WHY GOING GREY IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS

WHY GOING GREY IS GOOD FOR BUSINESS

SILVER LINING

For decades, we’ve been taught to cover grey. Now we should help clients embrace it, says colourist Nancy Stripe – it could be the best thing you’ve done for your business in years.

Nancy Stripe

When it comes to grey hair, real change is afoot. In 2024, it’s a statement of confidence and intent. Whether on the red carpet (Emma Thompson, Lady Gaga, Andie McDowell); among the fashion crowd (British Vogue’s Sarah Harris, Erin O’Connor, Jan de Villeneuve); or even on the world stage (Christine Lagarde and Princess Caroline), women of all ages are embracing a hair colour that for many years was seen as a sign of “letting yourself go”.

Leading the charge here in the UK is colourist Nancy Stripe (owner of Stripe Studio in Handforth, near Manchester), whose interest in grey was piqued when several of her clients who worked in and around fashion (30-, 40- and 50-year-olds) said they’d had enough of their male counterparts being labelled Silver Foxes and decided to wear their Silver Vixen crown. Stripe’s decision actively to market to grey conversion clients has not only been lucrative for her business (clients have been known to spend £600+ in a single appointment), it’s also led to a new education course, Embrace the Grey, that’s rolling out this year in partnership with L’Oréal Professionnel Paris.

So, when is it time to have a conversation about going grey? “As early as possible,” says Nancy, “because if you start blending the grey earlier, the eye gets used to seeing the grey in the hair. When women wait until they have a more solid amount of grey, they go from looking like they’ve got solidly warm colour hair to maybe being fully grey, and that jump is too much. It makes them feel old.” Clues to look out for that a client might be ready and willing? “When they say they’re sick of coming to the salon every three to four weeks, or they’ve got a white band around the hairline. But lots of clients are still worried about what others might think, so you’ve got to be ready with the support and encouragement.”

Transitioning to grey is a long and winding road – you’re looking at around a year, with some challenging moments along the way – so that initial consultation is absolutely vital. Says Nancy: “Key questions to ask include, How much grey are they comfortable seeing? Do they want a more fashionable grey placement? Are they willing to consider a different – possibly edgier – haircut, or will they look to retain their youthfulness through sharper clothes and make-up? Grey hair is naturally coarser, so you will also need to assess the condition properly before going ahead with any lightening methods, and also how much lift the hair can take because that will determine how many sessions will be needed to achieve the finished result. It’s vital you give your client realistic expectations.”

Is it going to be expensive? Yes, it is. But as Stripe argues, it’s highly likely these clients are already investing in expertly applied Botox and fillers (subtle enhancements being the order of the day), so cost tends not to be a deterrent. “I am very strict with my clients. I let them know there will need to be treatment plans, specialist products and if you don’t think you can do it, we can always go back to full coverage.  But it’s usually three to four appointments down the line where they think, Okay, here we are. Bingo!”

Stripe has identified four distinct client types, each with a different attitude to embracing grey, and each, therefore, requiring a different approach in her chair.

• The Embracer (role model, the actress Andie MacDowell) is excited to explore their natural grey patterns and wants to keep as much of the natural as possible. She will be looking to get maximum longevity from the colour. You’ll mainly be using babylights and balayage with this client, with powerful lighteners (where the hair can take it) and glossing.

• The Blender (à la Jennifer Aniston) wants to work with her natural grey to create a new canvas of blonde and balayage through her hair. She wants to retain a definite coloured look and will be back in the salon every three months for top-ups. High-level lifting will be required, with lots of coverage but easy to grow out.

• The Illusionist (as illustrated by actress Sarah Jessica Parker) wants to look as close to her darker base as possible, but with a softer grow-out She’ll be back in the salon within eight weeks, like a global application would be, but with a gentler blend. She’ll mainly need coverage in foils, but perhaps also some lightening and glossing.

• And finally, there’s The Bold (think, model Erin O’Connor). She may want an edgier look, such as a solid piece of her natural grey in the hairline and the rest of her hair kept darker.

Potential problems to look out for? Clients will feel their hair is too light, as they are so used to being a brunette. In this case, darken only with low lights and leave grey placement. Highlights may go too warm so there is too much contrast against the grey. In this case, use the strongest lightener possible and in fine sections for maximum lift, alongside a treatment plan (Stripe swears by L’Oréal Professionnel Paris’s Absolut Repair Molecular). And if the tint used for coverage in lowlights is fading too warm against the natural, then it’s causing too much of a shift in the undercoat, so go with a cool reflect for a truer tone and a softer fade.

