Hairdressers are especially suited to working for themselves!
Have You Considered Self-Employment?
by Shiro Shears on Monday, February 15, 2010
Working for yourself. What an amazing dream. But it doesn’t have to remain a dream: millions of people run their own businesses, people just like you. This may surprise you but hairdressers are especially suited to working for themselves.
Your typical hairdresser is confident and outgoing—essential qualities for building up a client base or going to ask your bank manager for a loan, and hairdressers are great at multi-tasking; a bonus when you have to be receptionist, accountant, promoter and sales person all rolled into one!
Hairdressers have fantastic time-management skills (that’s what it’s called when you get through a day with a double column and nobody turns up on time), are hardworking, determined, and creative. All these qualities are the bedrock of entrepreneurs and all you need is the knowledge of how to put them into practice.
So why work for yourself? Isn’t it easier just to go to work and come home without any worry or responsibility? To have the security of regular wages, holiday pay and sick pay?
OF COURSE IT IS! But just because it’s easier, doesn’t mean it’s better. What about freedom to choose the hours you work and the type of clients you see? What about the potential to have no limits on your earnings and to keep all the profits for yourself?
And what about the satisfaction of knowing that YOU did it? You built your business up from nothing and look at you now! (more…)
The 411 on Hair Cutting
In the design process, you must have a vision of what you want to create before you ever put the scissors in the hair. Anyone can make hair shorter. A true designer and artist will start with a strong and complete vision.
BULLET-POINT YOUR VISION
Think through each aspect of your vision. Where do you want to create weight? Where do you want to remove weight? How do you want the length of the hair to flow, from front to back or from back to front? How will the fringe frame the face in terms of length and movement? You simply won’t end up with something fabulous unless you’ve clearly visualized every path that will lead you there.
TALK THE TALK
Your vision is developed from the conversation between you and the client. No matter how well you believe you understand what the client wants, you can avoid a lot of complaints by double-checking. As the final step in the consultation, repeat back to the client what the two of you have decided to do. For example, confirm length to be removed by using your comb to show the client precisely what an inch means to you. You may discover that your concept of an inch does not match the client’s mental image.
Clients consistently ask for “a change,” so you must dig deeper to determine exactly what that means. You want to make sure that clients will be comfortable with the amount of change theysay they want. Try asking a question using an analogy. For example: “If we were making a change to your living room, would you be looking for a complete remodel that includes knocking down walls, bringing in all new furniture and possibly switching out the furniture style? Or, do you simply want to rearrange what you already have in a new way?” This type of questioning will give you insight into your client’s personal comfort and clue you into what she really means by “change.”
PARTINGS STRAIGHTEN YOUR THOUGHTS
Partings are a fantastic way to stay organized while you execute your haircut. It is easy to get lost in the hair and off track, but using strong partings will help you stay focused on where you are in the haircut. They also communicate to your client that you are professional and skilled. Clean partings are a sign of discipline.
SYSTEMIZE THE PROCESS
As part of your fundamental training as a hair designer, you should have learned a hair cutting system. If this was not provided at your cosmetology school or during a training period at your salon, take a class with a product line. Many haircare companies offer great systems.
A cutting system gives you an approach to use to execute your hair design. It teaches important details such as clean combing, partings, terminology, techniques and elevation. Learning a system will allow you to translate any hair cutting demonstration you observe into actions you can use to recreate what you’ve seen.
A HEADS UP ON POSTURE
As you proceed with the cut, stay aware of your body as well as your client’s body. Remember: You will always bring your work toward yourself, so make sure you are in the right position. Keep your work square to your body. If you are working a traveling guide while layering, make sure your body is moving with the direction of your sections.
It is just as important for your client’s body to be properly positioned. Develop these good habits:
- Instruct your client to keep her legs uncrossed when you are working on your baseline.
- Turn your client’s head when you are working on hair past the shoulders to avoid adding unintentional elevation on the sides.
- When you are creating a shorter baseline, such as a classic bob, you have to allow for the recessed curve at the nape of the neck, so tilt your client’s head slightly forward until you incorporate the side sections.
Author Joelle Ray owns Samuel Cole Salon and Salon Moxie in Raleigh, North Carolina. Ray personally trains her staff.
NOTE: Make sure you always use the highest-quality styling shears available. Great deals are available now, *<CLICK HERE>*
Encouraging Your Hairdressing Team and Improving Salon Business
In such a competitive industry salon owners can find it increasingly hard to keep their salon business growing. With most high-end districts offering a selection of hair and beauty salons, gaining the edge can prove difficult. A few simple points to remember can help salon owners head in the right direction and continue towards running a successful salon business.
