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Hi, everyone.
Wanna talk a little bit about some gray coverage and our gray coverage clients between the chemistry of what we're doing in the business, which is really what we teach, chemistry, design, and business, and how they all intersect with what we're doing.
Following through with the business of the clients, researching market research, what's going on with our clients, we have found that that in between, root touch up for our great clients is really where we're losing a lot of clients to over the counter.
We're just not making it from one appointment to the next. And and I can speak personally about this. You know, after a couple weeks when it starts to come in and you start to see some gray and you have events coming up, but your appointment isn't for a couple of weeks, what do you do? In a desperate situation, they're gonna run to the store. When they're in the supermarket, grab grab a box and touch it up in between visits. So a couple things we can do here.
One, we can implement some sort of, you know, root and scoot type of appointment.
They come in and maybe we just do the top and around the hairline.
You know, we fixed this same problem we had when we started doing foil highlights.
People didn't wanna sit for the whole time, pay the full price just to get this top touched up. So we invented partial foils. And I think we need to do the same thing now with gray coverage. It's time to address this problem because it's really starting to affect us, and it's affecting us in our pocketbooks, the amount of visits we have.
So a couple things. Some sort of root and scoot would be wonderful.
If maybe they come in and you apply the color, maybe they go home with the color on their head. Or, maybe it's just a quick touch up, pop them under a dryer or a steamer for five, ten minutes, and just get them another two to three thousand miles till their next visit for the full appointment. Maybe you even do that a couple of times to help save them money in between visits.
We also have some fabulous products that we can give them to take home. This is one of them. This is a hair retouch right here. This is the spray version.
There's five different colors. There's three different browns, a dark, a medium, a light brown. But I have used this too in in an emergency pinch, and they're wonderful and they work great. And if we can get this in the hands of our gray coverage clients, one, our retail goes up, and that's fabulous for us. But two, it really helps them. Along with this product, with our gray coverage knowledge and our gray coverage education, there's a couple of other things that we can do for this.
This is such a visual type of, class and information and education when we talk about this because we're talking about the finish of what we're doing, not necessarily the coverage, but the finish. So with great coverage, we typically have two, three, four different levels that we're starting from in the hair. Have some white hairs, have some of her natural hair, have some that are grayish, have have all sorts of levels in there. So when you start with multiple levels when you're doing gray coverage, if she has multiple levels and you cover her color her hair, she's gonna have multiple levels when you're done. And of course, the white hair is gonna look a level to two lighter than every other hair that you just colored.
Some people consider that a gray coverage problem where when it's not.
It's a finished problem. If you start with multiple levels but you want all that hair to be the same level when you're done, we have to pretreat or prestain or precolor the hair before we do it.
So we're not necessarily fighting a great coverage problem as we are trying to get the finish that we want on that client.
And let's talk about that finish. Some clients should have and want to have one solid look, every hair the same color. That's more of an opaque finish.
Some don't. Some like that multilevel finish.
My hair is a multilevel finish. It works for me. I'm a warmer client. I'm a fall.
If all my hair was exactly the same color, it would look more artificial or wig like or flat on someone like me. But the cooler clients absolutely want a more opaque all the hair the same color. That's exactly why these things are so important for those clients.
So it's being able as a colorist to look at her, look at her coloring, ask her some questions specifically about what bothers her about the color when you're done, the color in between, smack dab in between visits, what is your hair like, what bothers you then, and when she comes back in the door. So we can fix all of those gray coverage problems just by asking a few questions.
One major problem I see stylists do as I go around the country teaching is everybody has this one size fits all. Twenty volume for everyone.
Six n and twenty volume for everyone. And that's really where we're falling apart in the gray coverage world. We have to be able to do medium ash brown, straight up ash brown on gray coverage clients. And the warms and the neutrals, we have to be able to do all that with the finish. Do we want it opaque or do we want a multilevel finish when we're done?
For the ones that are really struggling with the gray coming in, some people think it's fading. Two weeks later, you're gonna start to see some gray. She thinks the color is fading. We have to have that conversation.
It's not fading. It's coming in.
If it's bothering you as it starts to come in in two weeks, this is exactly what you do right here. This is what she needs or she comes in for a root and scoot appointment. For someone like me that I have a multilevel finish, you can see the the white hairs are lighter than everything else. It doesn't look gray to me. It just looks like a multilevel finish to me. It doesn't bother me so much. Although, at a certain point as the gray starts coming in, maybe a week before my appointment, it really starts to bother me, which I need one of these.
Unless you can put some root and scoop, in for that client. I'm the one that can actually substitute my whole gray coverage appointment with just a root and scoop where other people cannot, and we need to ask those questions, do better consultation to find out what her pain point is for her gray coverage. But either way, these things are gonna help us in in in a in a big way. As far as the being able to use straight up ash or medium ash brown for gray coverage, If you're still being educated that you cannot cover gray with ash, that ash doesn't work, that, you need twenty volume, which is gonna make it warm when she should stay stay cool, you gotta get on the library and watch Fierce formulation.
And you gotta have a good color line, a fully pigmented line like Tuto to be able to do that type of work. So having the right tools like this, like a good color line because gray coverage is forty percent of what we do and we gotta get better at this. We're still doing it the way it was done twenty five, thirty years ago. There's a whole new language. There's a whole new level of education. There's a whole new aspect of handling our great coverage clients on on people my age.
Gotta learn that, gotta get on the library, gotta get the tools, gotta get things to send home with them if we're really gonna conquer this great coverage problem.
You know, it isn't every day that I'm worried about some gray coming through in between visits. It's only for certain events. I'm going somewhere, going to lunch, have an appointment, something like that.
So you can get some miles out of a product like this. They can spray it on and then the next day don't.
Maybe they have it for six months so it's a great investment purchase for the client.
There's also powders out there for some people they can put the powders in. All of these things are good but we really got to start implementing these tools. And instead of just touching them up and sending them on their way, give them something to take home with them for those days that they really need a little extra boost just to cover it up, just to get them through. So I love this product.
Some of them are runny. Some of them, you know, are really off color, but I really loved this one. It's imported from Italy. So when you're making your purchase, buy a couple of these things.
Get them into the hands of people who are really having a hard time and struggling. And don't be afraid to have that conversation with her. Ask her if it's really bothering her in between visits. Some people it doesn't.
But the ones that it does, make sure you have this product to give to them that they're going to make it from appointment to appointment without going to the store and having to do it themselves. Go to the store. Grab a couple of these on your next purchase. You'll be so happy that you did, and your clients will even be more happy that you did.