Intro: Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hair stylist? Like you got into this industry to make big things happen?
Maybe you’re struggling to build a solid base and want some stability. Maybe you know social media is important, but it feels like a waste of time because you aren’t seeing any results. Maybe you’ve already had some amazing success but are craving more. Maybe you’re ready to truly enjoy the freedom and flexibility this industry has to offer.
Cutting and coloring skills will only get you so far, but to build a lifelong career as a wealthy stylist, it takes business skills and a serious marketing strategy. When you’re ready to quit just working in your business and start working on it, join us here where we share real success stories from real stylists.
I’m Britt Seva, social media and marketing strategist just for hair stylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
Britt Seva: What is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva, and today, we’re going to talk about weirdness in the world of hair extensions.
This is an episode I’m a little bit nervous to do, only because I’ve never really done anything exactly like this before. This is the closest I’ve gotten to investigative journalism in the sense that this episode really has nothing to do with me or my opinions or what I think the industry needs to know. This is an episode that I was asked specifically to do not one time but many times.
I will say to the person who knows—they were the very first person to ask me to do this. You know who you are, I’m not going to shout you out here on the podcast for obvious reasons, but she came to me with this information and I was like, “Thank you so much. I’ll look into it.”
She was probably like, “Okay, yeah, whatever. She’s not going to do it,” and to be honest, for months, I didn’t do it and I told her that. I waited. I waited to see. I always take everything with a grain of salt and it was like is this stylist onto something? Or maybe she’s just having a personal issue with the brand and this really doesn’t mean anything.
Then over the several weeks that followed, another person reached out and then somebody else had something to say, and then I met somebody in person and they brought it up and I was like, “Whoa, okay, timeout. There is really something to this.”
So on August the 22nd, 2023, I shared just a quick post on my Instagram story and I said, “Hey, I’m starting to hear that there’s just some weird stuff going on in the extension side of the industry.” I kept it super vague and I was like, “If you think there’s anything weird going on that I should know about, let me know.”
Within minutes, like I don’t know if I’ve ever had a response to an Instagram story so fast, I was getting DMs, I was getting comments left—I left one of those little question bubbles on the story, tons of those coming in. I ended up receiving over a hundred stories and responses, and it made me realize, “Whoa, there’s something here.”
So to that stylist who initially reached out, I just want to thank you for your patience with me. Thank you for bringing this to my attention and doing it in just such a classy way and being patient with me in this process. And also giving me the opportunity, allowing me to be the trusted voice you chose to do that.
I tend to think that this stylist chose me because of the way I do things. I want to set the expectation for this episode. If you’re hoping to come and listen to this episode, to hear me bash certain extension brands, I’m simply not going to do it. It’s just not. I don’t believe anything good would come of it, but at the end of this episode, I’m going to share what I think needs to happen, next steps from brands and from stylists combined.
But this is not going to be a bloodbath. I’m not going to come on here and say any names at all, actually. That was my promise to those who shared their stories was this was going to be completely anonymous because I didn’t want the fanfare, I just wanted the truth.
The other thing that was interesting is when that Instagram story went up, a few big brands did reach out to me. I was a little surprised only because I didn’t think they’re watching my Instagram story and I actually still don’t. I think maybe some of their accounts reached out to them to let them know I was doing this. Not a one of them said anything like, “Please don’t do this,” or NDAs or anything funny. It was not like that.
What was interesting was mostly the accounts thought that this podcast was going to be about one thing specifically. The irony is it’s not what the podcast is about at all.
So when these brands were reaching out to me or when brand educators even were reaching out to me and they’re like, “Oh my gosh, here we go, watch the stylists come out. They’re all going to complain about—” what is it?
What do we think that the brands thought the stylists were going to be complaining about? Not being allowed to teach the method.
Do you know in the hundred plus responses I received, in both DM and in that form, there was maybe three people who said anything about not being able to teach the method. That was just not the overwhelming complaint at all. What it made me realize is—I mean, I’ll just say at the top of this episode, but we’re going to say it at the bottom of the episode too—lack of communication man is just crippling this side of the industry in such a big way.
I’m going to go through, I believe there’s eight or nine key points that were brought up and I’m going to go through all of them. Eight total it looks like. But what I’m finding, like being on the flip side of this is wow, lack of conversation, lack of communication, miscommunication, misunderstanding, hard feelings, hurt feelings, secrets, gossip is preventing every single one of these problems from being solved.
I’ll just say right at the top, there is so much misunderstanding and miscommunication in the world of extensions. It is heartbreaking because I don’t think all of these challenges need to exist. If we could just have collaborative conversation—and I have first some suggestions for next steps at the end of this episode as well—I really think everything can get to a pretty good place.
