In our last piece, “Redefining Beauty and How It’s Marketed”, we briefly touched on Rob E. Angelino’s experience working with Salon TV. How it helped solidify the importance of passion in any project that’s to be undertaken successfully. While this is an accurate takeaway from the experience, the full story of Salon TV is much more intricate. The story involves brushes with the mob, losing hundreds of thousands of dollars, the “Dotcom Bubble”, and 9/11.
The lessons learned building a place-based media television brand laid the foundation for what was to come. Discover how that experience developed the foundation for Beauty Network, The Beauty Channel, & Beauty TV.
An Investment Gone South
The idea behind Salon TV, a place-based media company developed for the salon industry, originally came from an investment opportunity called NCN (National Cosmetology Network). Rob E. Angelino entered this investment along with several other investors in the late 90’s.
Rob had amassed savings over the years beginning with high volume microchip sales in the ’80s. Later, this extended through his work with CompuCast Technologies and United Global Media Group, now Angelino Media LLC. Because of the lucrative potential, Rob saw in the investment, he funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars in the idea. Many friends and family also were interested and bought shares in the company.
However, things went south when the CEO of the company, who turned out to have ties to the mafia, died from a heart attack. Amid turning over leadership of the company, it turned out the shares in the company had been oversold. Consequently, the company was virtually worthless. As a result, Rob E. Angelino and everyone else who invested lost everything. It was a dark time for Rob, his friends, and his family. However, Rob was determined to redeem himself.
Salon TV and the Road to Redemption
While Rob E. Angelino realized he’d made a bad investment, he still loved the idea behind the Salon TV project. A place-based media solution for the salon industry made sense.
High-end salons could benefit from television in the waiting room. Content that helped sell products and styles before clients made it to the salon chair. It preserved the integrity of the stylist/client relationship. Prevented the need to push products rather than talk about life. Additionally, it streamlined the client sales experience and even provide entertainment.
Meanwhile, amid the bustle of what would later be known as the “Dotcom Bubble”, business ideas living on a prayer were all the rage. When Rob realized that the domain “salontv.com” was available, he bought the name and wrote a business plan to make the concept work. This time, he planned to implement a real strategy into its development. As a result, Rob built a real company with serious potential to be a change agent for the salon industry.
Investors Flocked to Salon TV During a Prosperous Economic Time
Looking at the U.S. National Debt Clock, it’s easy to forget there was a time in recent history when America had a balanced budget. In fact, there was often a surplus in funds. We came into the millennium with a thriving economy. An economy where finding seed investors was a different game than it is today.
Coming into the market during this period with Salon TV, Rob E. Angelino didn’t have to scour the market for investors. In fact, he got to pick and choose who he would work with. Rob ended up working with Boeing’s Digital Express, a company willing to put millions into building out the network. Through Digital Express, Boeing was looking to branch out of the airline industry to other investment opportunities.
This was one of the greatest times in Rob’s life. Finally, he had the large-scale capital to develop demos for Salon TV products. Developing LCD touch screens for beauty industry conventions was stressful. However, it was also exciting and liberating after turning a bad experience into the foundation for a great company.
On top of the investments Rob needed to build Salon TV, he had a regular income from his investor. Rob was invited to many corporate parties hosted by movers and shakers in the financial, beauty, and entertainment industries. Once, Rob even attended a Silicon Valley corporate party for Enron (which was a bizarre experience in retrospect). Everything felt too good to be true. Unfortunately, it was.
The End of Salon TV
The most disappointing aspect of the Salon TV story is not that it didn’t end successfully, but that it had the potential to be so much greater than what it was. Rob E. Angelino’s goal was to make Salon TV a staple in the salon and beauty industries. However, several events took place that prevented that vision from being fully realized.
There were a lot of bumps in the road that made Salon TV a challenging project. Simple problems clearly didn’t help move the project forward. Developers failed to meet timelines for the demos to be available for beauty industry conventions. Furthermore, other economic issues in the US began to surface. When the Dotcom Bubble burst, it became apparent beginning from mid-2000 into 2001. This range of issues did impact his investor’s faith in the project. However, they did not motivate Rob’s eventual decision to sell.
What did motivate the decision ultimately for Rob’s backer (an airline company) was September 11th, 2001. The events that took place on this date and their impact on America, and more specifically America’s economy, were detrimental. As you can imagine, the airline industry was delivered a shocking blow. Plans to branch outside of the airline industry into various projects, including Salon TV, were put on indefinite hold.
With a sudden limit placed on the capital required to continue developing Salon TV and no real promise from any new investors, the decision was ultimately made to sell Salon TV. While the project was far from a failure, it was a huge disappointment to Rob E. Angelino in the fact that it had the potential to be so much more. Rob returned his focus to his other projects in the hair restoration industry such as Best Hair Transplant and Laser Cap Me.
Paving the Way for Beauty TV
However, the story of Salon TV does not end on a negative note. Rob E. Angelino has never been one to give up or let a story have a bad ending. Rob took an experience that didn’t end the way he wanted and picked up the pieces to build something new. That something new was Beauty TV, part of Beauty Network.
Having met many movers and shakers in the beauty industry during his time with Salon TV, Rob leveraged the experience to build a brand-new television network catering exclusively to beauty. Beauty Network is a change agent for the beauty industry. If you haven’t read it yet, please read over all the exciting things we have planned. We have formed strategic partnerships with interested parties and are thrilled to bring you more news on our progress in the coming weeks.
Learn More About Beauty Network & Beauty TV
We would like to thank all our readers for their continued support and all the overwhelmingly positive feedback we’ve been getting from sharing our journey with you. We look forward to sharing more stories on Beauty Network and where we will be going from here.
For more information on Beauty Network and our journey, please read our article Beauty Network: The Industry Change Agent for Beaut. Additionally, you can visit Beauty Network, or contact Rob E. Angelino on LinkedIn.