Have you ever asked your clients what it is that keeps them purchasing their favorite skin care product? Do so and you will hear everything from “It reduces the fine lines on my face” to “It feels great on my skin” and “I love the smell.” These answers, and others, speak to the art that is skin care product formulation. Through a delicate balance of ingredients, chemists create products that cleanse, moisturize, lighten, protect, or reduce the signs of aging, with features such as pleasing consistency and pleasant fragrance, characteristics that appeal to consumers’ senses.

How do retail stores entice you to enter their doors and linger over their shelves full of irresistible products? Visual merchandising is a skill that department stores, shopping malls, and chain retailers have spent many years perfecting. Retailing and merchandising is an important part of your overall business plan and it will dramatically increase business profitability at your skin care center, salon, day spa, or medical spa. Lauren Gartland is the president of Inspiring Champions, a business training and coaching company specializing in the beauty industry. Gartland, along with Salon Spa Cash Flow expert Gary Ahlquist, regularly advise business owners on how to instantly boost their profits with retail.

Woodhouse Day Spas are appearing all over the country, but they are not your average spa nor is the company complacent to settle for the status quo. The Woodhouse team strives to improve and seek solutions to better serve its franchisees and ultimately the guests they serve. Since opening its first set of doors in 2001, The Woodhouse and its business model have proven to be a success. While each guest may receive different treatments, the total experience will always be the same. The company has developed a series of steps that spa employees must deliver to each guest, thus ensuring that all guests receive the same signature elements that are both unique and therapeutic.

The more you know about patient care, business, the arts, or just life in general; the more you can offer to your patients, your community, and your career. Professional and personal development improves existing and adds new skills, builds on your existing knowledge base, and gives you fresh perspectives of the world around you. As you develop yourself professionally and personally and apply what you learn to your practice, you increase your credibility, improve patient results, add to the level of professionalism in the skin care industry, and build your bottom line.
Deciding on where to invest your time and money for your development can be tricky.

Tis’ the season to creatively promote skin care! Well into the early fall, most salons and retailers start to get ready for the holiday season. They ramp up inventory, consider hiring more staff and plan special deals and marketing for the biggest selling season of the year. Once it comes time to start making the important marketing decisions that attract shoppers and clientele, all too often the busy season can force marketing to the back burner. The ideas were there in the beginning; however, the hustle and bustle of clientele and holiday appointments can get you off track.

The course of rosacea is prolonged. Recurrences are common and difficult. Rosacea is a skin in trauma and out of balance. When tissue repairs itself, it requires more amino acids for cell proliferation. Peptides are organic chemical compounds composed of one or more basic amino acid groups and one or more acidic carboxyl groups. Select a peptide product that contains palmitoyl-pentapeptide-3 and other peptides with a low molecular weight in the amino acid chain. Peptides are non-irritating and more stable than vitamin C and Retinol. Not only do peptides have the capability to reduce the inflammation associated with rosacea; they reduce the aging factors that compound rosacea sufferers linked with photo-damaged skin. Peptides must be an integral step in treating rosacea skin.

Solar Risks
Our love affair with the sun may finally be coming to an end. After years of romancing the sun, we are now more than ever dealing with the long term effects of our affair: wrinkles, hyperpigmentation, premature aging – not to mention a repressed immune system and the potential for skin cancer are all consequences of sunlight exposure. According to the Skin Cancer Foundation, skin cancer is the most common form of cancer in the U.S. with one million new cases diagnosed every year. One in five Americans will develop skin cancer; 90 percent of these cancers will be the result of exposure to ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun.

There is truly nothing more important than education to the success of any business, especially in the skin care industry. Manufacturers may tend to forget this-they think that their potential success rests with their products. Actually, the key is in the education of the people who use their products. I have dedicated the past 30 years to the education of skin care professionals. But here's what I've discovered: our clients also need to be trained. In fact, they are badly in need of a sort of Client Boot Camp.
I agree with the great Dr. Samuel Johnson, who said that "A little learning is a dangerous thing."

These days, it's easy to get distracted. The real trouble is, the distractions take our attention from the issues which really count-client service being key among these.
We are such sensory beings, and barraged as we are with marketing messages, a simple trip to the store may turn into a phantasmagoric trip down the rabbit-hole. When I buy groceries, I will often see shoppers, apparently from other places, who cannot hide their amazement at the shampoo aisle of my local supermarket. Has washing your hair ever involved so many decisions? The same goes for purchasing a pair of blue jeans.

Technique. This is a sacred word to skin therapists. To begin with, it's French-more on that in a moment. For generations, technique has been the skin care profession's raison d'etre-oops, I mean entire reason for being. Mastering the traditional posture, movements, and protocol defined the very essence of being a skin therapist, similar, let's say, to the discipline of a classical ballerina or a Cordon Bleu chef faceting perfect, six-sided baby carrot nuggets. But here's the big news: technique is not enough.