Styling the environment: John Sebastian mixes environmental concerns and hair care products in everyday business.

Sebastian International Inc.'s 100,000-square-foot headquarters in Woodland Hills is an embodiment of environmental awareness. The converted warehouse's floor is made of recycled wood chips, lights automatically turn off when employees leave their offices, and there are recycling bins in the building that hold everything from paper to glass.

Lining the walls of the headquarters' halls are children's drawings and paintings depicting their environmental concerns, such as a drawing of the Earth with the caption "Stop! You're destroying my precious ozone."

All this reflects the focus Chief Executive and President John Sebastian has taken in blending pervasive environmental awareness with everyday business in running his company, which manufactures and distributes hair care products, skin care products and cosmetics to 140,000 salons worldwide.

The company distributes its products to salons only. One hundred distributors worldwide distribute to 140,000 salons.

Through a program called Club U.N.I.T.E. (Unity Now Is a Tomorrow for Everyone), conducted in salons that carry Sebastian products. The program was formed in September 1991, but didn't really get off the ground until the beginning of this year. Sebastian said he expects to raise $2 million this year for a group of nonprofit organizations.

Also, the company is in its second year of sponsoring "Little Green," a project that invites children worldwide to draw, paint or write about their environmental concerns. The renderings on the headquarter's walls are this year's contest entries.

And in 1989, Sebastian asked all of the 140,000 salons that sell his products to pledge to practice environmentally safe business, such as being conscious of water usage at shampoo bowls and bringing coffee mugs to the salons instead of using Styrofoam or plastic cups.

But Sebastian, who is 54, 6-feet 2-inches tall and sports a full greying beard, doesn't call himself a philanthropist. Instead, he says, promoting charitable causes indirectly bolsters company profits because consumers develop a more positive view of the company and buy more of its products.

"We do what Washington and Sacramento can't do, take care of the community through good sound business," Sebastian says.

Since 1991 for instance, patrons of salons carrying Sebastian products have been making $10 donations to Club U.N.I.T.E., which funnels the money to seven non-profit organizations. These include the Design Industries Foundation for AIDS and the Humane Society of the United States.

In turn the customers receive $15 worth of Sebastian products and are entitled to special savings, bonuses and Sebastian products throughout the year.

Sebastian now runs a company with more than $100 million in annual revenues, but he has not always been wealthy. During two times in his life, Sebastian was nearly penniless.

A Tunisian by birth, he first experienced poverty was when he was a teenager in the 1950s and his family left their homeland. They joined an exodus of people fleeing battling between the French, whose 50-year protectorate of Tunisia expired, and the Arabs, who now wanted all non-Arabs out of the country.

The Sebastian family departed with only $81 in American currency. The rest of its money was in Tunisian currency and utterly worthless, Sebastian recalls.

The second time Sebastian found himself with an empty wallet was in 1971, after he tried to sell his $4 million investment as a partner in a beauty school. He and his four partners in the school sold it to new "owners" for "letter stock," which was not to be made good on until several months later.

In the meantime, the school went bankrupt under the new "owners," and Sebastian's life savings vanished.

How Sebastian dealt with each crisis in his life was an indication of what has brought him to success today. He faced each crisis with humility, tenacity and an ability to adapt to his surroundings.

For instance, Sebastian was able to adapt to his new surroundings after he, his two brothers and his parents left Tunisia and went to stay first with some relatives in Italy and later emigrated to Binghamton, a town in upstate New York.

Binghamton was "just a miserable place," with "lots of snow and dark skies," Sebastian notes.

He never made it past the ninth grade in Tunisia, so he helped to support his family in Binghamton by working at odd jobs, such as dying shoes, washing dishes and operating a jackhammer.

At home his family primarily spoke French (he still speaks with a French accent), but Sebastian says he picked up English in the street. Also, he says that although he was totally disoriented in the new American culture, he found it easy to make friends because he was young.

Seventeen years later, when Sebastian's life savings were lost in the bankruptcy of his beauty school, he says he didn't panic or go through a lengthy state of depression. Instead he told himself, "Let's go on."

His attitude toward dealing with crises entails setting a time, such as an hour or a day, to feel sad, "but let's not drag this on forever," he tells himself. When Sebastian lost his life savings, he allowed himself to mourn for about two weeks.

