Essential oils, a salon and a lower-case name.

The brand writes its name in lower case — john masters organics — and it began with a New York hairdresser. When the investment firm Permira announced its stake in May 2016, it described the business as “established in 1991 by Mr. John Masters, a well-known celebrity stylist in SOHO New York.” Japanese Wikipedia likewise gives 1991 as the year John Masters Organics, Inc. was founded in New York State.

The company’s own Japanese website tells the story in more steps. In the 1980s, it says, John Masters worked as a top stylist at a New York hair salon. In 1991 he began blending organic essential oils in the kitchen of his home. In 1994 he founded “john masters organics” as a brand and opened what the company calls a “clean hair salon” in SoHo. Reports on the brand in 2026, in FASHIONSNAP and WWD JAPAN, also date its birth to New York in 1994. Read together, 1991 is the year of the first blends and 1994 the year of the brand, by the company’s account.

The company says its first product was the one it now sells in Japan as the “Nourishing Defrizzer.” It frames its philosophy through a line it attributes to the founder, which in our translation reads: “Caring for yourself is caring for the Earth; caring for the Earth is caring for yourself.” In 2022 its new owner described the brand’s vision as “ONE EARTH — Respect for the Earth,” and today the company still calls that idea the starting point of how it makes its products.

From a New York salon to a Tokyo group.

The brand’s centre of gravity moved to Japan through its distributor. Permira’s 2016 announcement says Styla, founded by Yoshimune Noda and Maiko Noda, became the exclusive distributor of the brand in Japan and East Asia in 2007 — the year the company itself gives for its arrival in Japan. In 2013, WWD JAPAN reported in 2017, Styla International acquired a majority stake in the American company.

On 23 May 2016 Permira announced that a company backed by its funds had agreed to acquire a majority of the shares of John Masters Organics Inc. and Styla Inc., and that John Masters and the Nodas would stay involved in the combined business. WWD JAPAN reported that the group began operating as the John Masters Organics Group in October 2016.

Ownership changed again six years later. On 14 June 2022, the Tokyo investment firm Aspirant Group announced that funds related to it had signed an agreement to acquire the shares of John Masters Organics Group, Inc. and John Masters Organics, Inc. from shareholders including JMO Holdings Limited of Hong Kong, with the transfer scheduled for the end of July 2022.

The latest change came in 2026. On 24 August 2026, FASHIONSNAP reported, the Japanese drugstore group Matsukiyo Cocokara & Company announced that its subsidiary MCC Management would acquire John Masters Holdings, the company behind the brand; Netshop Impress reported that it was buying all the shares, with the acquisition scheduled for 7 September 2026, and that the management team led by president Yuichiro Otaki would stay in place. Japanese Wikipedia, citing a trade report of 8 September, records the transfer as completed on that date. Matsukiyo Cocokara & Company has owned the brand since September 2026. In WWD JAPAN that month, Otaki said being acquired did not mean the brand’s direction would change.

The operating company today is John Masters Organics Group, Inc., based in Meguro, Tokyo, whose website lists its business as cosmetics sales.

Haircare and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all haircare names: Shu Uemura, Leonor Greyl, René Furterer, Klorane, HASK, R+Co and John Masters Organics. Haircare brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from names that still carry a founder’s signature to labels that now belong to much larger beauty groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a pharmacy shelf to a salon backbar.

A haircare brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a bottle, a name and the story it tells about where it came from, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production or grown far beyond the place where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its products are actually made.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its products are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Made in New York, then in Japan.

Where the products are made has changed with the owners. The company says its first Japanese-made product, the C&G Shampoo, came out in 2018. In September 2026 WWD JAPAN reported that the company had moved away from its earlier US-centred production and sourcing and now made most of its products in Japan. Japanese Wikipedia says earlier products were made under contract at a factory in the United States.

That earlier supply chain is part of the brand’s record. In autumn 2017 the group voluntarily recalled 38 hair and skin care products because their ingredient labels were inaccurate, WWD JAPAN reported on 2 October 2017; Ryutsuu News reported on 4 October that affected products would be exchanged for correctly labelled ones. The company addresses the episode on its own website today, saying the listed ingredients differed from those actually used in some products, including undeclared synthetic ingredients, and that it reviewed its processes for checking ingredient information and labelling.

The same pages explain what the company means by “organic.” It says the word does not mean that every product is made entirely of organic ingredients, and that some products carry third-party certification such as USDA ORGANIC or COSMOS ORGANIC, shown on each product’s label. Its current hair ranges include the Bond Layer series, launched in 2026, and the H&H, P&L and PRO Botanical Concentrate series, alongside skin care, body care, fragrance and a line called “me johnmasters organics.” In 2025, it says, it launched its first product approved as a quasi-drug, a category in Japanese cosmetics regulation.

For a design guide, John Masters Organics shows how a founder’s name and a lower-case wordmark can carry a brand through several changes of owner and a move from New York to Tokyo. Compare R+Co and Davines, two more haircare brands. For this guide we use a leaf green and an amber with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep John Masters Organics’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.