As hairdressing is such an interpersonal profession your company image, ethics and ultimately its success are often completely in the hands of the salon’s employees. Therefore it’s crucial that a sound hairdressing team is established first, regardless of its size. It goes without saying that the whole team should be well-mannered, enthusiastic and reliable as well as being passionate about hairdressing. Staff will encounter customers from all walks of life and the ability to engage with them all is of the utmost importance whether you’re a salon manager or a weekend assistant. (more…)
Contest Winner Announced
Winner of Free Hair Cutting Scissors!
We are proud to announce our contest winner Timothy Poisal. He entered our CONTEST and won a Free pair of Shiro GV-55 styling shears.
All he had to do was fill out his name and e-mail address to enter. Anyone can enter this contest by going HERE. We are so confident in the quality of our products, that we are giving away one pair of Shiro Shears (of your choice) for every 1,000 entries. We know that Stylists love our Styling Shears and once they try them, they will love them.
Follow Shiro Shears on Twitter http://twitter.com/ShiroShears
New Hair Cutting Technique
New Hair Cutting Technique: How to turn the shears over for point Cutting.
A lot of customers are asking us, “What’s the best way to use my new Swivel-Thumb Shears,” from Shiro Shears?
By turning the blades upside down as demonstrated in the video; you can save your hands, arms, shoulders and neck from fatigue and pain. As most stylists cut hair, they tend to lift their arm up to at least shoulder height and turn their whole arm over when they do point cutting with the blade facing down. Now you can stop lifting your arm up and down all day by just turning the shears over in your hand and do your point cutting from this position.
Watch the video, it demonstrates the technique of turning the blade over in your hand using our Model GV swivel-thumb Scissors.
Hint: You can also get a Swivel-Thumb texturizer. This is the smoothest pair of texturizing shears we’ve had the privilege of offering. Follow us on Facebook for deals and offers!
Buy Swivel-Thumbs and try it yourself!
Swivel Shears: http://shiroshears.com/products/styling-shears/model-gv-55/
Swivel Thinning Shears: http://shiroshears.com/products/shiro-shears/model-gv-523ct/
Students Treated to Priceless Info from Curly Hair Expert
by Aileen Passariello on Dec 10, 2009
Ron King offers drying tips to a class at Avenue Five.
CurlStylist.com recently hosted a curly education class for the students at Avenue Five, a cosmetology school in Austin. Curl expert Ron King, owner and head stylist at Bo Salon, was the day’s educator.
King, who says his clients “just can’t stay away,” began the class by explaining that the most important key to success is customer service. Ron attributes his success to the relationship he builds with each client, the trust he develops, and most importantly the customer service that all clients receive every time they enter his salon. Staying consistent with their experience and cut is what makes customers loyal, he says. King emphasized the importance of “contact” by touching the hair, touching the customer’s shoulders, listening, and understanding to gain that trust needed for developing that strong bond between a hair stylist and their customer.
Also, he advises, stylists should not assume that they know what their clients want before they sit down in the chair. “Don’t just assume you know what your client wants because they will surprise you. Always sit down with them, listen to them, discuss how they are feeling and then give your opinion. Clients feel different each day and maybe that day, they are looking for something different. It is important to always listen.”
The students thoroughly enjoyed the class, taking away a wealth of useful information for their future careers.
“Today’s class was very informative and inspiring. I learned how to think about textured hair in a totally new way,” says student Hilary Lowry, who is known on ChairTalk as hil214.
King learned to cut curly hair with Deva. He attended a class in New York and has perfected his technique over the years.
He says he always cuts curly hair dry and always starts from the inside, using a bricklayer pattern. When separating the hair, try to avoid disruption of the curl, he suggests; don’t rip or tear. When cutting, always cut in the bend of the curl to enhance the spring action and create lift.
“Cutting curly hair from the inside in a bricklayer pattern made total sense, and trying not to disrupt the curl as much as possible makes a huge difference in the outcome,” says Lowry.
King addresses the important difference between cutting curly hair and straight hair. “No two curls are the same,” he says. Therefore, each strand has to be treated as an individual, he reminded the class.
“Pick up the curl, shake it out, and cut down the curl,” he emphasizes. Ron believes that the optimal shape for curly girls is the oval shape, as this shape avoids the “bozo the clown look or the mullet look.”
King told the class that after cutting, it is important to condition your client’s hair. Curly hair tends to be dry, so King recommends that his clients cleanse (not shampoo) their hair once a week. Once the washing and the massaging of the scalp is complete, King uses paper towels to absorb excess water. Regular towels have too many fibers and break the curls, he counsels. Fun tip: Sham wow towels also work great! King recommends using fingers to detangle the hair (or a wide-toothed comb) and then with a mixture of product on a paper towel, he mixes Deva B’Leave-in Conditioner and AnGel.
