The Great Salon Comeback

Client confidence is key to getting the hair and beauty industry back on its feet. To ensure the success of a salon comeback, the priority for your clients is undoubtedly the same as for you and your team; offering the best service safely. It’s fantastic news then, that a recent survey from the L’Oreal Professional Products Division (LPPD) shows that clients do indeed feel safe and relaxed after returning to a salon. 

The UK hair industry struggled with one of the longest Lockdowns in Europe – pretty much 4 months of salon closure. Bravo to all of you who have worked so hard to reopen and get your teams and your communities keeping loyal and trusting. You deserve success. Here, courtesy of LPPD, are some figures to make you smile, drawn on a survey of nearly 300 women:

Elena Lavagni, Neville Hair and Beauty and L’Oréal Salon Partner, comments: “Clients have been feeling grateful that we have made so much effort to make them and the team safe. It was a nice refreshing feeling for them to re-establish their pre-lockdown routine as well as experiencing the much needed the feel-good factor. As we are fortunate to have a larger salon, we are able to maintain a pre-covid environment whilst meeting the social distancing rules. This has given the clients a sense of normality in such unprecedented times.”

Professional comment

The report from LPPD continues: Salons have always been an environment that uphold the highest care and hygiene measures, as well as a place where their clients come to relax. Since the safe reopening, salons have very quickly and seamlessly implemented the new government measures for hygiene and safety. They’ve done this whilst ensuring that their clients can enjoy the same exceptional level of experience. In fact, 93%* of women felt equally or more relaxed and pampered on their post-lockdown salon visit. And 95%* agreed that they felt safe in the salon.

Many salons and hairdressers have gone above and beyond when prioritising their client’s safety and the research conducted by L’Oréal Professional Products Division demonstrates just how safe clients felt when returning post-lockdown. 95%* are now saying that they felt the salon was clean and hygienic. 94%* are being satisfied that measures were sufficient to reduce COVID-19 risk. Many salon team members and hairdressers have also completed additional training such as the L’Oréal Access Hygiene & Safety E-learning Certificate, which has been specifically designed to train salons and hairdressers on hygiene and safety measures, available on L’Oréal online education platform Access, now with over 40,000 users, uk.lorealaccess.com.

A beautiful and safe environment

The hair salon has long been a destination that is much more than updating physical appearance. It is a space and professional service that can help to support wellbeing and impact how people feel. The research revealed that despite the updated salon journey and measures, the actual experience and level of enjoyment was typically not impacted. 93%* of women say they felt equally or more relaxed and pampered. 96%* shared that they felt the same or better than usual after their salon appointment compared to how they usually feel after an appointment pre-lockdown. The research helps to demonstrate just how positive and seamless the salon experience continues to be post-lockdown. To further support salons, the L’Oréal Salon Emotion programme has been consistently offering webinars on L’Oréal Access on the new salon journey and experience under the current Covid-19 context with training across a variety of topics.

Salons continue to do an amazing job welcoming back their clients. However, the survey shows that some clients have still not returned with 28%* saying this is due to Covid-19 fears. The salon comeback is underway, but this indicates the need for salons to continue to communicate all of the hygiene and safety measures that are in place and to keep reinforcing client confidence.

Let’s keep the Great Salon Comeback front page news! 

*Post Covid Research: Salon Reopening. Conducted by 2CV Research on behalf of L’Oréal UKI via online interviews with 292 women aged 16-74, who had a salon appointment after lockdown was lifted. Interviews took place between 27^th-31^st July 2020.

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