Whew. Let’s get into it. I’m going to be going through the eight major concerns that stylists express to me about the way that extensions as a specialty are coming together in the industry. I’m actually going to start with something that’s fairly light and that we’re going to transcend into the next levels.
The first thing was questionable promotional contracts from brands. I’m going to read you a direct quote and if you’re watching this on YouTube and not listening through a podcast app, you’re going to see me looking at my phone a lot through this episode ’cause I’m going to be reading you a lot of direct quotes.
This stylist said, “I’m scared to share this, but okay, let’s unpack it. I’m a newer stylist, I just got my license in January—” so figure this stylist is eight months’ licensed at this point, okay? “—and my goal has always been to specialize in extensions and I want to be very successful. I am brand certified—” so listed the name of a brand “—and a representative from my brand offered me a one-year contract to work with them exclusively with the understanding that I post for them a few times a week and tag the brand into what I post. In exchange, I get lots of free products. My contract using brand exclusively, and I have to hit a certain sales goal. This is certainly exciting, but what I find weird is that this brand would offer this kind of contract to somebody who’s only had their license for eight months. I’m questioning their intentions with me. Although I signed the contract because it saves me tons of money by them sending me all these products, it’s hard to know the intention. To me, it’s a huge win, but I can’t help but wonder what their real intention is. Obviously, I’m making them money by selling the hair and I’m just selling their brand over and over with my posts. But I really don’t know. This is this weird, exciting thing.”
This was so fascinating to me. I think it’s very interesting. I think this is very interesting for a hundred different reasons.
I don’t know how this brand chooses to find their influencers. I don’t know. I haven’t looked at the contract. I don’t know what it looks like. I have snippets of what that stylist told me their arrangement/agreement is, but truly, I don’t know.
At surface level, based on what the stylist has told me, it’s one year of exclusivity, so she’s not allowed to use any other extension brand for a year. That is concerning to me as a new stylist specifically because she doesn’t even know what she likes. Do you know what I mean?
Remember being—if you’re not a new stylist and you’re listening to this, I mean, how many things did you try eight months in that you realized two years in, “Whoa, that’s not what I preferred.” Or “I would love to see what else is out there.” At eight months in, you should be nothing but curious. The world is your oyster.
Listen to the stylist who wrote into me. I’m not roasting you. I likely would’ve jumped at the same contract. You would have a hundred percent to what you’re saying. It’s saving you money. You feel like you’re being supported. I’m not judging your actions, I’m judging the actions of the parent company who offered you that contract.
To what she was saying, “I’m questioning their intentions,” in many ways, I am too. Is the game now to lock in extension artists into one brand or another before they find something else? That to me has a taste of manipulation that I’m not a huge fan of because it’s almost like shutting up the rest of the industry. Don’t look anywhere else. You stay right here. Keep your eyes right here focused and we have a sales goal and you’re going to post for us every single month and in exchange, we’re going to send you free products. That is concerning to me.
There is a piece of me that questions was this contract offered to somebody who was so new, hoping that they wouldn’t know any better? I don’t know. I don’t know what the intention was.
To the stylist who wrote in to me, I understand why you took the contract. If you feel like it is benefiting you, by all means, keep it.
When I say benefiting you, you should be actively and aggressively growing an extension clientele using this method. You should be supported with education that doesn’t sell the method but allows you to build a wealthier life for yourself.
Again, I don’t have solutions to all the problems. I’m trying to hit eight things in 20 minutes, but that was a concern to me and it did bring up some red flags.
As I unpacked that and as I go through all of these other things, I want you to keep that very first story in mind.
Concern number two: quality of hair has dramatically decreased. This I heard over and over and over. I’m willing to say that the quality of hair is one of the top two or three concerns that was brought to my attention. Key points that were brought up and then I want to get into some quotes. Excessive matting. I heard excessive matting countless times, huge concern. Hair lasting four to six months instead of lasting for six to 12.
What it sounds like—and it this was interesting too—is I never heard a stylist say “…and the parent company, the distributor, whatever, the manufacturer is refusing to do anything about it.” What they’re saying is the manufacturer, distributor, parent company, whomever will replace the hair. If the stylist complains and says “This hair didn’t last long enough,” they’ll replace the hair. But the parent company distributor, whomever, is not fixing the issue.
More than that, stylists are really upset that they’re not addressing it. Stylists feel like these bigger companies are hoping somebody like me doesn’t come on and do a podcast about quality of hair decreasing. They’re hoping it to stay this little underground secret.
If you are an extension company and you’re listening to this, I’m here to tell you it’s not a secret. The secret was out long before I did this podcast because I’m here to tell you, there is massive chatter in the industry about quality of hair.
If you’re a big parent company, a distributor, a manufacturer, and you’ve not heard this before, it’s simply because your customers are not talking to you. They’re talking to each other because there is so much buzz about this, it is unreal. Before you turn to me and say, “I can’t believe Britt said that,” understand that I’m the mouthpiece. This has been talked about for months before I did this. If the intention was to make sure that stylists don’t talk about it at scale, then I definitely don’t feel bad sharing this on the podcast.
