Ray Civello, Aveda Canada President, has a certain cool and demeanour about him that allows those in his company to be at full ease and comfort. He is a man of great stories and has an amazing way of elaborating on them. His use of words and storytelling skills had us fully intrigued and almost hypnotized! I always find that when people become successful at what they do, it is almost always due to the amount of uncontrollable passion that they have for what they’re doing. Ray Civello is no exception. He truly loves being a part of the hairdressing & beauty product industry.

He started out by telling us himself about his day, and trip to BC, and getting a little in-depth about Aveda and their current operations. He told us about a seminar that he had which is called “A Day with Ray” in which he talks about his personal characteristics and experiences which have allowed him to become such a great success, while also discussing Aveda and all of their goals and achievements.

Ray describes himself as a creative thinker and he told us that as a kid, he was looked down upon and was considered to have a learning disability of some sort. But as he grew up, and his career expanded, he realized that people pay a lot of money to people that are creative thinkers because they are always bringing new things to the table.

I wanted to hear from Ray himself about his journey to becoming Aveda’s Canadian President. I was positively surprised to see how detailed he got and how fascinating his career path has been. He told us about how there are moments or certain encounters in people’s lives that change one’s life forever. I will give a quick summary of his career path, because I think it will show his level of integrity and passion and a better understanding of why he became the successful person that he is today.

His Career Journey:

The encounter that changed Ray Civello’s life was when a famous photographer was sitting in his chair. He told Ray he was a photographer and Ray showed his own portfolio to him. This led to the photographer asking Ray to do hairstyling for photo-shoots which took him all over the US, Canada and Europe. Ray then came back to Canada and opened up an agency with free-lance hairdressers. His business became extremely successful and the agency became a $1,000,000 business while experiencing the highest rates in publishing. The recession hit in 88/89 and his business suffered. He went to Mexico to get away and mediate a little. This trip led him to opening his own salon. He wanted it to be the best salon there was, he believed that at the time hairdressers were generally arrogant and unprofessional, so his main focus in his salon was to provide great service. Proving world-class service to each and every client led to him having 20 – 23 clients a day, booked fully six weeks in advance, and the business hit $1M in its first year of operations. In his own words, the business became too successful. He had to turn away clients.

Aveda comes across his path in quite an interesting manner. He had Aveda products at his salon, and he kept sending pictures of his styles and the salon to Aveda because he believed that their image branding was not matching. This led to him getting invited to the Aveda conference. There, Horst Rechelbacher, the founder of Aveda, saw him and recognized him as the man that sends him pictures from Canada. From then on, he had Ray sit in meetings with him as an advisor, and Ray eventually became the Canadian Distributor and finally the President of Aveda Canada.

Q: Tell us about the Aveda School Institution and how Aveda is implementing its values and beliefs (eg. Environmental beliefs) into their student’s educational experience.

There are two main purposes of The Aveda School Institution. Firstly, there are over 700 salons in desperate need of a feeding system which means that students can choose from any of the salons in Canada to work in. There are over 7000 salons worldwide, which means that students have the amazing opportunity to choose from any of those salons as well. To have Aveda salons hire Aveda school Graduates, means that Aveda is maximizing its profits. Therefore, job security is made available to students which not only makes them happy but also their families or whatever other support system they may have.

Secondly, Aveda aims to train and educate their students technically. Students are trained meticulously and are shown every skill of determining the right angle, stance, movement and posture that it takes for them to become successful. Students will come out as efficient, technical and passionate hairdressers who are always practicing and developing their skills as their careers continue.

Ray pointed out an interesting point about technical skills. He asked us to go into any hair salon and see how the hairdressers are holding the scissors and cutting hair. There is a right way and a wrong way to hold a scissor, the correct way is to only move your thumb as you’re cutting hair because scissors are made to have only one blade move while the other remains constant. He was willing to bet that we could find hairdressers in any local salon using scissors incorrectly!

Each school is capable of graduating 70 students a term. The program runs through 10 months of training for understanding hair. They are taught about the service realm (client enters salon, offer beverage, massage, etc). They are taught the basics of photo-shoot styling. There is also an intermediate level of education available through which students can skip through having to go through apprenticeships and get hired as hairdressers. And the advanced level offers 2 day training sessions to further their skills.

Q): I personally had no idea about the depth of effort that Aveda puts into producing their organic and environmentally friendly products. Please elaborate on this matter so that our readers can be informed of the great lengths that Aveda goes through to produce their products.

Horst’s initial intention was never to produce environmentally friendly or responsible products, but rather to produce high quality products. Horst’s mother was an herbalist and he had previous knowledge of organic medicine and healing techniques. This is why all Aveda products are made from ingredients that are truly earthy and organic. Aveda has established several relationships with indigenous tribes from all over the world, who are solely responsible for producing certain oils and organic products for Aveda. Now, what happens when such relationships are established, is that tribes and villages are given jobs which means that the people of the tribe do not have to travel away from home for work, and the tribe or village becomes self efficient and sustainable. Aveda does not get involved with the operations of the production; they solely provide the necessary equipment. They also provide a couple of other notable necessities, which is to offer educational tools for the tribal people and also certain herbs that have medicinal usage which is surely helpful to the tribes and villages.

It is important to note that the herbs and oils used in the Aveda products can be produced in labs at a much greater pace and in much more inexpensive ways. But Aveda feels that such methods of production are not real. There is a great cycle of pure energy that takes place from the beginning of the production of Aveda products up to the point when the consumer uses the products at home. Ray genuinely believes that since there are actual people planting and picking the crops and producing the necessary herbs and oils for their products, there is a certain energy that comes with every Aveda product. It’s a great cycle that they have going, and the earthly, pure, and natural energy of the products is then transferred on to the consumer. Ray mentions that all the leaders of such tribes and villages possess the same characteristics of innocence and great knowledge. “There is one guy that knows 5000 plants and their uses from the top of his head, passed on from his grandfather and father.”

• The most important point that Afoot wants to make is that a great deal of respect is due to Aveda for not exploiting the methods that they use in their productions. In the current economy, almost all corporations are making an effort to mention the fact that they are a “green” company and helping the environment. Aveda does not do this, they instead make the information available for their consumers and as clients become repeat consumers (Aveda has the highest Try&Buy Ratio in the business) they then communicate their production methods to their consumers, which establishes a concrete level of loyalty from consumers. Afoot finds this to be greatly respectful and Aveda proves to be a company of great Integrity.

It was truly an honour to meet with Ray and his own personal story, as well as Aveda’s core corporate morals and values are inspirational. We urge you to visit an Aveda salon and experience the tranquil and genuine environment and products.

By Atousa Ebrahimi