From Clairol to KDC

Leah Curly LJI 

How does a small family business grow into a global leader? 

According to Derek Thornton, CEO of Amalgamated Industries and grandson of its founder, “It’s complicated.”It all began in the late 1930s when Charles Thornton and his wife Florence (Pettes) moved their company to Knowlton, making hair dryers and curling devices. Time and trends changed and Charles began producing hair colourants for a company in France, ultimately manufacturing Miss Clairol, the first home hair- colouring kit. 

Does she…or doesn’t she? 

Enough women did that Charles’ business outgrew the original site on Academy Lane, next to Coderre et Fils. The new Clairol plant was built on the Thornton family’s 18-acre lot on Knowlton Road, opening its doors in the spring of 1959. 

“It was a really good place to work,” according to Stanley Horne. He liked it well enough to stay 33 years. His wife July Fortin joined in 1976 and stayed 41 years, seeing the company through its final Clairol years to become Les Emballages Knowlton (LEK) in 1991 and kdc/one a decade later. 

The birth of LEK 

July remembers both transitions well. “Bristol Myers Squibb took over Clairol and decided to close the Knowlton plant,” she recalls. Two-hundred jobs lost. A big hit for a small village. But Phil Snider and eight other employees offered Bristol Myers a trade: their severance pay for the building, some equipment and just enough Clairol business to keep the doors open. Their proposal was accepted and the transaction took place on May 3, 

1991. July was in charge of the severance cheques. “At 2:30 p.m. my phone rang and I was told to cross the road, cheques in hand, and deposit them at the CIBC. There was no cross- walk back then. They told me — Look both ways!” 

It wasn’t all good news for the new enterprise. Hard choices had to be made. More than half the staff had to be cut. But while the deal with Bristol Myers was for five short years, LEK was hiring before the term was up, having built a significant portfolio of new clients. “By the time I joined in 1995,” says Cindy Bowen, now Director of Commercial and New Product Introduction at kdc/one, “Clairol was only 20 percent of the business.” 

Then came Novacap 

By 2001 LEK was back up to 200 employees and had attracted the interest of Novacap, a private equity firm, based in Quebec. Venture capital made acquisitions possible and LEK, now Knowlton Development Corporation (KDC), began assembling a portfolio of partner companies with complementary capabilities. Each had its own speciality, all shared an ethos. Today, kdc/one is a one-stop centre of excellence for customers in the beauty, personal care and home care sectors, offering everything from ideation, formulation, design and packaging to manufacturing and sup- ply. “The name kdc/one is our way of saying we are the one provider for all our customers’ needs,” Cindy says. “We provide operational excellence and speed to market for some of the world’s great- est brands.” 

The Mothership 

Flexibility and agility are keys to kdc/one’s success, as are the individual competencies of its partner companies. “Here in Knowlton, our primary business is beauty and personal care, especially hot fills, like stick deodorants,” she explains. “With our technology and intellectual property, we’re the biggest maker of hot fills in North America, probably globally.” 

“They call us the Mothership,” Cindy continues. Not just because Knowlton was the original site, but because the advances made here in things like safety, sustainability, environmental practices and regulatory compliances have made Knowlton the best-practices model to follow. 

kdc/one by the numbers 

Headquartered in Longueil, kdc/one employs 540 people in Knowlton and 15,000 around the world, in the Americas, Europe and Asia. It operates more than 6 million square feet of manufacturing and R&D space across 25 manufacturing facilities and 26 research and development and innovation hubs. It co-develops 3,000 products annually for some 1,000 brand names, including Procter & Gamble, Unilever and Kenvue (Johnson & Johnson) as well as for smaller, prestige customers. Not bad for a local business.