Salon Exclusive? The Truth About Hair Salon Product Diversion

Let's Create a Diversion
Most of you have seen your favorite, once salon-exclusive hair products slowly make their appearances in the Targets, Walmarts,and drugstores of America. Popular hair care brands like Redken, Biolage, Paul Mitchell, Sebastian, and even Nexxus have become a part of this grand marketing shift. This phenomenon is known as product diversion. Hair product companies are supposed to be fighting this "problem" at every turn, but I sense a conspiracy. This article will explain the hair product diversion conspiracy and list ways that you can determine whether or not the beloved salon brand you saw in Walgreens last week was truly diverted merchandise or strategically placed by the powers that be.

But first, why am I an authority on this issue?
For the last several years, I have been into promoting healthy hair care strategies for women, particularly women of color. The Internet has allowed me and many others the opportunity to address these populations that would otherwise remain under-served in traditional media outlets. For me, hair was a problem, turned hobby, turned passion. Because of my experience and undergraduate background in science and health care, I regularly disseminate trusted and valuable hair care information and advice on hair care forums web-wide. Currently, I am in the midst of writing a manuscript for a more comprehensive work on black hair care and I maintain an online hair album that documents my hair success and progress! Hair products and product conspiracies simply come with the territory.

What Is the Deal?
It seems that hair product manufacturers know about diversion, and use it to their advantage by manipulating both the salon and non-salon market segments. Look at this phenomenon from a marketing perspective. The bottom line here is money. Once demand for a hair product is created, typically in a salon, it is only a matter of time before that hair product manufacturer will be courted by mass retailers. Once the product is "diverted" to larger retail chains, customers who were discouraged from purchasing the product because of enormous price tags are now more willing to try the marked down version of the products they recognize from their salon. With a decrease in price per bottle, the actual number of bottles sold increases, and these companies laugh all the way to the bank. They have their loyal salon price paying customers, and their new bargain chaser variety customers who will pay the "mark down." At the end of the day, their product is still selling and they are still making money.

Diversion= Money
To understand the breadth of this problem, you must think like a hair product manufacturer. You have a hair product that you want to reach as many people as possible, but no one knows about your product. The hair product has not created a name for itself. What would you do?

Introducing new product lines to the general population is a costly and risky business. Competition from well known, well supported hair product lines already on the shelves makes the fight harder. New hair products must first gain credibility and be supported with commercials, ads, and other forms of costly advertisement to gain a loyal customer base. So where would a hair product line best gain credibility and a loyal following without costing too much through advertisement? Your neighborhood hair salon.

Hair Salons are Simply a Stepping Stone
Hair salons are simply cost effective stepping stones for hair product companies to reach consumers. Keeping a salon brand "salon-exclusive" is simply not cost effective from a financial perspective. Gaining wide appeal for hair products can only happen once they are readily available to the general masses. There is much more money to be made by allowing the intentional and unintentional diversion of well know salon brands to mass retailers and distributors. Financially, this practice is much more preferable to putting an unknown product on the general market and hoping for the best.

The hair stylist is essentially educated on the specific company and their hair product's image and philosophy. With the hair stylist well versed on the intricacies of a certain product line, and with you in the chair for an hour or two, the sales pitch can begin. These hair companies bank on your believing the hype that surrounds their hair products. They will of course, encourage you to purchase the salon version because the more you pay for the hair product, the more money there is to be made from the purchase by the company and retailer. This also creates brand loyalty and establishes a sound customer base.

Who Is Hurting?
The diversion monster has many faces, and perhaps the true victim of this practice is the hair stylist whose livelihood often depends on how much of an exclusive hair product he/she can retail. In fact, diversion truly becomes an issue once hair products become popular in the salon arena. Hair stylists are simply walking and talking commercials for these major hair product companies, and in a sense, they are being used as well. Instead of companies shelling out millions of dollars for 30 seconds of air time, they get much more mileage for their products by having them pushed by our hair stylists. The salon segment simply boosts the name and image of the product. Companies can utilize them as marketing tools for creating demand and putting certain hair products on the consumer radar. Do the names Nexxus, Pantene Pro-V, and Tressemme ring a bell? These, too, were once salon-exclusive products. The names were built in salons, and are now available for mass retail. Imagine how the stylists who specialized in and pushed those exclusive salon products to their clients must have felt when it was decided that these hair products would now be available at Walmart for $4.00?

Simply put, once a hair product's name is established, the next logical step is to sever salon ties and go mass retail. The job of the salon is to simply put these products on the map for you. These big companies are not willing to turn down dollars, no matter where they come from! Who is in business to turn away sales? Bottom line, there is simply more money to be made entertaining a mass retail situation than remaining salon exclusive.

