David Stanko

Redken Artist & Color Consultant

Spring "Bling" and "Floss" for Fall

What do "Bling" and "Floss" have to do with haircolor? A lot, if you want to upgrade yourself. In urban dictionaries, bling is synonymous with expensive, and floss or flossin’ is to flaunt something costly–or to show off your bling.

June, July and August, traditionally slow business periods, present the perfect opportunity to make the bling-and-floss upgrade. Clients are at their backyard gatherings, the Hamptons or their lake houses much of the time, and they need to keep their color strong. You want to keep your business brawny. It’s the perfect storm that ends with a rainbow!

Fact:

In 2007, there were nearly 65 million salon haircolor applications and 62 million instances of home haircolor happening.* When the spread is that small, it’s time to step-up your game and tap into what excites, such as time-saving techniques, more interesting ideas and new names for color services.

The best way to create incredible-looking color that gets clients flossin’ is to combine services and deliver them in a single sitting. A package deal with a playful name keeps retention and referrals high. For a modern menage-a-trio, I recommend combining a trio of top services that lead to a Trifecta-style win for everyone involved. All you need to do is to price those services right.

Best Bet:

Apply your base color, add a few customized highlights and refresh with Shades EQ between foils. Charge what you normally do for a retouch and refresh, then add a few extra dollars for the customized highlights. For example: if you normally charge $80.00 for a half-head highlight, or use about 40 foils, try using 20 foils and charging half of the price or $40.00. There’s your price.

Redken always gives you haircolor collections you can tap into when going for the bling. Color Fusion’s Gold Infusion and Metallic Glam are just two examples. Don’t look at their names too literally–they’re great, functional shades you can rely on for more interesting results with bling. Gold Infusion isn’t an 18-karat gold, but very rich brunettes and blondes with soft gold/beige or gold/red nuances. Here’s how I use it for Bling-Bling Brunette.

Last season, I used Redken Color Fusion 6N + 6Gb + 6NN to cover my client Karen’s gray hair. In the spirit of evolving and upgrading both of us, I recently started using Color Fusion 6BGb at the regrowth. Then I added custom-placed highlights and applied Shades EQ 06GB (a toffee tone) to seal the deal between foils. Of course, it was all in one go–everyone’s time is at a premium.

When you do it right, it’s "sick," which means mad-cool. My results were a deepened regrowth, greater depth and dimension along the shaft and customized highlights that are a standout in the outdoor sun.

However you use Redken Color Fusion to create high-rent hair, make it "Phat" by finishing with Chemistry System’s three–step Recovery Treatment that ends with PHix PHase. With one application, your clients will see an immediate, visible improvement in the quality of their hair, plus amazing color and styling results every time! Just a little something extra to floss about.

*Source: Haircolor Incidence Study 2006, U.S. Census Bureau 2002, Women Ages 20+