Women's Personal Care Products

She transitioned from a home-bound housewife to observing and improving hair salon procedures, leading to manufacturing new women’s personal care products. To her friends, she became known as ‘The Shampoo Lady’.

FAMILY BACKGROUND

Sydell Lois Lubin Miller (SM) was born in Cleveland, Ohio. Her father owned a furniture store. Her mother was more card playing and cigar smoking than the average homemaker at the time. 

EDUCATION

Following her high school graduation, SM attended the University of Miami (in Ohio) for two years before dropping out to return home – without any thoughts of pursuing a specific adult career. 

When a friend suggested to SM a local hair salon with a good reputation for their work, SM became a first-time customer, which led to her eventual marriage to the owner of the hair salon. 

EARLY ADULT DAYS WERE NOT A CAREER

Editor – While being a ‘stay-at-home housewife’ involves many ways to keep busy and help others within the family unit, remaining apart from the paid workforce is not a ‘career’ as it is defined within this collection of career stories. To earn inclusion within this collection, a ‘career’ must earn enough money to support at least the necessities of adult life: roof overhead, food, clothing, transportation, and healthcare. (Earning enough to also fund raising children, vacations, saving for retirement and donating to charities adds to the quality of life beyond affording the necessities.)

At the outset of her (first and only) marriage, SM and her husband assumed that she would remain a housewife forever while he would be the sole family ‘breadwinner’ working at his beauty salon. 

PART-TIME HELPER LED TO A CAREER IDEA

One day, when the receptionist at her husband’s beauty salon ‘called in sick,’ SM volunteered to come to the salon and answer the phones. Soon, SM was running her own women’s wear boutique above the salon.

As a salon customer and observer of the interaction between the salon ‘operators’ and their clients, SM had ideas to improve how personal care was provided to women, including new products which she and her husband began to develop. 

SM conducted early experiments to simplify eyelash adornment. The couple then took their invention on the road, traveling to a trade show in the Chicago suburbs, where they applied about 100 sets of eyelashes to the show’s attendees but did not sell a single eyelash kit. They agreed over dinner that evening, that their initiative was a failure but returned to the show the next day, anyway, having paid to reserve sales booth space for two days. 

They found a line of about 60 women waiting for them. “The women (to whom sample, free kits were distributed the day before) had not initially believed that they could shower or swim or sleep and that the lashes would still be on,” said SM. But over the next 24 hours, the women found that their new eyelash enhancements performed as advertised! “They kept saying, ‘Look! They’re staying!’ “ recalled SM. “In 15 minutes, we sold out everything we had.”

That success led SM and her husband to create Ardell, which became the industry standard for abundant and shapely false eyelashes. Later, they created and sold Matrix Essentials, often described as the nation’s largest manufacturer of salon products. 

The women’s personal care products created and produced by the Millers, in combination with Bristol Myers Squibb, to whom they eventually sold their company, made lasting changes to the way people world-wide get ready to be seen, both at home in front of a mirror and at a salon: 

• They invented the first pre-cut eyelash kit and false eyelash strips, reducing procedure time from hours to minutes.
• They changed how hairdressers colorize hair, creating cream-based (rather than liquid) dyes that allowed for precise application and giving hairdressers control over a range of mixable colors, as if they were painters – not aestheticians so much as aesthetes. 
• Paintbrush-like tools and color swatches that the Millers introduced are now familiar parts of salon routines.
• They debuted products that made it easier to do some complex hair treatments, like a perm and a dye, in one trip to the salon. 

CAREER SATISFACTION

Underlying the Millers’ business strategy was a belief that hairdressers had lacked the sort of commercial innovations, corporate attention, and social dignity that they deserved. Matrix succeeded because the company won the trust of hairdressers.

SM often argued for hairdressers’ importance to society. “They are advisers,” she said. “They see their customers in good times and bad. They glean information about them that few others know. For the sort of older client who rarely goes out, they might be an essential point of regular social contact.”

“I love hairdressers; there isn’t anybody in the world that gives more of themselves to their customers,” said SM. “What we wanted to do with Matrix was give back to them a way of growing, excelling and building a proper image truly of what they give to their people.”

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This career story is based on multiple sources, including an obituary written by Alex Traub, published by The New York Times newspaper on March 17, 2024, plus internet research.