the Root Cover Up, we were thinking, “Okay, this is one product.” I honestly did not want to go back into haircare at all, I felt we went out on good terms. But when we figured out the key to covering roots that was much easier and more effective, I thought, “We have to put this out; all of the baby boomers and everybody else, there's nothing for them. It's a huge market potential.” It was because nobody was satisfied, and it blows open when you have something that works.

I was thinking about hair color and how it changed so much over the years. Ages ago, people didn't want anybody to know they were coloring their hair, and now people are making statements about themselves through color, not as much through haircuts, like Farrah Fawcett and Dorothy Hamill did. With that came a lot of wear and tear on the hair. There were products on the market for color treated hair, but they were just little tweaks—they weren't addressing the real wear and tear that people were doing to their hair because color was used more frequently with way more dramatic changes back and forth. That was the idea behind the brand.

We would make things that had never been made before, like the Xtra Large Bombshell Volumizer. My daughter has blonde, very bleached hair. She came in one morning, and I asked her what was in her hair because it looked so dry. She said she was using the number one volumizer on Amazon. Volumizers all use either salts, alcohol, or drying resins to blast open the cuticle; that's what makes your hair look bigger. So I went to Joe and asked: Is there a way to make a volumizer where you don't use those ingredients and don't blast the cuticle open? He developed a type of polymer that coats the hair strand, and it's got a little  rough edge so it's not blowing open your own cuticle. It builds your hair like crazy without drying it out. It comes from looking at what other people say and listening to their hair issues—is there a way to give them  volume without the negative side effects?

A lot of that goes back to that innovation on the ingredient level. When I compare haircare with skincare, the cycle of innovations feels a lot more challenging in haircare, to be able to to bring those innovative formulas to market. Does that boil down to that working chemistry between you and Joe and trying to dig a bit deeper on the ingredients? How do you get to that level of innovation?

We always want to do something that matters. You want to make money, but if you make something that matters, you do make money. We always try to look at things in a way that is going to definitely deliver results. We're never ingredient-led. We do it more like a skincare company in that every product we make is for a specific hair issue. The team knows hair inside and out; a lot of us have been working together for over 30 years. Then of course we have a huge new group of amazing people that are part of the team. My daughters have been in it since they were 12, testing products for us, doing the commercials. They know about ingredients because they were spokespeople for us even in the John Frieda days. It's because we are so obsessive about making a difference in figuring out an issue that bothers people and making the product specifically for that, so there is no one ingredient in the range that is peppered throughout. Every formula is completely different from the other because the problem is completely different. A lot of ranges don't do that.

I would love to expand a little bit more on the people involved in helping grow your companies whether that's investors or an internal team. On one hand, you need a certain amount of capital, but then we've also seen investors derail companies away from their DNA.

It's a hard decision. We go back and forth all the time because there are benefits to the money with these big investment companies. But I'm glad you asked about the team, because I feel very strongly that this team we have and the team we had at John Frieda, they're exceptional. When we went through the pandemic, a third of our business was in salons and they were hit really hard. At the end of March, we were revisiting our budgets and cutting what our goals and final sales numbers were. It was a tough time; we were not used to doing all of the Google Meets and Zooms and this team literally worked around the clock and weekends. Luckily for us, in about 2016, we decided to put a huge amount of effort into our website, which was great for us. Then we devoted all our attention to making the most out of a difficult situation. They say never waste a big crisis, so we did everything online. All of our ambassadors were doing lives. We had Chris Appleton trying to go on every day, talking about different issues. We were making content, and it was hard back then because you couldn't use models, and people didn't want packages arriving at their homes. This team, I never want to be in the trenches with anybody else. They're all smart, fun, creative. We would laugh on the worst days when everything was a mess. You want to work with people like that because it's business, it's serious, but sometimes, you just need to have fun. Having your own company, you can choose the culture, so when I went back (and John Frieda was that way as well), you just want people that you really like, that share the vision, that work hard and get it. We have that. Everybody has the same vision, but we're also very different, which I think is key. My business partner, Ann Bell,  was with John and I the first time around, and now we work together. She's super smart and has so many qualities that are so good that I don't have. My brain works differently than hers. Together we're way stronger. I always look for people who aren’t “yes” people but who are very open and have qualities in areas of strength that I don't have. It makes for such a creative and interesting culture. If you're going to be at work 8 to 10 or more hours a day, you want it to be interesting and fulfilling. We're lucky that we have that because after so many years, I still have fun. I still like figuring out problems and doing it with the team.

