The Pro Shop
The professional ordering channel for salons and licensed stylists carrying the Design Essentials line. Manage what you stock behind the chair through the Pro Shop on the Design Essentials site.
Visit the Pro ShopFor professionals
Premium formulas, and the education to use them.
Design Essentials was built for the chair first. The lines reach stylists and salon owners through a professional network more than 25,000 strong, backed by the science that has defined the company since 1990.
The salon-first idea
Products and education, made to work together.
When Cornell McBride Sr. founded McBride Research Laboratories in 1990, Design Essentials launched as a salon-professional system, not a shelf product. The idea was straightforward: formulate professional-grade care for the specific structure and needs of textured hair, and pair it with the knowledge to use it well.
That is still how the company thinks about the professional channel. A premium formula does its best work in trained hands, so the lines are built to be understood, taught, and relied on chair after chair, rather than simply sold. For a stylist, that means products developed for real textured-hair work, from a company that has spent decades on the science behind them.
Education in practice
The teaching travels with the product.
The commitment to education is not just an idea from 1990. The company backs its lines with educational literature and sponsors events that teach salons and their clients how to use the products in a proper hair-care regimen, so the know-how reaches the chair alongside the formula.
Behind that sits a trained network. New distributors go through intensive training, held both at the company's corporate offices and in the field, and distributors hold educational workshops and events in their own markets as warranted. It is how a premium formula and the knowledge to use it well arrive together in a local salon.
25,000+
The stylist network
A professional community, coast to coast.
More than 25,000 stylists connect with the lines through the Design Essentials salon locator, the directory that helps clients find a professional who carries them. The brand is also available in JCPenney salons, extending the professional reach into the mall-salon setting.
Ways to work with us
Two doors into the professional line.
Whether you are ordering for your salon or helping clients find you, the professional channel runs through the Design Essentials site.
The salon locator
The directory that connects clients with professionals who carry the lines. It is how much of the 25,000-plus stylist network is found, and how a salon puts itself on the map.
Find a salonStanding behind the work
The McBride Guarantee.
Made to perform, or your money back. Every product is manufactured to meet the company's quality and performance standards. If it does not, the McBride Guarantee returns your money. It is the same promise a stylist can pass along to a client with confidence.
Bring the lines to your salon
Let's talk.
Considering carrying Design Essentials? Tell us about your salon and we will route your note to the right team.