The early years

In 1987 a 30-year-old Italian immigrant to South Africa, Maria Camarda (now Laughland), founded the company. It all began with her vision to create hair care equality between races by promoting the creation and subsequent growth of a professional Black hairdressing industry in South Africa.

At that time, all available products tended to be branded to appeal to a mass market becoming accustomed to ‘catchy’ clearly targeted brand names. Maria adopted a more up-market approach from the outset and combined the names of her two daughters, Laura (Lala) and Nadine (Dini), to create to a very special third child…… Ladine.

From the beginning the objective of the company was to offer a truly professional Afro hairdressing product range and to encourage Black hairdressers to match their white counterparts with a product range for exclusive salon use. To achieve these objectives Ladine adopted a three point approach, as follows –

• The first requirement for success was recognised to be extremely high quality products. 

• The second requirement was the most difficult – to establish the credibility of Ladine as a professional only product range. The industry had grown accustomed to new products being sold to them as professional only products, only to see them launched on the consumer market after their credibility had been established by salon use. Maria recognised that no quantity of words could establish Ladine’s credibility in this respect -  only the consistent application of that policy over a long period. Nearly 20 years later Ladine is finally accepted to be a professional only product range.

• The third requirement was to establish and cultivate a trusting relationship between Ladine and its salon customers. This was addressed by appointing caring and capable agents and employing quality representatives to service customers outside the geographic coverage of appointed agents.

 

Progress through vision – 1990’s.
Throughout the 1990’s the company founder’s drive and vision, together with the teamwork generated by a committed staff complement who understood the dream, resulted in a consistent and increasing record of progress. In the industry, consumer pressure saw the perm fade and demand for more interesting styles increasing. Maria reacted to this demand by developing products that would allow Afro hair to be styled and to feel like European hairstyles. To achieve this, the first need was to create a Relaxer for more sensitive scalps that straightened as efficiently as lye (Sodium Hydroxide) based products. Ladine was the first company in its field to perfect the NO LYE NO MIX Lithium Hydroxide Relaxer that is now used by most of the major Afro brands in the world. Secondly, and again because of the sensitivity of Afro hair and scalps, Ladine developed an extensive range of high quality maintenance products. These were essential to create that natural, volume and straight look. So every Ladine product was created to condition and nourish without the residue build up normally associated with maintenance products. By virtue of its outstanding quality and consistent application of the three point approach, the Ladine brand gradually earned its leading position as a provider of top quality professional market products.

Vision in the New Millennium

Ladine is now the leading professional Afro - hair market brand in South Africa. It is also well – established in a number of other Southern African countries and plans to establish itself in several other countries in the region.

Almost accidentally, Ladine now also exports to many other countries around the world. Accidental because Ladine has not planned on many of these export markets; sales have arisen because many South Africans who now travel and work abroad inform us that they cannot find products to equal those of Ladine. They ask us to supply the Ladine product range to their favourite salon together with instructions as to their use. The rest, as the saying goes, is history – many of these salons have increased their business as a result of their Ladine product availability.

The future beckons and a major part of that future will be to spread the availability of the Ladine product range around the world. To cater for these new markets as well as to provide for the rapidly growing Southern African market, in 2006 Ladine built a new factory with a well equipped research and development facility and an expanded education centre to meet the growing training needs of its salon customers.

Our products enjoy huge recognition by hairdressing professionals and obtain high levels of satisfaction from their salon clients. Nothing stands in the way of further global expansion of the company.