Then he got a low-profile job as a hairdresser in a local salon and soon saved up $3,000. This was enough to allow him to open his own small salon.

Sebastian had first been turned on to the art of hairdressing back in Binghamton when he was a teenager and working at odd jobs, and a cousin owned a barber shop. Sebastian started working there on Saturdays and found that cutting men's hair was a pleasant and easy way to make money.

Less than a year after moving to Binghamton, Sebastian's father moved with young John to Southern California. Sebastian decided to get a barber's license, and attended a barber beauty school in Claremont. This is where he developed a love for cutting women's hair.

Cutting women's hair is a challenge, he says. Most men just want a simple trim, but women have more complicated requests, such as wanting their hair to be made wavy, thickened or even tinted pink, Sebastian remarks.

After attending barber school for nine months, Sebastian got a job in 1959 assisting George Masters, a freelance hairdresser who styled the hair of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe.

Four years later, he started assisting the three Lapin brothers, who specialized in coloring celebrities' hair. One time Sebastian helped the Lapins weave Liberace's hair, and another time assisted them in making Jayne Mansfield's do.

In 1957 the Lapins opened a chain of beauty schools in the greater Los Angeles area, and asked Sebastian in 1959 to be a partner in the operation and both a manager and teacher in the schools.

Through his work at the schools, Sebastian says he learned how to manage people, motivate the schools' 400 students and other business skills. "It was about the best training I ever got," he says. He also met Geri, a student there, who later became his wife.

The schools were sold, and then went bankrupt in 1971, leaving Sebastian to build his way into opening his own small salon. Soon thereafter, Sebastian, his youngest brother, Tony, and Geri invented a straightening iron and a styling iron. They formed a partnership in the early 1970s to market them.

But the Sebastians' business didn't really take off until 1974, after Geri spent nearly a day trying to curl Barbra Streisand's hair for an album cover photo session. The fact that making Streisand's hair curly was so time-consuming inspired Geri to invent the crimping iron, the product that spurred the team to turn the partnership into a formal corporation in 1974.

A crimping iron is made of two blades, one concave and one convex. When heated, it molds hair to make it look curly.

The Sebastians took a prototype of the crimping iron to the International Beauty Show in New York, and received a tremendous response. They also invented other unique types of irons that year, and hired a manufacturer to produce all of them. Sebastian International posted sales of $150,000 during 1974.

In 1976, the company began selling liquid beauty products. Currently, 88 percent of the company's business is hair-related and 12 percent comes from the sale of cosmetics and skin care products.

Five percent of the hair-related portion of the business comes from seminars the company holds and the sale of videos. Another 8 percent comes from the sale of products for use by professional hairstylists, such as cellophanes and permanent solutions. The remainder of Sebastian's hair-related business comes from the sale of liquid hair care products for consumers.

Between 1973 and 1981, the company also operated a single school in Chatsworth for professional hairdressers, from which thousands of students graduated.

During the early days the company also ventured into the business of beauty video tapes that were shown in salons to customers who came to get their hair done. Today the Sebastian International headquarters houses the largest library of beauty salon tapes in the world. The library houses more than 200 tapes, all produced by Sebastian.

Sebastian says his company is unique because the staff decides what products to develop by looking at socio-economic and political changes that are taking place in society at the time. The products are then adapted to these changes.

For instance, when the women's movement flourished during the early 1980s, women began exercising more and washing their hair more often. Thus, Sebastian marketed a mild shampoo. And with the current conservatism of the 1990s, Sebastian has marketed products that are packaged more efficiently and are less wasteful. Laminates, which are concentrated droplets that give hair a super shine, are one example.

The company is actually run by both John and his wife, Geri. John focuses on day-to-day operations, running the administrative side, while Geri is the creative side. She is the sole developer of all of the company's products.

The Sebastians, who have no children, live on a 60-acre Hidden Valley ranch replete with horses, cows, goats, chickens, pigeons, ducks, cats and dogs. In his spare time, Sebastian says, he likes to spend time on the ranch, "getting his hands dirty."

It gives him time to think and "get back to the basics," he says.

SNAPSHOT

John Sebastian

Native of: Tunisia

Current Residence: Hidden Valley

Age: 54

Education: Ninth grade education