It’s that yin and yang of having people who will challenge you and help you make even better creations rather than if you're in a hive mindset where everything's the same.

A good idea can come from absolutely anybody. We have groups; it's not, “Oh Gail thought of this, and Gail wrote that.” Not at all. As a team we have to poke holes in things, but none of us take it personally. We all respect each other so much. We're talking about the idea, not the person's brain. Say anything you want, we can feel free to say it's awful without hurting anybody's feelings. We're all very direct and in the end, if we're all on different pages somehow, logic wins out and the person who is the most persuasive is what makes sense. I don't remember a time where at the end, we didn't wind up on the same page.

Also having Chris Appleton as a brand ambassador, the influence  he has as a hairstylist, working with the Kardashians and how much they really shaped hair culture. So much of what we see today as desirable hairstyles has been popularized by some of the work that Chris has done.

Chris is amazing. I was looking for several years for a stylist who I could work with like I did with John, for many, many, many reasons.I had so many portfolios shown to me, and none of them I felt were right. Then they brought me Chris's portfolio. I tend to look at the red carpet hair because you can't retouch them, they're out there. When you see other pictures, you don't know how much retouching made the hair look like it does. His red carpet hair was always as good as the shoots. So we set up a Skype, and he was so funny and articulate, knew products inside and out. He was a one-off, and we immediately liked each other.

We decided to work together for six months to see how we both liked the relationship. We did, and when working on what the hair should look like at a shoot—because I'll sometimes tend to move the hair around and some stylists will ask “What do you think you're doing?”—but other stylists  I've worked with, like Sally and John, they knew exactly where I was going and why. With Chris it was exactly the same. We see the same thing. I can't do it the way he could do it in a million years, but our aesthetic is similar. What you like is subjective, and I like the way he does hair; I always have. And he's okay with any suggestions that I might have about an idea of some style we should do, and he's just fun to work with. I thought that I knew just about everything about hair after all these years. I saw his first show to the trade;I couldn't believe all the information he gave that was fresh about products and how to use them. He's amazing, and I totally agree that he's such an asset to the company for all the reasons you stated.

I wanted to dive a little bit into your time working in the record business. Was there any kind of crossover between that and your time in the beauty industry that that experience helped inform?

I love music, and my husband plays guitar and sings, not in a band, but there’s always music in the house. My girls were signed by Interscope Records as a duo way back. We had a five-year non-compete [after selling John Frieda]. The girls were known from the Sheer Blonde TV commercials; people were always writing to us, and it was a sensation. We did a music video with Dave Meyers who was winning MTV awards all the time for Best Music Video, and the girls wrote the song. That got us into the music business, and we really liked it.

What was interesting to me, besides just loving music, was that we were in Atlanta; it was on fire. We had the opportunity of working with the most creative amazing producers like Dallas Austin, Tricky Stewart, Jazze Pha, Polo. It was such a collaborative environment. Even writing a hit song is strategic; being around so many creative people and strategizing about things and putting people out to the market in the marketplace. It got my creative juices flowing. I appreciated all of these completely different types of people we were working with and how well the collaborations went that it reinforced my wanting to build another team and make it super creative and a lot of fun.

Part of the reason that got me to want to go back [to the hair industry] was the idea of that collaborating, creative mindset, and strategizing with a bunch of people. I love that collaboration in that environment. I also say that's when my entire family started to go gray because it is a whole different world. I'd be in the studio—at times you think you're starting at 10 o'clock at night, but the reality is some people don't even show up until two in the morning. It was nuts. You never knew what was going to happen. It was the craziest time; I could write a book that would be hilarious. I always say of our five years in the music business, it was so much fun, totally different and it refreshed my creative side, which is what I needed.

When it came to your exit from John Frieda, what, in your eyes, is the key to a successful exit?

