Brelil Professional

Brelil Professional is an Italian professional haircare company founded in Varese in 1973 [1]. It develops and distributes hair colour, treatment and styling products aimed at hairstylists and salons rather than the general retail shopper, and presents itself as a partner to the trade, summed up in its longstanding tagline "the partner brand of the best hairstylist since 1973." All manufacturing is carried out in Italy, a point the company states plainly as "100% Made in Italy."

Today the brand is part of Sodalis Group, an Italian conglomerate active in health and beauty, personal and home care, and nutraceuticals [2]. Brelil sells in more than 40 countries and reports a particular strength in Eastern Europe, where the company describes itself as a market benchmark.

Brelil was established in 1973 in Varese, in the Lombardy region of northern Italy. According to the company, the name is an acronym formed from the name of a female muse [2]. The founders are not named on the company's published materials. From the outset the focus was narrow: a complete line of professional hair products supplied through the salon channel rather than through ordinary consumer shops.

In 1990 the company relocated its headquarters to Lodi Vecchio, also in Lombardy, where it remains [2]. That move coincided with the change of ownership that would shape the rest of its history.

Brelil is owned by Sodalis Group, an Italian group that the company describes as a conglomerate spanning health and beauty, personal and home care, and nutraceuticals [2]. How the relationship began is recorded slightly differently across sources. Brelil's own site frames it as "the first Sodalis brand," the seed from which the wider group grew [2]. Trade coverage instead describes Brelil as Sodalis Group's first acquisition, after which it "became the foundation stone for what evolved into the Sodalis Group" [5]. Sodalis Group's corporate site, for its part, lists Brelil among its companies without singling it out as a founding brand [3]. The two accounts are not far apart: an acquisition that went on to anchor the group.

The year of that acquisition is also reported in two ways. The brand site and the trade article on the group's origins place it in 1990 [2][5]; a separate trade brand-profile gives 1991 [6]. Brelil's founding date of 1973 is consistent across every source.

Sodalis Group has since expanded to around 50 brands. Within that portfolio Brelil sits alongside sister names including Deborah Milano, BioNike and Triple Dry. According to the trade press, the company's sales director has said that belonging to a large group lets Brelil draw on materials, services and international relationships built up for other brands while keeping its own identity.

Brelil positions itself squarely as a professional, salon-facing house. Its stated mission is to "allow everyone to reflect, in their aesthetic appearance, their most intimate identity," and it lists its core values as excellence, innovation, creativity and fashion, and responsibility. The "100% Made in Italy" claim recurs across the company's communications, tied to the idea that the full production process is kept in-house at Sodalis Group facilities in Italy.

The range is organised around three areas: colour, treatment and styling. On the colour side, the Colorianne and Prestige lines form the core, with Prestige described by the company as a "Colour in Cream" offering carrying more than 100 shades. The colour catalogue also extends to permanent dyes such as Essence and Prestige Zero, semi-permanent options including Colorforce and CC Colour Cream, and bleaching products such as Blonde Ambition.

On the treatment side, Numéro is the brand's professional haircare line, built around targeted ranges for different hair needs — among them restructuring formulas with oat, nourishing variants with shea butter, and a No-Yellow shampoo for blonde, streaked or grey hair. Brelil also markets a number of named technologies, including a complex it calls AminoHair 6 Acids, made up of six essential amino acids, and an ingredient it labels Luminescina used in the Prestige colour line, where it appears alongside camelia oil.

In 2023 the company marked its 50th anniversary and returned to the Cosmoprof trade fair in Bologna after an extended absence, an occasion covered by the Italian trade publication Estetica Export [5].

Brelil Professional remains an active brand. It operates a commercial website and social channels, continues to manufacture in Italy under Sodalis Group ownership, and its most recent prominent milestone, the 2023 anniversary and Cosmoprof return, places it firmly in current trade activity.