Selective

Selective, marketed as Selective Professional, is an Italian professional haircare brand aimed at hairstylists and salons. It is the flagship own-brand of Tricobiotos S.p.A., a manufacturer based in Vaiano, in the Province of Prato, Tuscany, and it was launched in 1994 [6]. The range spans hair colour, bleaching, texturing, treatments and styling, and the company presents it as a made-in-Italy line built for professional use rather than retail sale.

The brand remains active. Its catalogue is maintained with current lines, and its parent company states a presence in more than 60 countries [6]. Selective is sold through professional distribution rather than directly to consumers, and its public tagline is "A new colour experience."

Selective Professional grew out of Tricobiotos, a hair-cosmetics company founded in 1982 by Stefano Bertini together with Marco and Mara Bucaioni [6]. The firm's first notable success came in 1984 with Blitz, an organic hairspray, and in 1989 it moved to its current premises in Vaiano, where it built a production plant.

The Selective Professional name itself arrived in 1994, which the company describes as its major turning point — a brand it says is "acknowledged by hairdressers worldwide as an ambassador for Italian excellence and style" [6]. That 1994 date refers to the launch of this brand; the parent company traces its own founding to 1982.

Tricobiotos expanded beyond Europe for the first time in 1997, sending its products across the Atlantic, and in 1999 it opened the Tricobiotos Academy for training. It became a joint-stock company in 2002, describing itself by then as one of the leaders in its market. Over the following decade the firm also took on distribution of other companies' brands in Italy, becoming the exclusive Italian distributor for Moroccanoil in 2010 and for Kezy in 2012. In 2014 it introduced Natural Flowers, a product line aimed at customers looking for more eco-friendly options.

Selective is owned and produced by Tricobiotos S.p.A. [3], and the two are closely tied: the brand carries no separate corporate identity of its own. The company describes itself as the only Italian firm in its field that sells its products exclusively through distributors [6], a wholesale model that keeps the range within professional and salon channels.

Selective Professional presents itself under the phrase "beyond beauty, beyond salon," and the company says it promotes values of authenticity and belonging, alongside creativity, originality and passion. It sums up its approach as bringing out "the extraordinary hidden in everyone." In practice the positioning is business-to-business: the lines are designed for hairstylists and salon work rather than for shelves, and the brand's messaging leans on the idea of Italian craft and its "A new colour experience" tagline.

The catalogue is organised around three broad groups: technical products, treatments and styling. On the colour side it includes Colorevo, the demi-permanent Glow Liquid Color, thePIGMENTS, the Reverso range and the Decolorvit bleaching system, which the company markets for lightening of up to nine tones. Texturing is handled by the Kera Smooth System, a professional smoothing system, and Mild Texture for waving. Treatment lines include ONCARE, the Xstrong-based Rebuilding Treatment, Curllover for curly hair, a Hemp range and the men's line Cemani.

Several products are built around named hero ingredients. The Avocado Treatment uses avocado extract, described as an antioxidant rich in vitamins and Omega 3, while the keratin line relies on vegetable keratin — an amino-acid complex derived from wheat and soya rather than an animal source [7]. Tricobiotos holds ISO 9001 certification, a quality-management standard [6]. Its interest in plant-based formulas also runs through the 2014 Natural Flowers line and the Hemp treatments.

The company frames part of this work as "Green-Technology," a vegetal-keratin approach to straightening, and describes the result as the first vegetal keratin straightening treatment [7]. Selective is made in Italy, which the brand states plainly as "100% made in Italy" [7].

The Avocado Treatment received an award for most innovative product at Cosmoprof India in 2019 [7]. Beyond that recognition, coverage of the brand has come chiefly from trade rather than consumer press, in keeping with its professional-only positioning.

Selective remains an active brand. Its product lines are current and maintained, and through Tricobiotos it is distributed across more than 60 countries, with markets that include Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, China, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand [7].