Hair and Now - The Globe and Mail

SUNNYBROOK DONOR Michael Suba found his calling through what he remembers as a “terrifying experience” – being diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma at 25. Instead of sending him into a depression, Michael says, having cancer and undergoing treatments at Sunnybrook in 1990 gave his life a new direction.“In hindsight, when I look back on it, it’s the best thing that ever happened to me, being 25 and living like I was in a beer commercial. It has a way of focusing you. Two years later I was married and running off and building something,” says the upbeat Toronto native.That something was taking on a full-time role at his parents’ medical wig salon, Continental Hair, where he is now president. Michael, who has been cancer-free for two decades, grew up immersed in an unusual world: being around wigs, extensions and hairpieces in his parents’ Yorkville salon, established in 1964. But he gave little thought to the family business, or its positive impact on many people (women, in particular), until he was going through chemotherapy treatments at Sunnybrook. During those treatments, Michael heard snippets of conversations from women who had lost chinese remi their hair and were clients at his father’s salon. Many of them recognized him from the salon as well, where he was then working part time.He remembers hearing how much the wigs improved the women’s self-confidence and helped them maintain a sense of normalcy, because they were able to keep their chemotherapy private. “It just showed me how much of a difference it made.”It was then that Michael, who had a degree in politics from Brock University, decided he needed to take on a larger role in the family business. Being a patient spurred the opening of another Continental Hair salon location. One Sunnybrook staffer overheard that Michael worked in wigs and noted that someone had donated a box of them. He cleaned and washed the wigs for the cancer centre and began sending more used, donated wigs from Continental Hair to Sunnybrook.Once he completed treatment, he put in a bid to open a second Continental Hair in the hospital. That location has now been at Sunnybrook for 15 years, and Michael says he was honoured to have been able to open a business at the facility that provided him with superior care. “They were so professional and caring that it was calming,” he recalls.Two decades in the medical wig industry along with his personal experience with cancer have given Michael perspective on the emotional upheaval that hair loss can cause (although, ironically, he didn’t lose any hair himself during chemotherapy). He is enthusiastic about his line of work, despite the fact that many clients are going through a traumatic time. “They feel really comfortable coming here because they know that all the women around them are going through some sort of hair loss. They are not in a regular salon – everybody is in the same boat and we are very sensitive to that.”At times, there is a festive atmosphere. Women bring husbands, wives, sisters and friends and hair bulk try on different colours and styles.“They see that they’re not going to look foolish; they’re going to look good. All of a sudden their shoulders get more square and they breathe easier.” Michael Suba, owner of Continental Hair SalonHe is now looking forward to a new Continental Hair salon location at Sunnybrook: it’s moving from the Odette Cancer Centre to the new breast cancer centre, opening this year. Michael has a special connection to the new cancer facility, since Continental Hair has donated $75,000. “They’ve done so much for my family,” explains Michael.Besides his own cancer treatments at Sunnybrook, his mother, Emma, has had a doctor at Sunnybrook for years and his father, Peter, had quadruple bypass surgery at the hospital and later passed away there, following an aneurysm. “It was very emotional and the medical bulk hair teams really were very exceptional in helping us through that.”After his father died, Michael called the hospital and asked how he could help, and they suggested donating to the new breast cancer facility. Michael, whose passion and enthusiasm for Sunnybrook is infectious, says he can’t wait until it opens. “It’s kind of neat to pass by, seeing it being built and look up and say, ‘You know what? I helped out with that.’”It’s obvious from the way Michael talks about his experiences with Sunnybrook over the years that he is a “superfan.”“If we could all go through life and not know the work that they do, that would be great. But when you need them, it’s wonderful to know that they are there for you.”

