Jheri Redding Is Dead at 91; A Hair Products Entrepreneur

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March 21, 1998, Section A, Page 13Buy Reprints
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Jheri Redding, an Illinois farm boy who founded four hair care products companies, revolutionized the economics of the hair salon industry and changed the way much larger companies market shampoos, died on Sunday at Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, Calif. He was 91.

Mr. Redding was a founder of Jheri Redding Products in 1956, Redken in 1960, Jhirmack in 1968 and Nexxus Products in 1979. All four companies are still in business, though the family controls only Nexxus, which is privately owned, his son, Stephen J. Redding, the president of Nexxus, said.

Mr. Redding, his son and several competitors said, was the first to make ''pH balanced'' shampoos that match the mild acidity of human skin, to put vitamins in hair care products and to market added minerals, pitching the supposed benefits of these additives with evangelistic fervor at conventions of hair salon owners, some of whom he helped become millionaires by marketing his products.

''He was the Billy Graham of the hair care business,'' said Sue Rafaj, a former Revlon marketing executive.

Before Mr. Redding came along, hair salons sold few if any products to customers, said Allan Mottus, publisher of The Informationist, a cosmetics industry trade journal.

Robert Oppenheim, a former Clairol and Revlon executive, said Mr. Redding was ''a fabulous promoter who established that his products were different'' even if the differences were more image than science.

''He brought the pH concept in,'' Mr. Oppenheim said. ''Before Jheri no one asked whether shampoo was acid or alkaline. Every cosmetic chemist says it makes no difference if a shampoo is a little on the acid side or a little on the alkaline side, but whether it was beneficial was not the point. The point was that Jheri Redding thought it was and he sold that and it sold his products.

''The salon owners all loved him. He would hold up litmus paper and dip it into his product and it would come up golden,'' indicating mild acidity, ''and then he would put the litmus paper in a grocery store shampoo and it would come up black. What difference did it make if it had no meaning? It was a great demonstration with a lot of seemingly scientific babble and it was something that a hairdresser without a chemist's training could talk about to customers.''

Mr. Redding's son said that other consumer products companies had switched to shampoos, rinses and other hair products that used the mildly acidic approach his father popularized, rather than alkaline products. Likewise, he said, others have followed his father in adding vitamins, proteins and minerals.

''They all watched what my father did and changed to his way,'' he said.

Robert William Redding was born in Rantoul, Ill., the son of Irish immigrant farmers, in 1907. He became one of the first men licensed in Illinois as a cosmetologist because during the Depression he saw that hairdressers made more money than farmers and many other people, his son said.

He continually experimented with chemicals, trying to make better shampoos and rinses, and along the way adopted his unusual nickname as part of his efforts to market himself and his products. After World War II he moved to Los Angeles and in 1956 started his first company, which sold a cream rinse he had developed.

In 1968 he sold his second company, Redken, to his business partner, who had been a movie actress under the name Paula Kent. Because of a clause in the sales contract that kept him out of the business he sold vitamins and minerals under the name Jhirmack, formed from his name, the name of his third wife, Irene, and two investors, Maggie and Jack Gamberg.

Anxious to get back into the hair care business, Mr. Redding solicited the distributers he had recruited from beauty salons for Redken. They balked, fearful of angering Ms. Kent, and so he started a new distribution network for Jhirmack that his son and others said succeeded by urging salon owners to sell Jhirmack on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, when the hairdressing business was slowest, making some of them millionaires.

He later sold that company and in 1979 started Nexxus, saying the name was short for ''nature and earth united with science,'' his son said.

His wealth allowed him to own a variety of race horses, including one named Itsallgreektome that placed a close second in the Breeders' Cup in 1990 and 1991.

Mr. Redding retired from active involvement with the company in 1991.

In addition to his son, who lives in Santa Barbara, and two other sons, Robert William of Salinas, Calif., and Sean, he is survived by three of his four ex-wives, six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.