For decades, colourists have been conditioned to cover grey. Now, it turns out that helping your clients transition to grey is not only an impressive showcase of your technical skills, it may also provide you with incredible job satisfaction. Says Stripe: “I’m 40 next year and as you age, things change. You change, your clients change. My 20-year-old self would have thought having an older client base would be so boring. But now I know what great people these clients are to have in your life. The conversations we have are brilliant and quite exciting, actually!”

GOING GREY

 

  1. The start of Michelle’s journey and her two-week dreaded regrowth that made her re-think her approach to coverage.
  2. After starting to go lighter, she still felt like the regrowth line was too severe and wanted a much more natural grow-out.
  3. Session 2 of grey blending and we can see the grey is starting to become part of the fabric of her hair. Object today was to lighten the face frame and melt the colour together to create more depth and dimension.
  4. The result from session 2.
  5. L’Oréal photo-shoot day. Now very established in the grey blending technique, Michelle is getting four months in between salon visits. Today we got to try the new Dia Color shades as it offers up to 70 per cent coverage.
  6. Our stunning result. What a difference from when we first started!

Book the course:

Navigating Grey with Nancy Stripe

£220 per person

Leeds – 3 June 2024

Cardiff – 24 June 2024

London  – 12 August 2024

Edinburgh  9 September 2024

Register

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L’ORÉAL COLOUR TROPHY OPEN FOR 2024

L’ORÉAL COLOUR TROPHY OPEN FOR 2024

L’ORÉAL COLOUR TROPHY OPEN FOR 2024

From Future Talent to Moving Image, the iconic competition is now open for entries in both the UK and Ireland.

2023 Irish winners

2023 UK winners

The legendary L’Oréal Colour Trophy has opened entries for its 2024 competition, welcoming all hair pros in the UK and Ireland to take part. 

With six categories in the UK and four in Ireland, the competition shares a platform with professional colourists to showcase their artistry, shining a spotlight on creative colour with a firm eye on future trends and commercial looks. 

Now in its 68th year, the L’Oréal Colour Trophy’s mission is to uncover talent from all corners of the UK and Ireland. Entrants across all categories are invited to create a colour look on any model, of any gender or any gender identity of any hair type. The deadline for entries is 19 April. 

Alongside the original Colour Trophy category in both the UK and Ireland, there is the STAR Award, and also the Future Talent Award, for younger colourists to make their mark.  

Unveiled last year, the Moving Image Award returns to both the UK and Ireland to celebrate colourists excelling on social media. Entrants are asked to create a reel on Instagram or TikTok between 30-60 seconds of a finished hair look that illustrates real skill and delivers impact. 

In addition, UK entrants can also compete in the Afro Award, specialising in a hair type texture between 3C and 4C, in addition to the Colour Specialist Award, aimed at those stylists who have completed the Colour Specialist education programme with L’Oréal Professionnel Paris. 

In 2023, Sheffield’s Scullion and Scot won the L’Oréal Colour Trophy Grand Final in the UK, while Zeba Hairdressing scooped the L’Oréal Colour Trophy Ireland title. 

For more details on all the categories, visit lorealcolourtrophy.com or lorealcolourtrophy.ie. 

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THE MAN WHO’S CHANGING COLOUR FOREVER

THE MAN WHO’S CHANGING COLOUR FOREVER

THE MAN WHO'S CHANGING COLOUR FOREVER

Creative HEAD meets the brains behind Yuv Lab – potentially the biggest industry game-changer since the hairdryer.

Francisco Gimenez

Thought about your colour bar lately? It’s where your colourists mix the concoctions that command some of the highest charges on your treatment menu, but it’s also where your business haemorrhages money, too. Salon owners estimate that at least 40 per cent of the colour they buy goes to waste. And that’s why Francisco Gimenez has been thinking about your colour bar too.

The Mexico City-born tech entrepreneur is the brains behind the Yuv Lab, billed as the first smart, bespoke hair colour lab for salons and freelance colourists, looking to streamline and automate the colour formula process dramatically to reduce waste and costs while making clients happier.

Gimenez, whose engineering background predisposes him to problem-solving “I’ve been called a disruptor, but I have never set out deliberately to challenge things,” he says), had spent years thinking about and observing professional colour during his time with the customised hair colour business, eSalon. He had seen how colourists always mix colour by hand, a process that is not only susceptible to improvisation but that almost automatically creates a surplus of unused formula. It tends to taketwo to three shades to mix a client’s colour but only about half or a quarter tube of each shade is used. If colour runs out mid-application, it’s normal to run back to the colour bar and mix the full amount again, in order to get the same consistency. Says Gimenez: “What’s left in the mixing bowl after colouring a client’s hair gets thrown out, as does unused product in the multiple bottles of colour opened to create that person’s shade, since opened bottles of colour have a short shelf life before the formula begins to oxidise. If what’s left over isn’t quickly used on another client, it simply gets thrown away.

