Ask a former Sally Beauty employee anything

[endling]

DISCLAIMER: I do not represent Sally Beauty Supply and these opinions do not reflect the opinions of the company and are my own.

Want to know what it's like working a Sally's? Have a question on how the store is run? Ask away!

I quit on the 29th of December since I'm now attending Hair School full time.

Here's a picture of my employee ID Card for proof.

 

[surf girl]

I do have a question actually ovs ur not the company owner but maybe u could shed some light, why do sallys sell proffesional products to the public? All other warehouses require identification of qualifications & insurance, by doing that they make sure that proffesional products are only used by proffesionals (not saying some don't bend the rules but on the most part everything's run propperly) it can be quite damaging for business to us salon owners when customers can go to a sallys and buy the products we retail at a cheaper price than we sell, also there's the saftey implications! As we all know peroxide can be used to make bombs as featured in the film "four lions" but yet it's still available to the public! Then there's the colour and lightening products, they cause serious harm when used incorrectly but their still sold to the public. Here on salon geek I've also witnessed many many threads from nail techs commenting how customers will blazenly say oh I can get my own gelish kit (or whatever brand) from sallys and do it at home this is also damaging to business owners pockets, there are so many DIY disasters these days and realistically I feel the blame lies in the hands of the companies allowing these products to fall into the hands of non pros, not just sallys but also eBay & amazon just to name 2. Please don't think that's a personal attack but I genuinely have always wondered why it's accepted for sallys to sell to the public but no other big warehouses do?

 

[cassies97]

I do have a question actually ovs ur not the company owner but maybe u could shed some light, why do sallys sell proffesional products to the public? All other warehouses require identification of qualifications & insurance, by doing that they make sure that proffesional products are only used by proffesionals (not saying some don't bend the rules but on the most part everything's run propperly) it can be quite damaging for business to us salon owners when customers can go to a sallys and buy the products we retail at a cheaper price than we sell, also there's the saftey implications! As we all know peroxide can be used to make bombs as featured in the film "four lions" but yet it's still available to the public! Then there's the colour and lightening products, they cause serious harm when used incorrectly but their still sold to the public. Here on salon geek I've also witnessed many many threads from nail techs commenting how customers will blazenly say oh I can get my own gelish kit (or whatever brand) from sallys and do it at home this is also damaging to business owners pockets, there are so many DIY disasters these days and realistically I feel the blame lies in the hands of the companies allowing these products to fall into the hands of non pros, not just sallys but also eBay & amazon just to name 2. Please don't think that's a personal attack but I genuinely have always wondered why it's accepted for sallys to sell to the public but no other big warehouses do?

Just gonna second all of that

 

[mollie1985]

Want to know what it's like working a Sally's? Have a question on how the store is run? Ask away!



I quit on the 29th of December since I'm now attending Hair School full time.



Here's a picture of my employee ID Card for proof.

What questions are you expecting people to want to ask you?

 

[surf girl]

I've more

How much do sallys staff get paid?are you a hairdresser?
Do you like making random recommendations to joe Bloggs?
Does your ex employer know you are publicly talking about the business?

I expect I'll think of more a response to the thread would be nice considering your excitement to share your info with us! ☺️

 

[tsparker78]

Does the company encourage associates to give nonprofessionals bad advice so they will ruin their hair and return to purchase more products to try to fix it?

Who really manufactures ion products?




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[endling]

I do have a question actually ovs ur not the company owner but maybe u could shed some light, why do sallys sell proffesional products to the public? All other warehouses require identification of qualifications & insurance, by doing that they make sure that proffesional products are only used by proffesionals (not saying some don't bend the rules but on the most part everything's run propperly) it can be quite damaging for business to us salon owners when customers can go to a sallys and buy the products we retail at a cheaper price than we sell, also there's the saftey implications! As we all know peroxide can be used to make bombs as featured in the film "four lions" but yet it's still available to the public! Then there's the colour and lightening products, they cause serious harm when used incorrectly but their still sold to the public. Here on salon geek I've also witnessed many many threads from nail techs commenting how customers will blazenly say oh I can get my own gelish kit (or whatever brand) from sallys and do it at home this is also damaging to business owners pockets, there are so many DIY disasters these days and realistically I feel the blame lies in the hands of the companies allowing these products to fall into the hands of non pros, not just sallys but also eBay & amazon just to name 2. Please don't think that's a personal attack but I genuinely have always wondered why it's accepted for sallys to sell to the public but no other big warehouses do?

Sorry for the late reply!

I actually have a huge problem with Sally's selling to the public, and hair dressers agree with this.

There are a few select items in the store you have to be licensed for to buy. Those items are most of the perms, 50 vol. developer, and a few of the colour removers.