King uses a diffuser on his clients in the salon, but he recommends his clients air dry their hair as much as possible to avoid too much heat. Ron uses as many as 15 duckbill clips on top of the head to achieve root lift. He also recommends the students always diffuse from the bottom of the hair — not the top. King recommends setting your dryer on low speed and high heat setting. He suggests spraying the hair with Deva Set Me Up! pomade. The heat activates the pomade and gives the curl a shinny look.
Lowry was thrilled with all the real-world information King imparted. “I was also eager to learn how much online reviews and networking in the right ways can help your career,” she said.
And ChairTalker AndieJ22 added, “By far it was one of the best classes I’ve seen here. I graduate on Thursday and I couldn’t be more excited and I hope to learn more from Ron in the future.”
Top 10 Tips from Ron King
1. Stylists need to embrace curls and get over their fears before they can cut curly hair
2. Make contact — gain trust by listening and understanding your customer
3. Stay loyal to one product line — keep it simple for your customers
4. It is very important to educate your client about taking care of her hair
5. The majority of your clients are not looking for a shock effect
6. Be consistent with customer experience
7. Don’t get too comfortable with customers; they will surprise you
8. No one curl is like another
9. The best look for a curly hair is an oval shape
10. Cut in the bend of the curl
Split-Ends: A Stylists Guide
The official name for split ends is Trichoptlosis; but no matter what you call them, split ends are annoying and make the hair appear dull and scraggly. The cause of split ends has to do with the protective cuticle, which is stripped from the ends of the hair fibers. Although split ends can happen to all types of hair, typically you will see the most on brittle or dry hair. Other common causes can include excessive brushing, over dying, and brushing the hair while wet.
When the protective cuticle is removed, it cannot be replaced. The result is hair that is split in two, or sometimes, three strands. Depending on how bad the split end, it can be anywhere from one-eighth to one inch long. While there are several options for treating split ends, the best one is to cut the damaged fibers off.
Many people with split ends think that they have to change their monthly trim to once a week. In fact, that is not necessary. To prevent split ends from becoming worse, you can do other things, including trimming them yourself. Now before you panic, keep in mind that women do trim their own hair all the time and no one is the wiser. Even supermodels will trim their own hair between appointments! (more…)
How To Fix An Overly Dark Dye Job (or just a bad one)
Lindsey is in her mid-twenties and hails from the Midwest, a land second only to the South in Really Bad Hair. Having spent much of her youth supporting that title, she feels compelled to help others escape a similar fate, and is convinced salvation can be found in department store product aisles. Lindsey hates seeing people with wet hair in public and is suspicious of shampoo that costs more than $20.
In the years and years that I’ve been coloring my own hair, I’ve had a total of two “oops!” dye jobs. The first is unfortunately immortalized on my current driver’s license in the form of completely black hair. Lots of pale people can pull off brown-black or black hair. Apparently I am not one of them. The second “oops” occurred yesterday. It’s autumn and I want lovely, shiny, dark brown hair. And I mostly have it. I deviated from my normal hair color brand and shades, choosing something seemingly innocuous and ended up with almost-black bangs, roots, and ends. The middle? A medium brown. Ombre may be a trend, but NOT ON YOUR HAIR.
Unable to afford a professional fix and headed to a wedding this weekend, I and my patchy hair went to a beauty supply store, where they presented me with two options: buy a professional dye kit, bowl, brush, developer, etc or buy L’Oreal Color Zap to bleach the color out. I went with the third option: Google. Armed with the knowledge of the masses, I went back to the drugstore and my mainstay hair color, as well as bought some dish soap. The unsealed hair color box made me suspicious, so I checked to make sure the numbers on the bottle and on the box matched. They didn’t. When I was in high school, a friend regaled me with a story about how her co-workers used to switch hair dyes around when they were bored at work. Horrified, I’ve checked and double-checked product numbers ever since. My neurotic behavior has finally been vindicated!
Back at home I lathered up my head (particularly the roots and the ends) with some Palmolive, rinsed and repeated. I let it air dry, and apologized to my poor, innocent hair, promising to buy it ice cream or maybe a pony. At the very least, some really deep conditioner. It is of course, entirely possible that I botched this one and applied it poorly. But I’m skeptical of that being the lone culprit having colored my hair dozens of times before, and am going to go ahead and point some blame at the brand. Whose name will go unmentioned so as to protect the innocent.
Screw that, it was GARNIER.
