Reflections: Your Leg Up

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I attend quite a few conferences throughout the year, and at each of them I often engage in conversations with estheticians and spa owners in which I ask them about their main challenges. After all, our goal with Skin Inc. has been and will always be to give you the tools to do your job better and boost your business.

Top challenges vary, of course, but retail comes up as a major pain-point about 60% of the time. I get it, retail sales isn’t exactly something that is covered in every esthetic course curriculum, yet it can comprise a significant portion of your revenue and help maintain at-home skin care success for your client. You are trained on how to use the products, not necessarily how to sell or market them to the client.

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So, you need to sell more product. But how? In this issue, we aim to give you a leg up in retail, starting with the more traditional approach of visual merchandising. Your retail area may need a fast refresher, or it may be time for a complete overhaul. If either is the case, turn to Page 62, where Lauren Snow provides a 20-step Program for Retail Rehab. In it, she discusses visual elements, such as testers, props, lighting and placement, among others. She adds, “Visual merchandising is the art of thoughtfully telling a story through a balance of products and props with customer purchasing behavior in mind.”

If your clientele includes younger generations, chances are you will have to take your retail and treatments one step further and begin to think about personalization. On Page 54, Annet King discusses six ways to personalize your spa, which may include product customization, new booking technology and flexible protocols.

If you would like to learn more about retail in a classroom setting, I would encourage you to attend Face & Body Northern California 2017 on Aug. 26-28, 2017, where this and a wide-range of other topics will be covered in depth. Turn to Page 68 to see a snippet of all the education Face & Body will provide, which is offered in bite-sized or long-form versions to suit your needs. And, if you need to add new lines to your retail or back-bar, don’t forget that the event offers two days of exposition filled with cutting-edge devices, innovative skin care and insightful treatment protocols.

Without a doubt retail can be a challenge, but hopefully we have given you the insider tips, specialty tactics and industry resources to give you a leg up.

Yours in education,

Katie Sig

Katie Anderson

Managing Editor

[email protected]

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