Luxury Brand Partners (LBP), an incubator for artist-driven beauty brands, is pleased to announce Reuben Carranza’s role as President of R+Co, a new professional hair care line launching in May 2014. R+Co brings together a collective of top stylists, led by Howard McLaren, Thom Priano and Garren, to celebrate the culture of hairdressing, provide high-performance products created from a unique point of view and offer groundbreaking education.

Carranza joins LBP and R+Co after an illustrious career at Procter & Gamble, where he worked for 24 years. For the past eight years, Carranza was CEO, North America, of Wella, The Salon Professional Division of P&G, where he led a portfolio that included Wella Professional, Clairol Professional, Sebastian Professional and Nioxin. With Wella, Carranza was able to delve deeply into an industry that leveraged his heritage: Carranza grew up in a family of hairdressers, giving him a unique perspective on hairdressers and helping salons grow.

“It excites me to work on a brand like R+Co that celebrates the culture of hairdressing in such a game-changing way,” Carranza said. “Our industry is, at its core, a profession of relationships and collaboration. You see it happening between stylist and client, muse and professional, photographers, designers, editors, etc.; however, that collaboration has not transcended into the world of products.  Howard, Thom and Garren are each forces in the industry, so to have individuals of this caliber come together to share their points of view and push boundaries to create a product line that speaks to the varied needs of hairdressers and of clients will change the status quo.

“The culture of hairdressing doesn’t just extend to the stylists of our industry,” he continues. “The ability to celebrate the diversity of ideas and best practices and enable salon owners, as well as hairdressers, to come together is what I’ve always believed in and worked to create.”

Carranza is based out of the brand’s Miami headquarters.

“We are so excited to have someone of Reuben’s pedigree joining our very young and entrepreneurial company,” said Tev Finger, President and CEO of LBP. “While hairdressers and artists are the heart of R+Co, the collective extends to include industry veterans, fragrancers, designers and more; Reuben will lead this team and bring ingenuity from a business perspective. He is an important component of this perfect blend of talent.”

About R+Co

R+Co is a collective of some of the most knowledgeable, forward-thinking, rule-bending hairstylists in the business—a “supergroup” that has come together to make a “superline” of products and to share the knowledge garnered over a combined century of hairdressing. The lead stylists in the collective are industry legends Howard McLaren, Thom Priano and Garren. The line offers every single product that a hairdresser could possibly need in his or her kit, and each of those products embodies experimentation, design, artistry, passion and curiosity. R+Co will be sold in top salons around the country, C.O.Bigelow, Space NK and Blue Mercury.

About Luxury Brand Partners

Luxury Brand Partners develops and nurtures prestige artist-driven beauty brands, with a focus on innovation and a passion for the creative mind. With offices in Miami and New York City, the portfolio of companies offers high-performance products and top-of-the-line education informed by both an artistic and a business perspective.