With John Frieda, we didn't want to. We were entertaining the people because we felt we should, and you learn things when you're talking to them, but we were worried that somebody would knock us off. But they offered us a very sizable amount; we said “no”—they came back and offered us $450 million. I remember looking down and saying, “I don't think that we can say “no” to this. It would be irresponsible to our families.” They agreed, but it was with a heavy heart because we loved what we were doing. We had a lot of plans. I definitely had some PTSD afterwards. It happened so fast. I was at a loss. What they looked at in deciding to buy us was they [Kao] wanted shelf space in the US. It was a very, very strong brand with a unique proposition and a loyal fan base. Back in the day, the number of letters that they sent filled drawers down the whole hallway; I had worked for other haircare companies that never got mail; this was unbelievable. Particularly with Frizz Ease but with Sheer Blonde as well. That's what they were looking for; a competitive moat. How will you keep your business, sustain the growth, how strong is your brand following? Do you have really strong innovation and can you keep that going? What does your success look like? How strong is your team? How are your profits looking? That's how they look at it.

In terms of your ventures into skincare with Time Bomb, what were those experiences like?

Joe had worked in skincare before, but we were not thinking of coming out with a skincare range. We were heavily involved in music at the time, but what happened was Lulu, John’s ex wife, was coming out with another album, and she was always asking us if we could make certain products for her. She said, “I'm going to be on stage next to Kylie Minogue. I need to hold my own to a certain extent.”

She would give us benchmark products and say what she liked and didn’t like about them. We would make them just for her use. The females in the company  would all use them too because they were exceptional. This was going on for three years; we weren't going to launch anything; then when Lu came out with this album, there was a huge double-page spread that was published in this paper. She called me furious and said “They're not talking about my album; all they're talking about is how do I look so young?” Everyone wants to look good, but music is who she is, period. I said, “Lu, you're used to being on TV. Maybe we should go on QVC with this.” We did and sold out the first time. The problem with Time Bomb, while they were amazing products, was that Color Wow was taking off a few years after that, blowing up, and we couldn’t do both. Now we just have Time Bomb for ourselves.

We still ask Joe to make new formulas for skin, but we can't put them out at the moment or couldn’t for the last bunch of years. We just had to let something go. Growing that much that quickly like we did last year, you worry about the wheels falling off. It's very hard to go from the size that we were to this size and hire people quickly. If you can't put in the processes that you need to to make sure that communication is right, everything is pretty overwhelming, so we couldn't possibly take on anything else right now.

Or even having a viral product that is selling out and trying to meet the demands.

It's crazy, it's really difficult.

What would your advice to other beauty entrepreneurs be given all the success you've had and this magical touch when it comes to products?

When you have an idea, you really have to make sure that you kick the tires. That you don't just fall in love with the idea and then have your friends all say yes. You have to try to figure out: Is there something wrong with this? kick the tires hard until you know that this could work.

Then you have to have a passion either for that product or for business in general. I definitely have a passion for products but also a passion for business that I never thought, as a younger person, I would have. Collaboration is very important: If you're starting out, don't hire people with very low salaries because that's what you can afford. You have to figure out a way to have higher-level people in the beginning who will roll their sleeves up and do everything. You want a little think tank to help you. Everybody has to do the basic things, as well as the strategy and finances. That was really key to the first and the second business: we had three people to start, then five, then seven, then many. They were all very, very serious, smart, high-level people. That's really important.

Having that experience under your belt and being able to keep your cool is also incredibly helpful. You've mentioned some of the twists and turns and developments you can't predict, you need someone who will keep their hands on the wheel so to speak.

And maintain as much calmness as you can. Sometimes you have to laugh when it's really bad. It sounds crazy, but we do get anxiety. John Frieda gave me the book Only the Paranoid Survive because he said, “I was always looking over my shoulder, and I'm always planning for the next disaster.” You have to always anticipate what could go wrong so you have a plan B. It’s a roller coaster. There's no way everything goes smoothly ever. Especially now. Through running John Frieda, we probably had a couple of hiccups with the supply chain, but the amount of supply chain issues we have had since the pandemic, they were daily and many per day. The number of issues you have with getting products made—getting them to where they need to go, having the labels on right, making sure the type doesn't rub off on something, that something isn't leaking. It's enormous and you have to be ready for that ride, take it on, have the “okay we're going to fix it” mentality, and not panic too much, because it's going to happen all the time.

