Great Advice from Avenue Five Beauty School in Austin, Texas
If you’re working in the beauty industry, one important aspect of your profession that you need to always be updated with is consumer trends. Let’s say that you are a salon owner and you have a team of five hair stylists, one nail technician, and one makeup artist. A client walks in, wanting to get everything done for a red carpet event. She wants to recreate the look sported by a Hollywood celebrity at an awards night.
If your staff is not knowledgeable about the latest makeup and hair trends, how can they work on the client so that she will go out of the salon looking like a million bucks? This is exactly why it’s a must to have everyone working at the salon keep up with the latest consumer trends. A big percentage of the clients walking in would want to go for trendy hairstyles instead of the classics, so in order to give them what they want, you have to know what’s going on beauty industry.
Quick Tips on Keeping Up with Consumer Trends
Here are a few quick tips on how to keep up with the latest consumer trends in the beauty industry:
• Sign up for trade journal subscriptions.
Almost all professionals subscribe to a trade journal of some sort. This keeps them updated with the latest industry trends. Be it an online journal or a magazine that you subscribe to, make sure to discuss it regularly with the staff so that you can all share in the knowledge. You can even cook new ideas based on the latest trends to get clients excited about trying out new hairstyles, hair color, or makeup trends.
• Prepare a list of websites that your staff can visit to check out Hollywood and runway hairstyle and makeup trends.
Entertainment and fashion websites are definitely a must-visit so that you can check out the looks which are being sported by Hollywood celebs, fashion bloggers, and models. You can also harness the power of the Internet by scanning applicable Subreddits everyday to get your creative juices flowing. Check out online forums where you or one of your staff can participate. This exchange of knowledge is important so that your knowledge about the latest trends in the beauty industry will not grow stagnant.
• Complement your services with DIY tips for clients.
Unfortunately, more and more women these days would rather go for an out-of-the-box hair color rather than visit a salon for professional hair coloring. There’s really nothing wrong with this, although it does take away from the number of clients that will actually walk into the salon for a professional job. To complement the DIY trend, you can probably give clients tips on how to maintain the hair color at home. Tell them that roots have become trendy. If they want to cover it up and they don’t have the budget for another salon visit, they can always find cheaper products on the beauty aisles of supermarkets or drugstores. You can also have your makeup artist give clients tips on how to do their own makeup at home.
• Take a quick peek at what your competitors are doing.
Lastly, there’s nothing wrong in scoping out the competition. What look are the other salons giving to their clients? How about the cuts for men or hairstyles for women? What products are clients taking home after a treatment from their salon? If you see them responding to an emerging trend, what can you do from your end to keep up?
Remember that the trends and styles in the beauty industry is constantly changing. Some trends come and go while others are born out of entirely new concepts. Keeping up with consumer trends might be a huge challenge, but it’s something that you have to do if you want to stay relevant in the business and you’d like to keep your clients happy.