No Ordinary man – meet Gavin Taylor, creator of the new wave in organic hair care.
No Ordinary man - meet Gavin Taylor, creator of the new wave in organic hair care.
Gavin Taylor is the founder of No Ordinary, a range of organic, vegan friendly, cruelty free hair care products that deliver salon quality results.
With over 20 years’ experience as a professional stylist himself, coupled with an endless enthusiasm for creating a better future, Gavin is dedicated to providing his customers with products that combine ethics and quality. Products that allow them to play their part in protecting the planet, whilst taking the best possible care of their own natural health and wellbeing.
So what’s the story behind the No Ordinary brand?
Tell us a little but about your background. How did you come to bewhere you are today?
I believe it all started at 11 years old when I attended high school. I just didn’t fit into the Government’s mould of a successful student or employee. I struggled with learning, or should I say, remembering, what the teachers were telling me and nothing made sense. I wanted to create, not remember stuff! As the years went on I simply believed that I was destined for manual labour, or at least that’s what I was told I could do.
But I knew deep down that I was different and needed an outlet to shout about my passion which, in fact, was learning – learning new skills. So I set out the rest of my life to prove my sceptics wrong and to learn as many new skills as I could. I started with catering, then moved on to hairdressing and ultimately, how to create my own cosmetics that fitted in with the world I wanted to live in. A non toxic, peaceful and forward thinking planet that could harness what the earth had already given to us.
So, how did you make the leap from professional stylist to organic haircare entrepreneur? What was the driving force behind it?
Having been in the industry for over 20 years, I have seen so many big brands dominate the hair care market, with none of the smaller,more ethical or moral businesses even getting a 1% share. This was twinned with my frustration at struggling to find a company that produced a product committed to using as many natural ingredients as possible, but one that didn’t aggravate my already allergy prone skin – which some say has been caused by using toxic, chemical based products in the past.
After testing many variations at home over many years –researching the best ingredients, reading many books and recipes – I finally found a combination that not only worked for me but that was effective on hair, skin and body. And that was also safe for the planet.
I felt that if I were to start my own product range, I needed to understand the importance of each and every ingredient – how and why they mattered. Having changed careers from a chef to a hairdresser as a teenager, I had the belief that I could do anything I put my mind to.
How do the ingredients you use produce the results they do?
The main reason I am so passionate about using plant based ingredients is because they work in harmony with your own body. Instead of masking the problem, the ingredients in our products balance out the hair and skin, leaving naturally glossy, naturally healthy results. They also show up any areas for concern so that the user can take the proper steps towards repair when hair or skin has been damaged by heat or a chemical process.
There’s a growing number of organic hair care products on the market, what separates No Ordinary from these other brands?
No Ordinary has been born from a passion for change in our industry. The salon hair care market is worth billions but yet it’s full of brands that do not really care for our end users, the clients. Yes, the client’s hair may feel wonderful when they leave the salon but other brands do tend to still mask the problems rather than prevent them in the first place.
No Ordinary comes straight from the salon so has been created for and with our clients in mind. These clients want real hair that they can recreate in their real lives. No BS!
And what about what the brand stands for? What’s the message behind No Ordinary?
We have decided not to compromise on our message. And it’s a strong one. No Ordinary want to change the world, one step at a time. From our 99% naturally derived ingredients to our refillable bottles, No Ordinary plan on changing how we use and reuse products in the cosmetics industry.
Our message is clear – we have one life and one planet and if we do not change each area of industry to become one of care, for both the customer and the planet, we will have neither for much longer.
What’s the next step in the No Ordinary journey?
We are looking very closely at our packaging and how we can create compostable bottles, certainly refill pouches that compost. We also plan on looking more into skin care and how we can help to improve that side of the industry – to teach people that we are all beautiful and that using cosmetics to cover up our natural beauty is wrong. In fact, we should be embracing who weare and how we respond to others.
You seem very committed to creating a culture of change, how does the No Ordinary brand fit into your wider campaign?
Our salon has just been accredited a single use plastic free business. We also provide a refill service for all our No Ordinary customers, discounting the new bottle if they bring back their old one. This keeps all undamaged bottles in circulation instead of the bin. Bottles are then processed for recycling if they become unusable.
Alongside this, I am a founding member of Plastic Free Rothley, a committee of 20 people pushing to make the village, or now rather town, of Rothley, Leicestershire, one of the first single use plastic free business communities in the UK.
Beyond this, whilst it might seem far fetched, I am now a keen teacher and the big goal is to set up my own school in which confidence is a lesson and practical skills aren’t forgotten. Students will learn about their own passions in what I plan to have as ‘Free Lessons’. No Ordinary is just the start of what I see as a change to our formal education, to help others like myself build self-esteem and, in turn, work towards ending jealousy and unnecessary conflicts between peers. A life less ordinary is something we should all be striving for.
Final question. If you could change just one thing about the world we live in today, what would it be?
That’s a difficult one. The one thing would have to be education. This is an area that, in essence, hasn’t changed for over a hundred years. Why? Everything else around us has changed.
We can send people to the moon and produce cars capable of unbelievable speeds yet we still provide an education that was invented to produce manual labour workers to do production line jobs. Whilst the subjects we teach and the jobs we work towards have changed, the educational system remains one of guided structure governed by people who decide what we should learn and when we should learn it.
The world has changed and we need to rethink this age old model and start producing thinkers, outliers and challengers to the conventions we still have today. I am excited about the future if we can harness the creativity that we already have in young and passionate people.
Want to shake up your hair care regime and protect the planet in the process? You can browse the No Ordinary range by visiting the ONLINE SHOP, or by popping into the award winning Gavin Taylor Hair Salon.