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The story
Martin Penny, Gary Douglas, Susan Powls, and Robert Powls founded ghd in January 2001. The four collaborated to buy the rights to a hair straightening iron from an inventor in South Korea. The brand grew organically from word of mouth, and began their first advertising campaign two years later. By then, hair salons had purchased £12 million of stock, against a forecast of between £3 million and £4 million.
In May 2004, ghd entered the North American market, which helped generate worldwide sales of £37 million for the year. In July 2006, The Jemella Group, which owned the ghd brand, was bought by Lloyds Development Capital for £55 million. It was sold eleven months later to Montagu Private Equity for £160 million. in February 2013, Lion Capital, a British private equity firm, purchased ghd for approximately £300 million.
By March 2013, the company had sales totalling over £150 million, more than doubling since 2007, selling over two million styling irons through 50,000 salons worldwide. In 2016, Coty bought ghd for an estimated £420 million from the private equity firm Lion Capital LLP. The sale was completed on 21 November 2016.
On December 1, 2020, Coty completed sale of Wella, Clairol, OPI and ghd brands stake to KKR for $2.5bn in cash whilst retaining 40% stake in the standalone company. On October 1, 2021, Coty announced that it would sell approximately 9% of its shares to KKR for $426.5 million. The deal cuts Coty's stake in Wella, Clairol, OPI and ghd brands to around 30.6%.
On November 8, 2021, Coty has agreed to sell an approximate 4.7% stake in Wella to KKR in exchange for the redemption of approximately 56% of KKR's remaining convertible preferred shares in Coty. The deal reduces Coty's total shareholding in Wella, Clairol, OPI and ghd brands to approximately 25.9%. KKR will continue to have a 2.4% ownership stake in Coty on an as-converted basis.
Products
In 2011, ghd launched the V Gold Series styler.
In 2012, ghd launched the Air Professional hairdryer.
In March 2013, ghd launched the "Eclipse" hair straightener. The consistent temperature reduces the time to style hair, particularly coarse hair that may previously taken multiple run throughs.
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In 2014, ghd launched the Aura hairdryer and ghd Curve, hair curling range.
In 2015, ghd launched the Platinum styler.
In 2018, ghd Platinum Plus styler was launched.
In 2023, ghd Duet Style wet to dry styler was launched
In 2024, ghd Duet Blow Dry wet to dry hair dryer brush was launched.
In 2024, ghd Chronos styler was launched.
In 2025, ghd Chronos Max styler was launched.
In 2025, ghd Chronos Curve curlers were launched.
In 2026, ghd Speed hairdryer was launched.
From Wikipedia’s article on Good Hair Day, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4