Estheticians making money off products

[Guest guest]

I thought I'd give a quick explanation of how the industry works for anyone

interested. At most spas and salons these days estheticians are employees of

the establishment they work for. The other scenarios are renting just a room

from someone or running your own show. Through knowledge of my local area,

attendance at national conferences and through networking with other

estheticians around the country I know that retail sales quotas often vary

from 25% to 50% of service dollars. Most have a dollar or percentage

threshold you must meet before you receive any commission money. A lot of

pressure is placed to meet these goals because gross margins on retail exceed

those on services plus products don't require benefits! So unfortunately

selling you product that day might determine whether she keeps her job or

not, makes her bills that month etc...

The situation regarding retail products for me is very unusual, I must say.

Where I work everything is truly a team effort. Nobody receives retail

commissions and nobody has retail quotas. We keep track of our numbers for

its own sake and we recommend products only when we really like them and use

them ourselves and think they will really work for someone else. We feel

that the goal should be to align yourself your products you really believe in

and then in doing your job well show others how to benefit from them. Despite

working for an aveda spa my boss believes in results so we get to keep

Pevonia also because employees and customers love it and it works.

I go and receive treatments with other skin care lines and as I mentioned

previously I do keep fairly up to date professionally both in personal

contacts and trade journals. So FWIW my two favorite other lines I've tried

besides Pevonia are Decleor and Physiodermie.

It is always interesting to me the difference in feel of a place based on the

way behaviors are compensated. Don't buy anything unless you get all your

why questions answered about all the products suggested. Ask for samples.

Return anything you have a problem with within two weeks and ask for your

money back. Try one of their treatments, if your face doesn't feel +/or look

better right then don't use their products. The corrollary to this is the

products are only as good as the person recommending them. I hear bad

Pevonia advice all the time at my place but the people mean well. Being an

esthetician is kind of like being a quarter back. You are just calling the

plays. You can have all kinds of good plays that you know of but being able

to figure out the right one at the right time is the hard part. Some don't

realize there are better plays out there they could be using. So really

there are all sorts of reasons things could go wrong.

I hope this helps some of you when determining the motivation behind the

advice you receive.

Jana