Also the market is more competitive than ever before and there's so much noise. Navigating those waters is different.

Absolutely 100%. That's a big difference. Before, there weren't that many players. You had to get into the drugstores, the Ultas of the world, and not many people were in there. Now the landscape has totally changed. The opportunities are there online so anybody can come out and put products on there. We have our own in-house lab but other brands can go to contract manufacturers where they have formulas lined up and you know, and you could just label it with your logo, go to market, and pop them onto Amazon or your own website, then go on to QVC. There's so many things you could do now that you could not do before. Even getting names; it used to be easy to get a name for a product. Now because there's so many people picking up names, holding them, and having people come and buy them off of you. That's even a business where it wasn't before. It's all trickier.

What has it been like having your daughters be a part of the business?

It can be tricky when you're working with your family. I have my brother and two sisters working with us. John Frieda’s nephew works with us. We have a whole bunch of family members and people that are our family because they've been with us over 30 years. It's a very family-oriented company. I brought in Brit first. I just wanted her to help with social media. I didn't know how it would go. They've grown up in business basically and are both extremely strategic. They know how I think and what I'm looking for, quickly. Everybody in the company has the opportunity to weigh in anywhere. If you've got the potential to rise and come up, it's there. We want everybody to reach that.

Alex is a really good writer, so she's also working with the creative team in developing concepts for ads, eblasts, packaging, direction, and copy. Do I want to do this until I'm 110? No. So I'm always looking for my successor. I feel really lucky to have them rising up and helping me and the team with this strategy. We'll see what happens.

Are you born a CEO or can you grow into that? Sometimes there's this idea that you have to be a certain personality type, but then I think perhaps we're also expanding ideas of what leadership can look like.

I was born the oldest of four, so I was the bossiest, but I would have never pictured myself as a CEO. I do think that things have changed, but one of the reasons why I started to think about having my own company and rising to where I was, was because I had twins and one of  them was born with congenital heart disease. That made me get super serious about making money and doing something on my own, so I would have the freedom and also be able to hopefully make enough money to make sure that she had the care anywhere in the world that she needed. That really lit a fire under me. They say that fear can do many things, but I felt it could give you headwinds or be the wind beneath your wings. I had that fear push me rather than hold me back. That is a big reason why I am here today. Other people who know me say no because I was always putting on shows in the neighborhood and would be directing and producing, but I do think it was a combination of things to get me here. When you love what you're doing and if you have a certain skill set, it just naturally happens. Some people have it in their head that this is what they're going to be. I never did. I went to law school; then I'm singing with the band.  In some ways, I'm sure it shocked some of the people I went to school with.

It's nice that we don’t have to pigeonhole ourselves to one avenue of life and can transition between these different avenues. There's also something very special about being able to nurture talent and seeing others grow.

I love to do that. I don't feel bad when I'm telling somebody that it's not right what they're doing  because my intention is never to tear somebody down. It's to make them better. I've said that to other people; “Don't feel bad if this person reports to you, and they're not doing the right thing. If you're shying away from telling them, you're not doing them any favors; just do it with the intent to make them better.” If it's because they're being lazy, don't care, or have an attitude, that's one thing, but most people want to do a good job. If it's because they don't understand yet how to do what we need them to do, I am very direct. When I'm doing that, they're going to benefit. The people I've mentored in the company are now doing the same with the younger people who are coming in and I like to see it. That's why we're really strong.

Truth is one of the most sincere acts of kindness. That's actually more loving towards someone than not saying anything.

I noticed  the people who do the best are the ones who want to know. We have some people who do TV for us, different ambassadors, and we've had some in the past come back and ask: What was good, what was bad? I need to know, how can I improve? The people who grow by leaps and bounds are the people that want to know: How can I be better? They're happy to go out of their comfort zone. The people  I know who are great, there is no step too far for them.