In any case, thanks to a little dish soap (another alternative being a good clarifying shampoo) and some freshly and carefully-applied L’Oreal Feria, my hair is rested, redyed, and ready to work. Perhaps a little bit more fragile, but no longer resembling the back end of a raccoon. I obviously wouldn’t recommend this as a regular antidote to overly darkened hair, but as a quick fix? It totally worked.
Salon Outlook Positive in Q3
The outlook for the salon/spa industry remained positive in the third quarter, as the Professional Beauty Association’s (PBA) Salon/Spa Performance Index (SSPI) rose for the second consecutive quarter. The SSPI — a quarterly composite index that tracks the health of and outlook for the U.S. salon/spa industry — stood at 101.9 in the third quarter, up 0.1 percent from its second-quarter level. The SSPI is constructed so that the health of the salon/spa industry is measured in relation to a steady state level of 100. Index values above 100 indicate that key industry indicators are in a period of expansion, while index values below 100 represent a period of contraction for key industry indicators.
“For the first time this year, salon/spa owners reported a net increase in service sales. However, they also reported that retail sales continue to be soft,” said Sam Leyvas, PBA’s director of government affairs. “Long term we are seeing growing optimism on the part of salon/spa owners both in terms of service and retail sales in the months ahead.
The SSPI is based on the responses to PBA’s Salon/Spa Industry Tracking Survey, which is fielded quarterly among 800 salon/spa owners nationwide on a variety of indicators including service and retail sales, customer traffic, employee/hours and capital expenditures. The Index consists of two components — the Current Situation Index and the Expectations Index.
The Current Situation Index, which measures current trends in five industry indicators (service sales, retail sales, customer traffic, employees/hours and capital expenditures), stood at 99.1 in the third quarter – down 0.6 percent from its second quarter level of 99.7. The Current Situation Index has remained below 100 throughout 2009, which represents contraction in the current situation indicators.
For the first time in 2009, salon/spa owners reported a net increase in service sales, meaning more owners reported higher sales than lower sales. Thirty-eight percent of salon/spa owners reported an increase in same-store service sales between the third quarters of 2008 and 2009, while 36 percent reported a sales decline.
Although salon/spa owners reported an improvement in service sales in the third quarter, they continued to report soft retail sales. Forty-seven percent of salon/spa owners reported lower retail sales in the third quarter while thirty-six percent of salon/spa owners reported higher retail sales between the third quarters of 2008 and 2009.
The Expectations Index, which measures salon/spa owners’ six-month outlook for five industry indicators (service sales, retail sales, employees, capital expenditures and business conditions), rose 0.7 percent in the third quarter to a level of 104.6. The Expectations Index remains well above 100, which indicates that salon/spa owners are optimistic about industry growth in the months ahead.
Third quarter growth in the Expectations Index was driven by growing optimism for both service and retail sales in the months ahead. Fully seven out of 10 salon/spa owners said they expect to have higher service sales in six months (compared to the same period in the previous year). Only 8 percent of salon/spa owners expect their service sales volume in six months to be lower than it was during the same period in the previous year.
Salon/spa owners are also much more optimistic about stronger retail sales in the months ahead. Sixty-one percent of salon/spa owners said they expect to have higher retail sales in six months (compared to the same period in the previous year. In comparison, just 9 percent expect their retail sales to decline in six months (compared to the same period in the previous year).
“PBA takes pride in providing timely and relevant economic data to the marketplace,” said Sam Leyvas “doing so is critical to our mission as the industry’s leading trade association.”
by Michelle Breyer on Thursday, October 29, 2009
The full SSPI and second quarter Salon/Spa Tracking Survey Report can be found at www.probeauty.org.
Celebrity Stylist Opens Multi-Textural Salon
Anthony Dickey is opening a new salon where all hair textures can co-exist under one roof.
Hair Rules New York, with its elite team of stylists and colorists, is located at 828 Ninth Avenue, between 54th and 55th streets in the diverse Clinto neighborhood.
“From the first day of cosmetology school, stylists are taught to process hair without regard to natural texture,” explains celebrity stylist Dickey, creator of the Hair Rules line of products for multi-textural hair. “What that means to women with highly textured hair is that their hair is a problem that needs fixing.”
As a result, says Dickey, generations of women with wavy, curly and kinky hair have battled their hair into submission, often with damaging chemicals and heat. “The result of that is not only damaged hair, but divisive notions about what’s socially, professionally and fashionably acceptable.”
Although the majority of salons work with a broad clientele with all hair types, many stylists do not feel comfortable working with naturally kinky hair. And for many salons that do specialize in highly textured hair, the main focus may be relaxers, weaves and heat styling to change the texture rather than work with it.
Full article at CurlStylist.com.