The venerable El Rey Theater in Los Angeles’ Miracle Mile district is a historic music venue that has had famous glam rockers like Elton John and Rod Stewart on its stage.

But one Saturday last month it was sequins and mascara of a different hue as the El Rey staged a Hollywood-style modeling showcase to celebrate the relaunch of an iconic Black Hair and Beauty company.

The grand finale of ‘The Great Model Search,’ was the closing stage of a national competition created by the new owners of Johnson Products Company to find the next new faces of their iconic brand products.

The competition was launched this February when over 1,200 contestants uploaded their photos to the model search website and the top 48 were selected from a public vote.

From there, JPC representatives picked 16 semi-finalists, with eight final contestants winning an all expenses paid trip to L.A. and the chance for a modeling contract, $5,000 in cash and international exposure.

The centerpiece of the night was a special video tribute to George Ellis Johnson, who founded the company in 1954 and ignited a $9 billion dollar ethnic hair care industry.

The launch-pad for the new JPC is the brainchild of husband and wife business executives Eric and Renee Brown, who with help of L.A.-based investment firms St. Cloud Capital and Rustic Canyon/Fontis Partners, purchased JPC from consumer products giant Proctor & Gamble last March.

The new JPC management team, headed by Eric as chief executive officer and president and Renee, executive vice president of sales and marketing, who met as students at USC, is based in Dallas, Texas.

Renee is the daughter of Proline Corporation founder, Comer Cottrell, and the Browns bring a wealth of experience in the field having served as executives for Proline and its subsequent corporate owners, Alberto-Culver, since 2000.

Eric and Renee talked to the Wave’s Olu Alemoru about why and how they re-purchased the historical company and their goals for the future.

Why did you want to acquire JPC?
Eric: JPC has been around since 1954, started by George Johnson, who borrowed $500 and made it into one of the most respected and largest African-American owned businesses in the U.S. It became so large that it was the first African-American company traded on the New York Stock Exchange [in 1971]. For me and Renee and the rest of the team, it’s amazing that we have the opportunity to have acquired this business and are pleased to bring it back to the community.

How did the deal come about and how much was the purchase price?
Eric: It came about as a vision we had, because it was clear to us that P&G, who acquired the company as part of its acquisition of Wella AG, had no interest in growing the JPC brand. So we reached out to Proctor and thought it would be an easy process. But P&G is a tough organization to negotiate with and it took us 18 months to finally make the transaction happen. We were fortunate to reach out and find two important investor groups in St. Cloud and RC Fontis, who believed in our vision and came along at the time of the worst financial crisis in our history. They got behind us and we worked very hard in a short period of time to seal the deal. The sale price we agreed would be confidential, but for sure there are millions of dollars [at stake] and at the end of the day both we and P&G felt good about the deal.

What vision do you see for the future?
Renee: Well, obviously we want to grow the business and we think we can do that in several ways. There’s product and brand development; in any consumer based company you’re only as good as the number of products you can bring to the market. We also think we have a great opportunity to take these brands into foreign territories. The world is browning; curly, textured hair is really the way it’s going. We have some distribution in West Africa and think we have a great global opportunity for these products in the Caribbean as well as where there are people of African descent, in Latin America, Europe, you name it. Another great opportunity is to look at other companies and think of rolling them into our brand.

How was the model search part of that?
Renee: The weekend was a spectacular event to create brand awareness and very important for our young consumers. I mean Johnson has been a household word in the African-American community for 50 years, but there’s this generation gap with 18 to 34 year olds, she isn’t as tuned in to the brand as say her mother or grandmother is. So we wanted to bring excitement and awareness through this competition.

What is your operational structure like?
Eric: When we acquired JPC we didn’t acquire any infrastructure or people other than the brand. So we’re in the process of building an organization. Right now we have 14 actual employees, but we have at least another dozen people that we support through our independent consultant organizations, especially in marketing and sales. Actually, if you include the broker organizations, our team is about 45 strong. The manufacturing side is all done through what we call co-packers, whose business it is to manufacture these products to our specifications and that is being done in Chicago. In fact, one of the things we’re proud of is bringing those jobs back to the U.S. from Mexico.

How do you think we can create young Black entrepreneurs?
Eric: It’s incumbent on African-American business leaders to be visible in the community so that they can hear stories of how different enterprises got started and young people can learn from the successes and mistakes. I had the extreme fortune to spend time with Mr. Johnson and heard some of the things he did and my responsibility is to continue that education through others.