The lack of transparency in that is very concerning. If there is an overarching issue with hair quality, transparency is going to be the solution, period.
Here were some of the other additional problems. So excessive matting for sure. The other thing that came up, I mean this was with specific brands, hair isn’t holding color. Hair isn’t able to be colored, especially with blondes. That was brought up more than once. Hair doesn’t style like it used to. Hair doesn’t hold a style like it used to now.
When the stylists were making up their own stories about why quality has decreased, right? Because like I said, manufacturers, distributors, parent companies are not being transparent. What happens when an organization is not transparent? Stylists are going to talk. The idea that everyone’s just not going to notice, that failed. If that was the idea of “Let’s not say anything and hope they don’t notice,” they noticed. Now what they’re doing is they’re making up their own stories about why this is happening and the stories aren’t great.
One of the concerns in there, maybe some truth to this, is that with the recent COVID pandemic, we know that there was biological changes that happened because of that. We won’t know for years, decades, maybe even within our lifetime, the full repercussion of when a new virus enters humanity like this. It’s still brand new, even three years out. We don’t know everything there is to know. But one of the things that’s been pretty widely documented, it is that there was a correlation between hair quality, excessive shedding, texture changes, and COVID. That’s pretty widely documented. I don’t have any research to cite it.
What I’m saying is there’s a lot of conversation about it because there’s a lot of conversation about it. A lot of these stylists are assuming that potentially there is that correlation between those who are sourcing the hair, the people that that hair is being sourced from, and perhaps the quality just will never be what it used to be. There’s a huge outcry for distributors, manufacturers, parent companies to simply talk about it, say what they’re seeing, if there is an issue, talk about it.
The other thing that that came up was maybe there’s a short supply of the chemicals needed to treat the hair. None of us are stupid. We all know this hair has to be deeply chemically treated before it becomes an extension weft. Is there a shortage in supply there? That was something that came up a few times.
This was an interesting one. Again, this is where the conspiracy theory comes out because there’s no transparency. Somebody said maybe the hair was just lasting too long, so these companies have reduced the quality to increase the volume that they sell.
That is terrible. There’s simply a lack of trust between the parent companies, the distributors, the manufacturers, and the stylists. What happens is then the stylists don’t know how to build trust with their own clients because they’re not sure what to promise. Is the hair going to be able to be colored? Is the hair going to last? Is the hair going to mat in two months? The stylists don’t know and so they feel not empowered to have the conversation.
I want to read with you another quote. “Hey Britt, I’m really glad you brought this up. This is a question and concern that’s really been bothering me and our entire salon team. There is 100% an extension crisis going on right now and no one is talking about it openly. I have seen one person hint at it with a specific brand, but nothing else. We know stylists from other states that are having the same issues with another brand.” This person’s bringing two brands into the equation, “—and other brands as well, buying directly from wholesale. All of the extensions are matting so fast, big brands, small brands, everybody. Now out of the blue, a lot of these brands are starting to say that hair only lasts four to six months, when for years they’ve been saying six to 12.
“Recently we had a class unrelated to the extensions, but there was an extension artist leading the class. This person flat out stopped the conversation when a question was brought up about hair quality. The educator said that they are best friends with one of the creators and didn’t feel comfortable talking about it. So the question is, what the h is going on and why are no brands addressing this? It’s making us look bad to our clients. And if they are replacing the hair left and right, they should know it’s a problem.”
Again, what’s coming up is this idea of why aren’t they just talking about it? The secret society, secret snake kind of thing is likely where this is all bubbling up from. There may be an issue with hair quality. We may never go back to having extension hair that lasts for 12 months. Totally possible. What stylists are asking for is transparency and open conversation about it.
What is possible with your quality? Have you noticed issues with quality of other competitors? What are you doing to ensure that your quality stays high? If you cannot promise six to 12 months anymore, what can you promise? What is your policy for? If a stylist does see matting with the hair? What they’re asking for is to have the conversation. They realize there may not be some magical solution and nobody asked for one, but what they’re saying is why aren’t we talking about it? I thought that was fair and valid.
The next thing that was brought up was micro brands. Here were the overall feelings about micro brands. “It feels like everybody these days is developing their own extension line, methodology, and proprietary techniques.” That’s a quote.
This is not a quote, this is an overall feeling. I saw this several times. A lot of people are saying they’re leaving the bigger brands because of the lack of trust and or some other things that we’re going to get into in a minute. They’re trying to trust these micro brands, which when I say micro brands, what it seems like—first of all, P.S., that’s a term that’s being used. I didn’t make that up. It’s something that people are saying and it sounds almost like an extension artist becomes a big deal and then they somehow source their own hair and now they’re selling their own hair and creating their own techniques.