Toronto native Jamie Salter rebrands Marilyn Monroe - The Globe and Mail

Dead celebrities have so many advantages over living ones—from a branding and marketing perspective, that is. Their faces, figures and gestures are already seared into our minds, yet those images can easily be repurposed and polished to promote new products or events. A dead celeb won’t object to being used, either, or damage a brand by hurtling off the rails à la LiLo or Tiger Woods.More related to this storyLicensing slip up: Velvet Underground sues over Andy Warhol bananaMusic industry wants more royalties from CBCKing of Pop: In life, debt-laden; in death, asset-richWhat's inside this monthReport on Business Magazine: The May issueAnd these departed icons never age: Marilyn Monroe is just as beautiful now as she was in 1962. “It’s very sad, but Marilyn died at a very young age,” says Jamie Salter. “She’s gonna be 36 forever.”It’s Salter’s job to ensure that Monroe’s commercial cachet also stays robust forever. As CEO and chairman of Authentic Brands Group LLC, he owns her estate. He’s at the forefront of the specialized business of representing celebrity estates, a business levitated of late by expanded legal rights. In the public mind, Marilyn is peacefully frozen in time as a goddess in a white dress over a breezy subway grate. But behind the scenes there’s been a complex courtroom imbroglio over the rights to her image.And Salter must also contend with the matter of cheesy representations. Icons are not made in the five-and-dime, after all; they’re made in the luxury aisles.Marilyn Monroe, it appears, needs a rebranding.Trouble Marilyn may be, but it’s the kind of trouble Jamie Salter revels in. His career path looks quirky, but there’s a theme that makes sense of it: an ability to spot opportunities amid disarray. A native of Toronto, Salter, now 49, started out small in sporting-goods marketing in the 1980s, quickly tapping into the surging popularity of snowboarding, then still almost an outlaw sport. In 1992, he joined forces Hair extensions with two Seattle entrepreneurs to found board manufacturer Ride Inc., a Nasdaq wonder that went public in early 1994 and saw its share price shoot up by about 1,500% within 18 months, then plummet thanks to slower than expected growth. Salter stepped down as CEO in 1996.After several other sporting goods-related ventures over the next decade—successful ones—Salter and Hilco Trading LLC, a privately owned American firm, founded Hilco Consumer Capital LC in 2006. Hilco Consumer Capital is essentially a liquidator—it swoops in and buys troubled or outright bankrupt brands, then tries to revive them with new licensing deals and partnerships. Under Salter, it bought, gussied up and sold off several brands: TheFeather hair Bombay Company furniture and the Tommy Armour and RAM golf equipment lines. It retained and continues to refurbish others, including Polaroid and Miss America Properties, producer of the beauty pageant.Salter displayed a flair for hype at Hilco. One of his boldest moves was hiring none other than Lady Gaga as creative director for Polaroid. Hilco and a financial partner, Gordon Brothers Brands LLC, bought the company’s assets in a bankruptcy auction in April, 2009. In January, 2011, the pop diva introduced the first of Polaroid’s Grey Label products: a digital camera and printer that spit out instant photos similar to the Polaroids of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as sunglasses that sport a built-in camera. “They really let me put my hands in there and design this shit myself,” Lady Gaga said.But a similar gambit failed in the case of Halston. Hilco acquired the dead designer’s name in 2007. In early 2010, he and other executives hired Sarah Jessica Parker as the label’s “chief creative officer”—a four-year deal reportedly worth $13 million (all currency feather extension in U.S. dollars). A year later, she was gone.Salter is tight-lipped about why he resigned from Hilco later in 2010. Reports said he was in a dispute over compensation with the parent company, Hilco Trading. But Salter has nothing but praise for the company. The overriding attraction for him at Authentic Brands seems to be that he’s the only guy in charge. Having invested $250 million, private-equity giant Leonard Green & Partners owns a majority of the equity, but it has given Salter operating authority as chairman and CEO.Salter retained one file in moving from Hilco to Authentic Brands. Although the deal had come from an unlikely corner, it pointed to his future with Marilyn.In 2008, Salter was introduced to Cedella Marley, daughter of reggae icon Bob Marley. She was acting on behalf of her mother and siblings; they needed help with a mighty brand that too many people thought was communal property. Salter estimated at the time that counterfeiters around the world were selling as much as $600 million a year in unauthorized Marley recordings, T-shirts and other merchandise. Taking on a contract to manage the brand with Cedella, Salter vowed that Hilco would spend “as much money as it takes to stop them.” He won’t disclose how big a slice of merchandise revenue Marley’s estate now earns in royalties on officially licensed products, but estimates range from 5% to 10%.Single page1234NextMore related to this storyReport on Business Magazine: The May issue