Your clients and patients love beautiful nails! While artificial nails are still popular, natural nails and natural nail care are the most exciting trends for professional salons, day spas and medical spas today! Whether you currently offer nail care services or are planning an expansion to include nail care services, you should be aware of the latest nail care trends. Maintaining natural nails is a challenge and there are obstacles that could cause your patients to become self-conscious of their nails’ condition. Most of these common nail care challenges are unsightly but can be overcome by regular visits to a nail technician.

You have a vision of a magnificent new spa and you want to turn it into reality! Wonderful!! The decision to create a new spa starts a cascade of activities that can be both daunting and thrilling. It involves creating the physical space as well as designing how the spa will operate once it is open. You know that you cannot do it alone. You need a plan to ensure that the operations will flow smoothly in the space. An architect will help translate your vision for the physical property into the blueprints that will begin to turn the dream to reality.

Professional skin care in the 21st Century has never been so exciting, technical, scientific, profitable and yes, extremely competitive. Open up a fashion magazine today and you will find no less than 30+ non-professional skin care brands claiming to reduce lines and wrinkles, improve skin, restore elasticity, replace Botox tm and on and on and on.
These companies also promise simulated “professional peels” and “microdermabrasion” in do-it-yourself at home product kits. Think about it, if you are reading these ads, it’s inevitable your clients are reading them too!

Early in my career as a skin therapist, I had a colleague who was (and is) a wonderful aesthetician with a huge following. Let’s call her Madge. One day Madge was visited by a regular client for her routine age management treatment. Upon her arrival, the client told Madge that she had been to her dermatologist, and just had a biopsy on a lesion that she and Madge had been following for a year.
Truthfully, Madge had mentioned it to her on several occasions, and told her that she should have it checked out. The client had multiple problems with her skin (i.e. acne, pigment changes, photodamage) in which Madge was diligently supporting her with appropriate education, treatment, and products.

Theory of Corporate and Business Planning, Conflict Resolution, Human Resource Managers, verbal and written reprimands and warnings, OSHA, ADA, and ACLU are all important topics when it comes to owning a business. After pondering these topics for oh… 15 seconds, I came to realize that the main reason we became business owners is because we love the industry and are passionate about our work. The employees that we surround ourselves with at our place of business, although with many differences, are all practicing the same end philosophy, 100 percent customer care that is physical, social, and therapeutic.

Have you ever sat and wondered about your profession? Are you aware that you are in one of the best professions? Did you know that it offers an incredible number of opportunities?
Many of us, when we graduate from aesthetic school, cannot wait to find a job to do facials, whether that is in a salon or spa. All we do is think and think about doing a facial cleanse, tone, and moisturize. Who will be our first client? Will they rebook? Will they tip us? But, our license offers us so many other opportunities that the possibilities are truly staggering.

Aestheticians have a big responsibility to their clients' well-being in the treatment room as well as after they leave. While facial scrubs may be the most often employed method of exfoliation in the professional environment, knowing how scrubs affect the skin and how critical it is to properly treat the skin post-scrub can be the difference between exfoliation that can improve skin conditions and a procedure that promotes oxidation and aging.
Scrubs are ingredient compounds usually formulated with small, hard particles suspended in a cream, gel, or lotion, often containing a light surfactant cleansing agent plus skin conditioners and moisturizers.

Spas come in all shapes and sizes from the mega resorts to the independent day spas; well so do clients and their needs. Are you prepared to meet the needs of all your clients? Young, mature, pre-teen, petite to large size clients are all looking to spas for waxing to massage but are you prepared. I know you are thinking YES… but while many spas are prepared for the average size clients many are not prepared for ALL. There are many things to consider including ADA requirements, equipment strength, and therapist etiquette.

Only a generation ago, children were to be seen and not heard. Now, young people who might have been dismissed as “kids” back in the 20th century are proving to be the most powerful segment of American society in terms of establishing and driving brand dominance in the consumer marketplace. Rather than viewing consumers under the age of 21 as simply future-tense buyers, the fact is that national purchasing trends across the board in fashion, beauty, food and lifestyle choices are shaped largely by teens and ‘tweens. Fierce brand loyalties to a specific label form younger and younger, as children are barraged with marketing messages from infancy, and often acquire personal income well before high school.

If I had to identify one large knowledge gap in the skin care industry, I think it’s in the area of retail sales. Yes, there is a wealth of product knowledge training available, but very little in the way of customer psychology and sales technique. Knowing what to recommend is not the same as knowing how to sell.
Aestheticians are in a tough bind because of this shortfall. On the one hand, it’s probable that no one has ever taught you how to sell products, and yet on the other hand there is an expectation that you’re supposed sell a lot—whatever that is.