In today’s world of fashion, hair coloring plays an important role. Most women color their hair, whether it’s to cover the gray or to make a unique statement by using the bright hip colors of the rainbow.
The company Chromastics is revolutionizing the market place with their new concept of using only 19 permanent colors and 17 deposit colors, allowing the hair dresser to become a true Artist, who can design a unique palette for their clients.
The Hollywood 360 sat down with Peter Ciotti, Co-founder and CEO of Chromastics, Isabel Navarro, hairstylist, and Antonio Garcia, the West Coast Representative who talked about their company and why it is different from other hair coloring products. Christine Peake, of the Peakpr Group, not only set up the meeting with this fabulous company, but she also arranged for the Chromastics people to color her hair in the VIP room at Cristophe’s Salon in Beverly Hills.
The Hollywood 360: Tell us about yourself and what your company does in the hairstyling industry.
Peter Ciotti: I am the co-founder and CEO of Chromastics Hair Care and Hair Color. Chromastics was founded in 2004 by my business partner, Tom Dispenza and myself. We are both hair dressers. Tom comes from the corporate level of Clairol. He was the International Director of Education and traveled the world teaching the basics and fundamentals of hair color – Why colors work and why they don’t work. I’ve been very fortunate that my first job was with Vidal Sassoon Salon on Madison Ave, and 69th Street. After three years working in the city, I went out to Long Island and opened my first salon. I maintained it for 25 years.
Tom and I got together and decided to put together a color line that make the hair dresser, colorist, more creative and saves more money. What makes Chromastics special is that we have the least number of colors than any other company in the world. We believe that you don’t have to buy 200 tubes of blended color, that you can work with 19 permanent colors, and 17 deposit colors only. From those, you can mix any color that your mind can create.
The Hollywood 360: It sounds like you think of yourselves as Artists like an artist has certain color for his palette and this is what you’re doing with your hair colors.
Peter Ciotti: Absolutely. You take total control of the look, the color, of what you want to achieve. Instead of taking something out of a box or out of a tube and just applying it, you now become a Master Colorist.
The Hollywood 360: Do you have a training program?
Peter Ciotti: We travel the country doing shows individually and we also do the large conventions. Every January, in California, there is the ISSE Show. I will be doing shows in Orlando, NY, and Chicago. We do go to the main conventions, but Chromatistcs likes to put their own shows together, working with our distributors. We want our people to truly get to mix and match to see how well this product works.
The Hollywood 360: What kind of success have you had in the market place?
Peter Ciotti: What we have that no other company has is called concentrates. Concentrates are very heavily pigmented colors. We have brown, gold, green, blue and red. They work with women who like to bleach out parts of their hair and highlight, a pink color for example, to honor breast cancer or try out a color for fun. With the Chromastic concentrate, you can do that. With the other colors products , they use direct dyes and direct dyes fade out very easily. Ours are oxidated, meaning we are mixing it with hydrogen peroxide as a developer. . Chromastics colors do not fade.
All of the ingedients and products are made in the USA. I wanted to take control of where we got our products from so we can address any problems easily . The Europeans make wonderful color, so do the Canadians, and Mexicans. We wanted to keep Chromastics strictly American made.
The Hollywood 360: What is happening here in LA with your company.
Peter Ciotti: I’ve been very fortunate to have a lovely young lady who is with us today, Isabel Navarro, hair stylist and our distributor from Southern California, Antonia Garcia. These are home grown professionals
The Hollywood 360: Isobel talk about the product here in LA
Isobel Navarro: I want to talk about my experience. It’s been amazing. I feel like I have stepped ahead in my career with Chromastics. Before Chromastics, I worked with another company and my goals with them did not pan out. I found myself always guessing what colors were going to appear when I was mixing them. With Chromastics colors I have more control with what I am doing. These pure pigments have helped my career because I have control of my colors. I feel I have my own palette with them, my own color to work with. I’ve been saving so much money because I don’t have to mix so many colors..
The Hollywood 360: What are some of the results that you have been getting?
Isabel Navarro: My clients tell me when the color fades, it fades beautifully. There’s no orange or red with the fading. Because I work with a lot of Hispanic clientele, their complaints before were the hair was too orange or red. Now, the color lasts longer and fades with a better result.
The Hollywood 360: What has been your experience? (Addressing Antonio Garcia.)
Antonio Garcia: I am the West Coast Representative of Chromastics. The scene here from Beverly Hills to Orange County,is that hair color is the thing to do now. You get up in the morning and people want to change their hair color like they want to change their clothes. Hair dressers need to learn how to do that for their clients without damaging the hair. Coloring is a fashion statement. The younger generation are very conscious about fashion because they look at their i-Phone every day and all they see are famous people with different colors. That’s what they want to do no matter the economic status. The Chromastic color line is the one people are gravitating to because we educate the hair dresser to do the color correctly and get the best results.
The Hollywood 360: Talk about the hair stylist market in Los Angeles.
Antonio Garcia: The LA market is way ahead every place else. Whenever a manufacturer wants to sell something they come to LA . If it sells in LA, everybody will buy it. The same thing pertains to color. When I visit a salon, I ask the stylists what is happening, and they tell me they want crazy colors because that is what people want. ‘People want unique colors now to suit their personality. We are getting the hair dresser to understand how to mix fewer colors and use the ones we have so they don’t need so many. We are coming out with the Chromastics concentrates too.
It makes it affordable for the hair dresser so they don’t have to carry 1,000 dollars of inventory, they just need a couple of hundred dollars- worth. It allows the hair dresser to become an artist again and LA is the leading area where this is all happening.
The Hollywood 360: How does this affect the entertainment industry?
Peter Ciotti: The entertainment industry between New York and LA is very big and people care about their appearances. Chromastics has been breaking the barriers because the ingredients we use are of the highest quality. We are not a billion dollar consumer company that wants to make 5cents on the sale of each product, we want to sell the best made product. Out products have soy protein, rice protein, silk protein, hydrolyzed protein. We are all working hair dressers and we stand behind what our product is going to do. Shampoos and conditioners are called Tri Organic because we have three certified organic ingredients – Aloe Vera, Gigobiloba and Green Tea extract. The combination of these three add moisture.
You need to have your hair protected \so by using Chromastics hair color which is very high quality and it doesn’t fade, you now can maintain it by the Tri Organic complex. That’s why you as a consumer can have a hair like a celebrity.
Chromastics are on a mission. It’s our mission to be number one for beautiful color hair for as many people our product can touch; but equally as important, we want the hair dresser to do something that nobody else can do. We call that client retention because if you are making a formula specifically for your client, they can never go to any other salon and have it duplicated. I believe in life we all want to feel special and that is what our product offers to the consumer.
Christine Peake’s hair went from a very dark black to a soft and multi-colored chocolate brown with warmer chestnut hues. She was very happy with the results of the coloring because her hair dresser had told her it would not be possible to change the color of her hair. Please see the before and after photos.
I also had the wonderful experience with Isabel Navarro at Simone Salon in Agoura Hills. She colored my hair with Chromastics products and Isabel made my color gorgeous with cool honey tones of gold.
For more information about Chromastics you can contact:
https://www.facebook.com/
To contact Isabel Navorro :
Simone Salon
290290 Agoura Rd.
Agoura Hills, Ca 91301
Photo Credit: Sheryl Aronson / The Hollywood 360
