How to integrate hair and beauty

Creating harmony between hair and beauty services is important in a successful salon Beauty means business, and expanding your salon services to encompass nails, make-up, tanning or skincare can bring in new clients and extra revenue. However, it is important to integrate hair and beauty services effectively, and to ensure clients trust your expertise in both. We spoke to Beverly Bates of Ekko in Banbury, to find out how she integrates La Biosthetique skincare into her salon. Do you have separate hair and beauty areas in the salon? “No, our skincare sits alongside our haircare, and we have sale displays throughout the salon, alongside beautiful La Biosthetique imagery. Our projector displays skin and hair photographs and information onto a light box. We follow this through with skincare information on our newsletters, Twitter and Facebook feed.” [caption id="attachment_20121" align="alignleft" width="300"] Ekko's total concept salon[/caption] How do you introduce your clients to the integrated services? “We promote ourselves as a total concept salon. As soon as you walk into the salon you are surrounded by a beautiful, calming aroma and relaxing music. We introduce our clients to the La Biosthetique brand, and include its history and concept; the aim is to create healthy skin and scalp to produce the ultimate in beautiful, glossy hair. We perform the scalp test first to diagnose correct treatment, and the skin test to determine skin type. This always has a big impact on our clients and they are extremely interested in the information revealed.” How do you retail skincare? “We ask if clients have any particular issues with their skin and offer relevant treatments. For example, lines around the eyes is a common question so we’d offer them an anti-ageing eye cream or a gel patch which we apply and the clients can keep on during their hair treatment. We charge around £5 for this, and many people buy the gel patches as a result.” Do you have to be careful not to offend clients when talking about their skin? “We are careful to use words such as renewing, lifting, energising and hydrating when talking about the skin. We only say anti-age if the client raises the subject.” Do you hold any special hair and beauty events? “Every six weeks, we invite guests to a pamper evening where we demonstrate hair, beauty and make-up treatments and perform ‘how-to’ workshops. This always leads to a minimum retail spend of £100 per head, as well as bookings for hair and beauty treatments. Ultimately, it’s a case of creating the right environment to ensure the client is receptive to good advice and information.”