E-Laborative Technologies is a family-owned corporation with over twenty years of service to the professional salon industry. The company was founded officially in 2002 by Mike Cooper, Ryan Cooper, and Jeff Reichenthal. The present company, however, went back to several years earlier. E-Laborative was born out of the ashes of an internet startup called ClubSalon. ClubSalon was a "click & mortar" enterprise that was founded around 1999 and built over several years by the same three principals Mike, Jeff, and Ryan, plus a staff of about ten additional developers and designers. This unique concept was operated by a board of directors consisting of many of the largest distributors in the beauty industry; including West Coast Beauty Supply, Shoeneman, Beauy Systems Group, and Armstrong McCall. ClubSalon was perhaps an idea ahead of it's time - to develop a singular, unified distribution and online ordering system to serve the Beauty Industry. Despite gaining some momentum toward this very ambitious goal, the stock market took a sharp downturn and there was not a very clear consensus on which was the best way to steer the company in light of a wave of internet startup failures when the internet "bubble burst" around the same time. As a result of this uncertainty, and other geopolitical and economic turmoil of the time, these distributors decided to disband the company in late 2001.
Instead of giving up on the excellent concept that had been nurtured during the ClubSalon years, the three principals decided to create a new company called E-Laborative Technologies Ltd., and their core product would be a system called SalonBuilder. By focusing on the fundamental business management, web hosting, and marketing functions needed by Salons, SalonBuilder began to grow and prosper as an independently owned corporation. Over the years since SalonBuilder's foundation, Mike and Ryan Cooper continued to work on SalonBuilder, and on projects for many corporate clients. Along with their work on SalonBuilder, The dynamic Father-Son team built the famous web site BehindTheChair.com with industry icon Mary Rector. They also continued to build additional features into SalonBuilder including appointment booking, instant gift certificates, e-commerce functions, photo galleries, e-marketing, and many powerful and effective features for salon owners to grow their businesses.
Several years after the founding of SalonBuilder, Jeff Reichenthal had moved to the east coast to be closer to his family, and decided to divest his interest in SalonBuilder and pursue other ventures. At this point the company became wholly owned by the Coopers. Their partnership continued to grow and they became known as a reliable and intelligent duo who could take on any project in the web development realm. While working on BehindTheChair (BTC), they jointly built powerful systems and web based marketing for a vast cadre of beauty industry entities including Pureology, SexyHair, KMS, OPI, TIGI, Schwarzkopf, Farouk, JCPenney, SportClips, Fantastic Sams, Vidal Sassoon and many other prominent members of the professional salon industry.
After several years of working as the sole web developers for BTC, the Coopers became more focused on growing SalonBuilder and decided to part ways with BehindTheChair to focus on the core systems that had been gaining momentum and traction in the industry for many years. Their successful collaboration also led to many additional projects and sites for leading companies including John Paul Micthell Systems, Paul Mitchell The School, Your Beauty Network, Cengage, and P&G Salon Professional brands including Wella, Sebastian, Clairol, Nioxin and Kadus. In 2016, P&G sold their professional beauty brands division to COTY, the worlds pre-eminent beauty brand portfolio. E-Laborative continues to support COTY's unsurpassed professional product family, which includes iconic brands including Gucci, Burberry, Calvin Klein, Clairol, CoverGirl, O.P.I, and other household names.
Since their shift to focus on SalonBuilder, the company grew considerably to add key employees including Trinity, Image Director, Jason, Director of Marketing, Katharine, Accounts Receivable, Neil, Customer Service Mamager, and Jessica, who provides social media management. Unfortunately, Jeff Reichenthal passed away several years ago. His dynamic personality, sense of humor, and vision during the early years of the company will always be fondly remembered and appreciated by the Coopers. The company has grown to encompass numerous additional projects and employed numerous contractors, designers and technical experts over the years on various projects from the local to the international scale, but remains dedicated to the principles of personal service, loyalty to customers and attention to detail that has always been a hallmark of their work.