“On top of that, salons typically purchase a professional colour brand’s full portfolio of 100+ shades, many of which are nearly identical with only very subtle pigment differences,” he continues. “Itopened my eyes to all the unnecessary spending and excess waste that’s occurring, and I thought, there has to be a better business model.”

Gimenez’s solution is the Yuv Lab (pronounced “you’ve”), a patent-pending refillable cartridge-based dispenser that’s light enough to carry under your arm (making it perfect for freelancers, too), and that can store and dispense millions of customised colour formulations. Instead of mixing colour by hand, Yuv does it all with the touch of a button. The machine’s sensors – Gimenez had a whole team of robotics and manufacturing experts working for him – measure and calibrate exactly how much of each colour is to be used on a client, then it stores that information online for future visits, eliminating the need for keeping clients’ formulas on hand-written notecards (which as we all know, can often be marked incorrectly or get lost altogether).

 

Yuv ambassadors Grace Dalgleish, Jack Mead & Lydia Wolfe and Samantha Cusick
 

Yuv uses refillable aluminium cartridges, rather than single-use plastic bottles, ticking important sustainability boxes – every delivery includes prepaid return shipping labels to send empty cartridges back to the company. The colour itself (which Gimenez knew had to be world-class) was created by a speciality colour formulation lab in Switzerland. It provides up to 100 per cent grey coverage, using ME-PPD technology to dramatically reduce allergic reactions. The Lab is also equipped with all the developers needed, including a cream bleach, and offers the flexibility to substitute ingredients to create semi-permanent formulas. 

But here’s the bit that’s truly revolutionary: you don’t purchase any colour inventory upfront. Yuv Lab runs on a ‘pay as you dispense’ model, meaning salons and freelancers will only be charged for what they use, eliminating paying for dead stock and cutting down on waste. The smart system tracks colour consumption over time and adjusts consignment deliveries to match what you use, streamlining inventory and saving precious shelf space.

“We bill for the grams of colour used, which is precisely tracked by the Yuv Lab machine and stored in your online account,” explains Gimenez. “The cost per full tube of colour is roughly the same as what the other major salon brands charge, but it’s pay-as-you-go colour, so you get better value because each tube lasts longer, and you never pay for unused formula.” He estimates that Yuv can reduce product waste and cut colour spend by as much as 35 per cent on both fronts.

It costs £49 a month to subscribe, which includes a Yuv Lab, an iPad to access its app, a thermal printer to label hair colour bowls, and access to its business solutions.Even with our fee, you still save 25 to 35 per cent on overall colour costs because Yuv cuts out product waste and you’re not paying for inventory,” says Gimenez. “And renting the machine, rather than buying it upfront, removes all fear of expensive commitment.”

Gimenez has thought about potential barriers to Yuv Lab, too – for example, he knows that colourists get attached to their current colour brand and so do their clients, who’ve been depending on the existing hair colours. To get salons and hair colourists comfortable with switching, Yuv grasps what’s been effective for them to date to enable its machine to replicate that.

Explains Gimenez, “Instead of forcing people to learn a new system, Yuv allows each hairdresser working in the salon to customise their account. That means Yuv works bespoke to each colourist and their way of working, which means it’s not a problem if you have a new team hire and they’ve got their own unique approach to mixing and using colour.”

But most important of all to Gimenez was to reassure colourists they can still be creative with Yuv – in fact Yuv pledges to amplify creativity. The machine enables hair colourists to play with tones, ammonia levels, pH, opacity and more, and repeat the results of their playing consistently after they’ve pinned down their desired concoction. Gimenez envisions hair colourists developing tailored hair colour palettes akin to Spotify playlists of hair dye that they can leverage to boost their personal brands.

The Yuv HQ is in London because, “it’s a good benchmark market for a hair salon business in that you’re connected both to Western Europe and the US,” says Gimenez. Plus, he loves London. YuvLab has been put through its paces in a selection of London salons and now, with the feedback in place, the time has come to roll it out further. Grace Dalgleish and Samantha Cusick have beenappointed UK colour ambassadors (“Yuv will revolutionise our industry,” says Dalgleish. “I can’t wait to create my own bespoke palette for the brand”, while Cusick will collaborate with Yuv to develop new shades and formulations that meet the needs of modern salons and freelancers). And they have just been joined by Jack Mead and Lydia Wolfe from Jack & The Wolfe. Says Gimenez: “Their commitment to pushing creative boundaries and their influence in the industry make them an ideal fit for the brand”.

