What is diversion? Diversion is when a product is sold in an “unapproved” channel.
Salon Professional Products are supposed to be sold in SALONS ONLY; there are many reasons for this. Professional products are usually high quality and need to be brought to the market through professionals that can ensure you are using the right product, correctly.
In many cases, manufacturers have been wooing salons for years, even decades, convincing salons to carry their products. During the courting process, manufactures repeatedly say that they are against the diversion of their product ; however, somehow their products end up on drugstore or grocery store shelves creating competition for salon retail.
You see this trend more frequently with the brands that are owned by large corporations. Loreal, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever own more than 80% of both the salon professional products and the consumer hair products designed for drugstore/grocery retail. They are very familiar with both channels of selling products and are using their drugstore/grocery access to dupe salons out of their promised exclusivity.
Corporations are so busy trying to trick salons that their product gets lost along the way. Salon Professional Products are arriving at drug stores in many back channeled ways. There is no way to tell whether the products are “real” or counterfeit, and even worse, the products could be stored incorrectly which leads to spoiling or lack of potency. Stores have been able to get away with these practices because most products don’t have a production or expiration date.
The idea of cheating and lying to stylists and salon owners is reprehensible. The averaged stylist only makes $27,000 a year and doesn’t have health insurance. They need to profit from selling products to pay for their children’s dental care or their mother’s groceries. For the large corporations to prey on hard working stylists shows that corporations are truly unfeeling and use no morality to make decisions.
The diversion problem can be fixed if salons only involve themselves with truly independent companies who have the stylists’ best interests in mind. Consumers can fight diversion too by only purchasing products from their trusted stylists. Both the salon and the consumer should notice whether the bottles have expiration dates and look for products that stand out. Products with unique and innovative packaging are not sold en masse.
As the Managing Partner of an independent product line Screen Professional Hair Care, I am very passionate about this topic…especially the impact this practice has on Salons and Stylists. Salons are about beauty, creativity and making people feel good. Companies that prey on the industry should be ashamed!
Written by Andrea Bogdan and Jayne Corso
Written by Andrea Bogdan and Jayne Corso
