Interesting thread, it always makes me smile when I see how heated we all get when we are defending 'our' product.
I used minx bridel on my daughter in laws nails for her wedding day. That was two weeks ago her toes are still going strong and her finger nails lasted for just over a week.
She's a health care assistant and those hand sanatisers are hell on all types of nail art/enhansment. So I felt they did very well. Maybe I'm just picky but after a weeks growth I think it's time to change them anyway, I just don't like to see that big gap at the cuticle end.
I haven't used the Blinxz or any other wraps but I have talked to techs who have and every one of those has told me that the quality of minx if far better then the other brands out there which makes minx much easier to work with and the only reason I have been given for contiueing to stock the other brands is to give customers requested designs that are not available from minx. Now that's a reason I can understand, if a client wants something I'm not going to send them to another tech if I can help it. But I will always go for quality by choice. It makes my life easier, whether it's waxing, nails or tans I like to be known as the tech who gives a top quality service. We have so much competion in my town that we have two choices, cheep or different. I prefer to be different.
I also prefer to support companies that constantly plow their profits back into research and development, I like being offered new things to try, new ways of doing things. If you buy knock offs in the short term you save a few pennies but the companies that supply knock offs don't have R&D departments, so what happens when the companies that do, go out of business? Well theres nothing new for your clients to get excited about and if you can't keep them excited and you can't deliver products that do the job better then your competion then your customers can't come to you because you are different, that leaves cheep.
Hands up all the techs who want to sell sets of L&P for £10 or a set of blinxz for £5. All that time and money you've invested in your self with training, with stock and the end result is the supermarket shelf filler is earning more then you! Is that really what you want?
Let me give you an example. I know a girl who is constantly admiring my nails but she doesn't like my prices, so she goes to the local nail bar, she pays them £10 less then she would me, she doesn't get long looking nail beds, she doesn't get a choice of glitter colours and she's pretty limited on the nail art. Every time she has the set removed she finds her own nails are thin and brittle. She moans about it and wants me to drop my prices, but admits that my nails are better and that yes, she would expect to pay more for shoes from Morgan then she would for shoes from primark.
Since May I've been using Shellac, she loves them, she still doesn't like my prices and I'll admit that I'm smug as hell because I know she can't get these from the nail bar, not for any price. If she wants them she's got to come to a real nail tech and we all charge the same.
We all buy our products from companies who invest in R&D, who invest in us.
