Hello everyone . We are over half done with 25 days of blogging!! Today I want to talk about an issue that goes on in the beauty world and something I feel strongly about.
As a stylist, I have many clients tell me that they cannot produce the same results at home as their stylist does in the salon. We do our best to educate everyone on how to style their hair at home, and with that comes recommendation of products to create that look. But only about 30% of people actually purchase products from the salon.
A lot of people think they can go buy something similar off the drugstore shelf. To be clear, this is not an indictment of actual chain store hair care lines, such as Garnier and Organix, and if those work for you that’s great. I’m talking about lines such as Matrix, Paul Mitchell, etc, that are only sold by their companies to salons and then weirdly end up in the same place as paper towels and groceries.
You should NEVER go out and buy "salon" products such as "Big Sexy Hair' "Bed Head"(etc)at WalMart or CVS or Walgreens etc. And here is why.
You don’t know what’s REALLY in that bottle: Retailers that are not hair salons are not legally allowed to sell salon brand products. This means they often obtain these brands from wholesalers who go out of business or have shady business practices (notice how they never have an entire product line in stock).
Retailers often set them aside in a warehouse for years until the barcode expires so they can't be tracked. During this time, not only does the barcode expire but so does the product inside, warping from heat.The products you love may be well beyond their expiration date, left sitting in a hot warehouse for “who knows how long”, or even diluted or tampered with.
"I can tell you first hand that I found a whole shelf of Aveda gels at CVS (priced exactly the same as in the salon) that were yellow in color. I’ve worked with Aveda long enough to know that gel is supposed to be clear. Ew, gross!"
"I also have a friend who used to buy her Bumble and Bumble online because she could get the liter sizes and save $5 to $10. She used the same conditioner for years getting consistent results until the last bottle she bought tangled her hair instantly and made it feel dry and brittle. After I spoke with her about it and explained that these items can easily be tampered with (think about it, none of them are sealed before use), she agreed it wasn’t worth saving $10 if she couldn’t even guarantee the conditioner she loved was what’s inside the bottle."
Some of the largest professional brands in our industry are amongst the most frequently diverted. Many of these companies have spent millions of dollars in research to help battle this illegal activity and in doing so, they’ve uncovered alarming facts.
However, something that you can easily spot is that that the bottles of salon products that are sold at chains stores pretty often have weird stickers all over them, and ALWAYS a sticker with a different barcode slapped over the original barcode printed on the bottle.
Not only were their products being sold at drugstore often expired, but they found many of them were filled with bacteria and some were even replaced completely with cheap lotions and creams trying to pass for the salon brand conditioner you thought you were buying.
We know everyone wants to save money where they can, but the prices at these places are rarely different than ours in salon. And buying from your stylist is truly the only way to know what you’re spending your money on. so the bottom line is that as long as there are people doing hair within the same walls as you, you're good to go.
I hope this helps shed some light on the subject of why it’s important to buy your hair care products from your stylist. This is a subject I feel strongly about and would love to educate people on. Any questions -I would love to answer.
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