Now, it bothers me that we can sell perms and 40 vol. developer to non-licensed customers. There's absolutely no reason that a non-licensed customer would need a 40 vol. developer and it's led to quite a few problems, i.e. customers who bleach their hair and then come back with scalp legions and missing chunks of hair.

Safety, obviously, is one of my main concerns, and I tried to be as thorough as possible and steer customers in the right direction. For example, I had a 20-something year old girl who wanted to lighten her naturally 6N hair to a platnium blonde. "Oh, I watched a tutorial on YouTube, the girl on there used 40 vol. developer, where is that?"

Me: "No no no, you only need a 20, and it's going to take more than one process to get it to the colour you want."

I can't tell you how many times I've had to go over this with customers, but I wanted them to be safe and not hurt themselves.

The main reason that I can think of for Sally's selling to the public is for profit. Another reason being that a lot of 'low brow' at home hair dressers come in and buy low quality back bar shampoo and perms because they're cheap. We sell a lot of developer and bleach in big tubs.

Sally's is pretty much the Wal-Mart of the beauty supply store industry, and it's a huge problem. Sure, clip ins, hair care products and body care is fine for the public, but leave the hair colour and other stuff for the pros.

 

[endling]

Does the company encourage associates to give nonprofessionals bad advice so they will ruin their hair and return to purchase more products to try to fix it?

Who really manufactures ion products?




Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I337 using SalonGeek mobile app

Absolutely not, this may be true for other stores, but me, as well as my co-workers, spent a lot of time with customers to ensure they had everything they needed to successfully colour their hair. If I had someone who had never coloured their hair, I would spend at least half an hour with them and even write down instructions, and I would also tell them to call the store if they had any more questions. I'm sure it's not a very popular sales pitch to actively encourage sales associates to mis-lead customers, but I'm sure it has happened. If we were super busy and couldn't devote a lot of time to customers, sure they're going to run into some mishaps, but we never did it on purpose.

As for ION, I don't have an answer for you on that, but I was told from a co-worker that it is manufactured in Italy, albeit I don't know how true that is. The site does says it's European.

 

[endling]

I've more

How much do sallys staff get paid?are you a hairdresser?
Do you like making random recommendations to joe Bloggs?
Does your ex employer know you are publicly talking about the business?

I expect I'll think of more a response to the thread would be nice considering your excitement to share your info with us! ☺️

We got paid minimum wage (in B.C. that's 10.25, however I started off at 10.50). You get a 10% pay increase per year, my co-worker has been working there for 3 years and she only makes 11.25. If you're a manager you obviously make more. It's pretty insulting how much they pay you considering how much work we have to do. And, no, I'm not a hair dresser however I am in hair school full time.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by 'Joe Bloggs', but if you mean random customers, I have occasionally made a random suggestions out of boredom or ire because they pissed me off. For example, I had a really nasty customer once I recommended a lotion for her because I knew it smelled terrible, for the most part, no, random recommendations were't too common.

Nope! We're allowed to talk about the company and what it's like working there as long as we state that we don't represent the company (which I should probably state in my first post...)

 

[surf girl]

I like the recommendation of the smelly cream lol that made me chuckle, it does bother me slightly tho to think your only in hair school now but have been recommending peroxide and colour and doing step by steps for people, how come you know how to recommend the products? Is there a training programme within sallys? Or did you already do hair school before?

 

[endling]

I like the recommendation of the smelly cream lol that made me chuckle, it does bother me slightly tho to think your only in hair school now but have been recommending peroxide and colour and doing step by steps for people, how come you know how to recommend the products? Is there a training programme within sallys? Or did you already do hair school before?

Sally's does provide basic training for hair, and my manager is a hair dresser. Every month we'd have to do quizzes related to hair colour and hair care, so we had a basic understanding of hair care. We know how much gray coverage each product offers (Semi, Demi, Permanent), mixing rations, how much lift each developer provides, how to apply it, processing times, how to care for it etc etc.

My manager was a great resource and he taught me a lot, so that definately helped, but most Sally's employees have a basic understanding of hair colour.

 

[emmapj]

I buy some of my products from Sallys as its the only whole salers near me I often hear wrong advice being given to customers and I've been asked by staff before to help them with a customers questions x

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[siobrennan]

I buy some of my products from Sallys as its the only whole salers near me I often hear wrong advice being given to customers and I've been asked by staff before to help them with a customers questions x

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I'm the same other than Sally's my nearest wholesaler is a 60mile round trip. It horrifies me when I hear people being recommended products that are clearly wrong to anyone trained (majicontrast On scalp with 40vol anyone?) And don't get me started on bad colour matching for those damned clip in extensions..........

 

[funtimefranko]

Didnt realise you could get 50 vol?

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