From Massachusetts salons to Los Angeles.

Philip B. is the professional name of Philip Berkovitz, an American hairstylist, and the hair and scalp care brand that carries it is his. English Wikipedia says he began styling hair as a teenager in his home state of Massachusetts and moved to Los Angeles in 1984, where he worked in salons with a Hollywood clientele. According to the same account, he started mixing botanical blends of his own because the commercial treatments of the time did not do enough for over-processed hair, buying essential oils at farmers’ markets and herb shops.

The date of the first product differs slightly by source. The company says its Four Step Hair + Scalp Treatment launched in 1991, and its website carries the line “made in Los Angeles since 1991.” Wikipedia, citing a 1996 Los Angeles Times profile and other sources, says the first commercial formula, Rejuvenating Oil, went on sale at the Los Angeles store Fred Segal in 1992, and that the line went national a year later through Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman. Berkovitz himself gives an earlier date: on The Kara Goldin Show podcast he said he launched Rejuvenating Oil in 1988, at first meaning only to sell it to clients of his salon.

That early making was by hand. On the same podcast Berkovitz described mixing the oils himself and funnelling them into bottles, filling his own bottles and printing his own labels at a print shop, before department-store buyers, among them a Neiman Marcus cosmetics executive, took an interest and he brought in an experienced cosmetics executive to help run the growing business. He called the Peppermint Avocado shampoo his original product and still his leading one.

Early press helped. Wikipedia cites a Vogue article by Marina Rust from October 1993 that praised the four-step treatment, and the company quotes American Vogue describing “soft, supple, shining, spread-across-the-pillow hair.” Forbes put the treatment on a 1999 list titled “100 Things Worth Every Penny,” Wikipedia records, and the company repeats the line on its own about page. In 1995 Berkovitz published a book of at-home treatments, Blended Beauty, which Wikipedia says is now out of print.

Oils, peppermint and amber.

The range grew out of treatments rather than styling. The company’s current list still leads with Rejuvenating Oil and the Peppermint Avocado shampoo and conditioner, alongside a Russian Amber Imperial line, a Weightless range for fine hair and body products. Wikipedia notes that later formulas brought in ingredients including African shea butter and Russian amber.

On manufacturing, the company names the country but not the factory. Its FAQ says Philip B. products are manufactured in the USA, with materials sourced from around the world, by what it calls its manufacturing partners, and that its Stroke of Genius hairbrushes are made in Spain. The same FAQ describes the products as cruelty-free while noting that the company holds no third-party certification for that, and says that many, but not all, of its ingredients are natural, with silicones used in many formulas.

On packaging, the FAQ says the bottles can be recycled once caps are removed and rinsed, and that the company is moving its tubes to a sugarcane-based resin. Distribution runs through the company’s own sites for the United States and Canada and for the United Kingdom, plus retailers and salons; Philip B. says its products are sold in 35 countries, and Wikipedia names markets across Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all hair-care names: Joico, UNITE, Kerasilk, ELEVEN Australia, Philip B, Hairstory and Innersense. Hair-care brands sit at many different points in the trade, from small companies still run by the hairdressers or founders who started them to lines that now belong to much larger beauty groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a salon backbar to a department store or a website.

Salon brands in particular are often built by people who came from behind the chair, and many were first sold to salons before they reached shops. Their identity is usually carried less by a single product than by a name, a bottle and a way of talking to stylists, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its production to a contract manufacturer or grown far beyond the salon where it began.

That makes the plain questions behind each name worth asking: 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 bottles and labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A founder’s name on every bottle.

The business trades as Philip B. Botanicals, the name in the copyright line of its website, and the brand speaks largely in the voice of its founder, from the “Philip Explains” section of the site to the first-person quotes on its about page. Wikipedia names Michael Huober, an artist and designer, as creative director of Philip B. Botanicals, International, citing reports from 2013 and 2015.

The founder’s name is the identity. The company sets it in capitals as PHILIP B., keeping the full stop and, in places, a registered-trademark sign, and pairs it with the tagline “botanically powered hair + scalp care” and the Los Angeles origin. Its current website credits the design and build to the studio Wayfarer + SHS. The founder has also worked in front of a television audience: Wikipedia says Berkovitz styled models on season 13 of Project Runway in 2014. In 2026 the company was selling a 35th-anniversary edition of its classic four-step set.

For a design guide, Philip B. shows how a stylist’s own name, a home city and a short list of treatment products can carry a brand for more than three decades. Compare it with Oribe, another luxury line named after a stylist and now owned by Kao, and with Innersense. For this guide we use peppermint green, amber and cream with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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