September 2008 Archives

(From L-R; the Gentle Cleansing Shampoo, the Hair & Scalp Nutritive Conditioner, and the Leave-In Conditioning Mist)

Hair weaving and extension services are big business in professional hair care, literally, accounting for millions and millions of dollars in salon revenues. Indications are that the market will continue to grow as women opt for, at least on occasion, augmented hairstyles of varying lengths, colors and textures.

Up until now, expenditures have been concentrated in the sale of commercial hair and fees to stylists for performing these services. The care for weaved and extension styles, however, have been for the most part a disjointed affair - forcing weave wearers to search for a shampoo from one line, a conditioner from another line, and then a scalp care product from yet another.

Nowadays its become popular for some people to push ideas that "hair is hair", "all hair is the same", "its just hair", "any product can work for anyone" or that the shampoo & conditioner you can buy in aisle 7 of your local supermarket is an all-encompassing solution for every hair type.

Here is why they are wrong:

If you go back to slides 14-22 in my Structure of Hair presentation that I gave, you have all the evidence needed to debunk the myth that all hair is the same.

During the shampooing of hair, a few processes are at work simultaneously, which are as follow:

1. While shampooing, physical abrasion of wet hair is being caused by rubbing movement of the fingers during the sudsing of the shampoo and the cleansing process. According to Okumura (1984), this rubbing action is responsible for cuticle damage or cuticle abrasion and the cuticles are chipped away from the surface of the hair.

2. Towel drying can also cause damage to the hair due to rubbing movements.

3. The detergents of the shampoo can slowly but gradually dissolve a small portion of the non-keratinous cell membrane complex and the endocuticles.

At last, here are the Dry & Itchy Scalp slides that I recently presented to the stylists of Europe and Boston. I know I promised to put these up a long time ago, so I apologize for the delay.

In the slides, I will cover various scalp conditions such as dandruff, seborrheic dermatitis, psoriasis, and seborrhea.

I will also go over the resources that we at Avlon have developed specifically for stylists in order to combat these conditions. This presentation has quite a few high-resolution images captured by our imaging apparatuses, so be sure to view the presentation in full-screen mode.