Martha Matilda Harper

Martha Matilda Harper ( * 1857 in Canada; † August 3, 1950 in USA) was an American cosmetics entrepreneur, pioneer of hair care.

Life

Martha Matilda Harper was already sent with seven years as a maid to the family of her uncle after Leskard near Ontario. Her father Robert Harper had gone into debt, and so the whole family had to live in a Einzimmerhütte in the oak forests. With twelve Harper worked for a doctor who had great influence on their resume, as he explained the structure of the hair and the importance of combing and shampooing. He also gave her the recipe for a hair tonic of herbs, with whom she would later become famous ..

In 1882 they left Canada and moved with sixty silver dollars to Rochester (New York ), United States, from. She found a job as a housekeeper for the lawyer Luther Hovey. A year later she was handed over to the entire house and home to the new owners and Luella Owen Roberts who accepted as a daughter. Luella Roberts and her friends were the first ladies, where Harper tried her hair water. They developed various hair tonics, shampoos and massage creams.

1888, she opened the first shop Harper. With her photo in which she is seen with her floor-length hair, she made advertising for their products. Soon all the important ladies from Rochester their customers, and also the suffragettes, they like to show Harper supported and as an example of an independent woman were. In 1920, she married twenty-six years younger than Robert MacBain, whom she had met as a guide and they funded a study in Cambridge.

1921 their empire had grown to 450 salons worldwide, and she started her own factory. The stock market crash of 1929 was the Harper Shops as a provider of quality products harm. Mid-thirties began a gradual descent of the company that Harper left her husband as managing director. To maintain his wife, who was suffering from dementia, Robert MacBain asked a few years later a manager.

Martha Matilda Harper died in 1950. Your company was sold six years later and continued until 1972 under various owners.

Business ideas and inventions

In addition to the hair water they had patented, Harper has with the slogan " Beauty comes from within " also made ​​their head massages as a means of head blood circulation and strengthen the hair to a successful business model. Their business model was based from the beginning on the pampering of their clients who should be proud to have customers at Harper.

Contributed to this success which she designed barber chairs and sink decide at. Before their invention, people had to have their hair washed leaning forward, making the face was wet and even soap could come into his eyes. Their invention was the sink with neck cavity, as we know it today.

Their branches were awarded after franchising methodology. She has thus established the first franchise system in America.