At a recent trade show. I attended several seminars given by nail manufacturers. Although the topics were product specific much of the information given could ho applied to any product or technique.

One common theme in all the seminars I attended was the importance of retail: specifically the importance of offering your clients retail products they can’t get anywhere else. Any woman can go into a drug store and pick up an over the-counter nail treatment, said one educator. “But that product isn’t going to work if she doesn’t have the support of a nail professional to teach her how to use it. When you sell professional products in your salon, you are also providing service and support, winch your clients can’t get anywhere else.

Okay, let’s not kid ourselves. One of the reasons tins seminar was being offered was to sell the product. And this particular educator made no secret of the fact that she felt salon owners and nail technicians should be stocking the product she was selling. But that doesn’t make her point any loss valid. And her point was that the salon that stocks and sells her product gels sales and technical support from a manufacturer who is loyal to the professional salon. If you are selling her company’s product and a customer has a problem with it, you have access to the manufacturer, somebody you can go to with that problem. If you stock the same products as your local drug store, are you going to get that kind of support? Probably not.

When salons sell professional-only products, everybody wins. The manufacturer, obviously, wins because the products are being sold. The salon wins because customers are spending money above the puce o their services. And the customers win because they are receiving the educational support necessary to make the products they buy work best for them.

Retailing home care products is an additional service you are offering your clients. Think about it. There are reasons you use the products you use. Presumably you’ve shopped around and found which products work best, which are most cost-effective and winch manufacturers provide the best service to you. When you retail professional products to your clients you pass all these benefits on to them. And after all that’s why they’re coming to you in the first place – to receive benefits they can’t get lay buying products at the drugstore and doing then nails at home.

 

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