L’Oréal Professional Products recently hosted a series of Business Connects Events across the UK and Ireland. Representing Respect for Hair, reporter Octavia attended the London edition of Business Connects back in April. These events allow salon business owners to connect, network, exchange ideas and share inspiration.
London L’Oréal Professional Products Business Connects
Opening the day, Octavia was impressed by an immersive presentation. The team from L’Oréal Professional Products asked guests to contribute to a series of questions, displaying answers on screen. The questions tackled relevant topics for salon business owners, such as consumer concerns. One concern explored was the cost of living crisis. A study by L’Oréal Professional Products shows that 75% of women, the most prominent sector of salon clientele, are making at least one change to their lives due to the crisis. Despite this high proportion, hairdressing was not found to be the first thing that most women cut back on. This reaffirms the importance of hairdressing in society, with 72% of women saying that having their hair done is good for mental health.
The L’Oréal Professional Business Connects event also explored sustainability as surveys found that 45% of British women said they want their salon to be more sustainable, and 23% now expect a beauty or wellness business to commit to reducing their environmental footprint. L’Oréal Professional Products wants to emphasise the importance of sustainability in the salon. One takeaway for salon owners: being more environmentally conscious will help lead you to success. It may help retention and recruitment challenges as people want to work for brands that have an environmentally conscious approach. Consumers are more concerned with sustainability and will seek salons prioritising this.
As well as pushing sustainable values L’Oréal Professional Products will continue supporting the development of emerging talent with education as its “biggest obsession.” As L’Oréal Professional Products says, it is a “People-centric business”.
The goal of Business Connects was to educate, push boundaries, and drive meaningful conversations amongst those in the room and with their broader teams outside of the event. To further this L’Oréal Professional Products invited inspirational speaker Jamil Qureshi to give a talk. Jamil is a performance coach, psychologist, author and expert in high performance and certainly had a lot to say about business success. One takeaway from Jamil was that people often think they need to stop or start something to be successful, but this isn’t true. Instead, try doing something more. For salon owners, Jamil had fantastic points about managing your team- one takeaway was that people support what they help create. Instead of telling team members what to do, could you give them a problem to solve?
Monica Teodoro
Monica Teodoro, general manager of education and professional development at L’Oréal Professional Products UKI, says: “As we look to the future and the evolution of the professional industry, connection to our community is more important than ever. By learning and inspiring one another at the Business Connects Roadshows; ideas and challenges were addressed, new skills and knowledge obtained, and opportunities seized. The power of community is the tonic we need, and we cannot wait to bring the Beauty of L’Oréal’s Professional Partnership to more salons and stylists in the months to come.”
In the afternoon, a panel of industry experts provided insights and emerging trends led by Monica Teodoro.
Industry experts in the London panel
Joanna Hansford – Jo Hansford
Lucan Salem – Hari’s
Bree Davie – Trevor Sorbie
Darren Fowler – Fowler35
The four industry experts tackled challenges faced by salon business owners that guests had expressed in the first half of the day. These included the challenges of retention and recruitment and filling apprenticeships.
Thank you to L’Oréal Professional Products for hosting such an inspiring and informative event.
For more of the latest news from L’Oréal Professional, click HERE.
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