Which Companies Care About Diversion?
Companies that claim to not support diversion, but consistently have rows and rows of their full product lines from the shampoo down to the gloss and gel found in each and every non-salon store location, are obviously using deception. There are actually very few product companies that do not allow some form of diversion. Kenra, Joico, AVEDA, and KeraCare are a few that come to mind. Lines that are ONLY carried in salons, not carried by stores like Trade Secret, ULTA, Sally's, and drugstores are typically controlled by companies that do not support diversion. (While Trade Secret and ULTA are technically salons, they are actually retail venues that happen to have a couple of salon chairs and sink bowls shoved in the back). Product lines that are not supported fully at mass retailers (ex: conditioner is there but shampoo is not) or spotty and seasonal stocking from store to store within the same chain are usually signs of true diversion.

More Myths and Half-Truths
Manufacturers play both sides of the field. By allowing some degree of diversion, companies are able to peddle their products to the bargain chasing masses, and by giving the illusion that diversion is being fought at every turn, they keep stylists loyal to their lines. It is a win-win situation. Some hair companies come out loud and hard proclaiming the woes of hair product diversion with some pretty scathing and frightening evidence tactics! However, claims of striking differences between salon purchased products and the same salon products found in drug stores or online are unfounded.

Unsafe and Inferior Ingredients?
Many hair product manufacturers will tell you that their products are no longer guaranteed or of good quality once they reach these discount retailers. This is simply a keen form of psychological manipulation. Keep in mind that these hair products are still subject to the Food and Drug Administration guidelines for all cosmetic formulations. Companies do not send their product bottles back to the lab to reformulate them into a less concentrated "drugstore version." Such a practice would prove costly for the company, or any would be counterfeiter.

Bacteria?
Bacteria infestation is another scare tactic of the industry. Do not assume that your products are old simply because they are sitting on a discount or drugstore shelf! Hair shampoos and conditioners do not expire quickly unless they contain perishable organic ingredients like egg. The average shelf life of shampoo and conditioner is approximately three years. Never has an independent study confirmed these theories of rancid products consistently sitting on shelves. In fact, many of the supposedly salon-exclusive hair products that find their way to discount shelves are new and in the latest manufactured packaging!

The fact that most shampoo and conditioners in the salon and otherwise, do not list expiration dates speaks volumes. Let's face it, many salon AND non-salon products are chock full of preservatives in their formulations anyway! This is to prevent the growth of bacteria in their products and to extend shelf life. If bacteria were indeed growing in a bottle, the bottle itself would most likely show slightly bulging and emanate an odor from the increase in weight, volume, and the respiration of the bacteria. If the problem of bacteria were so prevalent the FDA would be all over it requiring all product labels to have expiration dates as milk and other perishable items do.

Counterfeit Products?
There is no doubt that there is some small-scale diversion going on by dishonest distributors who may peddle counterfeit items, but to say that all salon-only hair products that appear on mass retail shelves are counterfeit is misguided thinking. There is no way that a few unscrupulous distributors and salons are stealing boxes and peddling product out the back door, and certainly not to the extent that every single Walmart, Target, Costco, Publix, and Walgreens in every corner of America and Canada ends up having shelves consistently stocked with entire hair product lines in the latest manufacturer's packaging month after month. If manufacturers were truly concerned with preventing diversion, wouldn't the ordering of enough product to fill and replenish WalMart and Target shelves month after month by distributors raise an eyebrow? They cannot possibly think that this amount of hair product is simply being purchased and pumped into Miss Betty's and Auntie Ellen's hair salons! The "diversion" problem is entirely too well organized and widespread to be the handy work of a few dealers. The systematic and well orchestrated diversion we are seeing of salon products to mass retailers is no doubt largely an inside job. So Paul Mitchell, enough with your belly-aching already!

So How Do You Know if your hair product is a diverted product?
Be proactive. Familiarize yourself with current packaging, as packaging does change from year to year. When in doubt, call the manufacturer with the barcode in hand. They can ring up the batch number and tell you exactly when the product was created. If barcodes are missing or the product looks suspect, do not chance it. Other things to look for:

*If the product line on the shelf is spotty- with only 1 or 2 items (a shampoo with no conditioner, and maybe a leave-in conditioner)

*The line is never really kept in stock from week to week.

*The packaging is not current.

*The product doesn't smell or look right.

Then it is probably true, diverted product.

But if the line is 1.) FULL-- from the shampoo, conditioner, reconstructor, neutralizing shampoo, leave-in, and gel down to the last hair finishing gloss, 2.) always replenished weekly/monthly and 3.) and is wrapped in the manufacturers current packaging-more than likely, it is meant to be there.