Gimenez is carefully building its salon and hair colourist network, one by one, knowing that as the word spreads, there’s a growing waitlist of salons that want Yuv Lab. Scaling up will come once every box is ticked. “I really want our first clients to be satisfied,” he says, and then the volume will come. So, to me, the number one thing is the satisfaction of those first clients. The plans for growing will happen once everything is ready.”

Francisco, we’re ready!

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GRACE DALGLEISH ON... WHEN INSPIRATION DOESN'T STRIKE

The 2023 double Most Wanted award winner shares her guide on how to find inspiration when it’s playing hard to get

We all know the importance of finding inspiration. It’s a powerful force that drives creativity, motivation, and the generation of new ideas. It often involves a deep emotional or intellectual connection that sparks enthusiasm and a sense of purpose. Finding inspiration can be a highly personal and subjective experience, but what happens when inspiration dries up? Even with the best will in the world, all artists experience periods when inspiration just isn’t there. What can colourists do when it happens? 

 Switch up your tools 

Why should we be limited to a tint brush? It’s fun to experiment with different sized paintbrushes; different angles can create various blends and placements. Sponges are a great way to create seamless freehand blends, making the most commercial applications fun. 

Play with paints 

Truly understand your colour wheel; it’s essential to know this inside out to take your formulas to the next level. When looking to customise shades, play with acrylic or water paints to understand how to create the most unique tones. For example, while working on different shades of greens, I found that adding a dot of red to my formula created a more muted beige effect, giving me the perfect pistachio.  

Get swatching 

Personalisation is exactly where colour is; crafting colour for the individual and giving our clients a reason to return to us. After playing around with paints, I love to test my shades on swatches to see how they transfer onto hair. This gives me a starting point, allowing me to keep tweaking until I find that perfect shade.  

Press pause 

To be creative, we need downtime. It’s essential to pause and stop. I find new inspirations spark when I take a break from social media and immerse myself in something other than hair – whether that be watching a documentary or taking a walk and observing people. Recently, I was inspired by a group of students who had been colouring their hair themselves. It was super visual and made me consider how I could recreate it. 

Inspiration can’t be forced; it needs to flow through you. When life is busy or there’s a deadline attached it can be difficult to feel inspired. Looking at colour through a different perspective, stepping away from the situation or trying something new, gives internal space for creative thinking and fresh ideas to come alive. Inspiration can’t be forced but it can be encouraged, it needs to be nurtured. Stay open and stay curious. 

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NEW GUIDELINES REVEALED FOR ALLERGY TESTING

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NEW GUIDELINES REVEALED FOR ALLERGY TESTING

Collaboration of industry bodies unveils new testing protocols for professional colour in the UK.

A new allergy testing protocol for professional hair colour has been unveiled through a collaboration of industry bodies. 

Associations including the National Hair and Beauty Federation and Hair & Barber Council have blended the changes announced by Cosmetics Europe last year with existing industry best practices. The new guidelines offer a clear benchmark for hair professionals, insurers and hair colour brands to meet to promote the safe use of professional hair colour services in the UK. 

Posting professional colour to a client’s home for them to test at home is not recommended under the new protocol, as this goes against industry best practice and may invalidate insurance cover.

The new protocol recognises three systems for professional allergy alert testing:

1. The Allergy Alert Test (AAT)
Instructions designed by manufacturers and printed on packaging and instructions for use.

2. Protocols designed for professional use only and conducted by a hair professional*
Hair colour brand protocols are applicable to their own products only, whereas some hair industry, trade organisations’ and insurers’ protocols can be used with any hair colour brand.

3. Universal allergy screening tests licenced as medicines for consumers to use at home to screen for the most common hair colour allergen (PPD)
These products are available to buy online or via approved stockists and may only need to be used once.  

“Having three options that have been thoroughly researched and examined by our industry leaders makes it simpler to understand and easier for us to communicate to the public,” says Gareth Penn, registrar at the Hair & Barber Council.

“Allergy alert tests are vital to protect clients and guard against potentially expensive legal action if something goes wrong. This is a huge step in the right direction,” added Caroline Larissey, chief executive at the National Hair & Beauty Federation. “These collaborative guidelines will help raise standards and also support clients make an informed choice.”

The industry bodies working together are Good Salon Guide, Salon Employers Association, the Barber Council, the Fellowship for British Hairdressing, the Freelance Hairdressers’ Association, the Hair Council, the Men’s Hairdressing Federation and the National Hair & Beauty Federation.

* Precise protocols differ and it is the responsibility of hair professionals to check cover with their own insurance provider.