When Vish crunched its data to identify the country’s top Vish Waste Warriors, a Toledo-based salon absolutely dominated the list. Rêvé Salon in Sylvania, OH, isn’t manned by avid eco-warriors but it still finished with three out of the top five hairdressers (Renee Gavioli, Chris Schnabel and Carmen Wigmans) who have the lowest color cost per service and are producing the least waste per service. No other salon came close.
The stats gleaned from the thousands of stylists and colorists who are using the Vish Color Management system showed the average wholesale cost per service of those three hairdressers ranged from $2.17 to $2.71, while average cost of the waste per service was as little as 23 cents. Using the app clearly doesn’t just help the planet; it actively helps salon businesses by boosting color profits.
It wasn’t always like that; according to Rêvé’s Controller, Gregg Radaker, Vish has brought savings of $400 a week for the salon. Less color is dispensed so less is wasted and poured down the basin.
“And because we are using less color we are also saving on transport, packaging, inventory control, trash and contamination,” says Radaker. All good for the environment.
Rêvé is a large full-service salon, well-established formore than 34 years, with employees peaking at around 70, and the hair department spread across two of the four floors. Monitoring such a large team to ensure they stick to procedure when it comes to color is tricky, but owner Carmen Wigmans, who is still behind the chair about 25 hours a week, put their success down to good training.
“When we started with Vish about two years ago, we were lucky to have Tim Howard, Vish chief innovation officer, visit the salon for three days and onboard the whole team, and since then we’ve been reinforcing the message,” says Wigmans. “At first, weighing and reweighing bowls seemed to take longer, but the team soon realized that having a system that automatically records their formula speeds up the whole process.”
Since Rêvé brought on Vish new people have joined. Wigmans continues: “But the system is so easy to use our existing team is able to teach new stylists how to use it. They motivate and remind one another to reweigh.”
The culture of weighing and reweighing color bowls is now fully entrenched in the culture of the salon, and the salon business is more profitable and more sustainable.
Originally posted on Salon Today