To be honest, I’m not an extension artist, so I don’t see those things. Literally all I’m doing is reporting what’s being told to me.
What the story that’s coming up is these micro brands start off great, you feel hopeful, but then when you reorder, the quality, the speed and the quantities can’t be sustained. Which that’s typical with a startup, so I can be empathetic from that standpoint, but it doesn’t mean it’s not a frustration for the stylists.
Then that leads into, as a stylist, I feel like I’m looking to find my own wholesale distributor due to increased cost, decreased quality, and lack of communication.
Another point with the micro brands is they’re saying it’s hard to know who to trust. The industry has become quite saturated at this point. Previously, even go back five years, there were a few key brands, I can’t even name all the brands now. All the brands, all the methods, all the educators, all the distributors, all the tech. I mean, it’s just, it’s expanded and exploded. What’s happened because of the dilution and because of the whispers instead of the straight up conversation is that mistrust seems to be pretty rampant.
I was talking to one stylist specifically about this and she hit me up in the DMs and she was like, “Well, I had a really bad experience with X brand, right?” Insert any name, it doesn’t matter. And she was like, “But the brand I’m with now, blah, blah, blah has been amazing. This is who you should spotlight or whatever as a great brand.”
I told her straight up, I was like, “Guess what? The brand that you love is the brand that 20 other people hate, and the brand that you hate is the brand that 20 other people love.” That was the thing is like what I told the stylist is pretty much nobody came out unscathed. I mean, I heard stories about pretty much every single main brand and that shouldn’t be a surprise. P.S., no one’s perfect, literally no one’s perfect, and I want to say that from the perspective of the stylist and the owner, if you think the brand you’re with is perfect, probably not. I’m certainly not perfect. I don’t know if you as a stylist or salon owner are perfect, it’s probably pretty impossible. But the idea that one brand is sheer evil and another is sheer perfection is so deeply jaded. We have to let that go. Take those blinders off, take off the rose-colored glasses, and I think that’s going to be the undertone of everything is that I’ll get to it when I get to it.
But one of the other things, actually, let’s unpack it right now. One of the big complaints is that stylists feel like some of these extension brands are trying to create a false sense of community, and that once they get into the community, it’s different than what they expected. Some of the things that were brought up were cutthroat competition within the community and beyond. In the sense of you should stay with us because everything else is bad, they do not like that.
What they’re saying is for years they actually bought into it and now it’s feeling very scammy and spammy to them. It’s coming across as saying, “It’s okay for any extension brand, distribution house, whatever, to feel like they’re incredible and they’re the best.” But what they feel like has come up is that these companies have stepped away from being like, “We love what we do, we’re proud of what we do.” They’ve started to instead turn on each other and say, “We don’t do this and we don’t do that and you won’t find this here,” like attacking co-brands.
It’s giving stylists the icks, like it’s not feeling good. It’s feeling petty. I don’t think that that was intentional. I think that it’s because of this, again, subculture of this brand is the best, this brand is the worst, this brand is malicious, this one is perfect, which none of those things are true. But I think because this subculture has bubbled up, this is a byproduct. We shouldn’t even be surprised. Of course that’s where things have landed.
But these are some of the things that were brought up: cutthroat competition within a specific brand.
Let’s say I get certified in Seva brand extensions. The fact that even other Seva brand educators wouldn’t want me to become too big because it would be a threat to them. I heard story after story after story of that.
There was one stylist who reached out, let me actually find their quote ’cause it was so good. This stylist said, “There’s an educator in my city who does the same type of extensions that I offer. We work with the same brand, we should be aligned. I’ve reached out to this person multiple times to gain knowledge from them, happy to pay for it. This educator replies, states she’s been watching my growth in extensions, offers ways to work together. I message back saying I’m interested and then she ghosts me. I don’t get it. I’ve reached out multiple times. She acts like she’s ready and willing to educate online, but in private there’s this ‘mean girl’—” and that’s in quote— “‘vibes’ from her. I genuinely want to work with her. I genuinely want to work with this brand, but I don’t want to continue chasing her. I don’t understand all of this competitiveness to know more than your neighbor. Let’s share, of course, paying for their knowledge. I’ve been happy to pay the whole time. Can’t we just rise the tide to rising tide lifts all boats? Isn’t this supposed to be a community after all?”
That is the perfect summary of the issues that I’m hearing of. A brand shouldn’t say community, but then have educators who do this.
Here’s the thing to the big brands: how do you know if your educators are doing this? I don’t have the perfect answer to that. All I’m doing is airing the concerns and letting you know this is happening.
When I share a story like this and the brands say, “Oh, it’s ’cause everyone can’t teach the method and they’re mad.” I am here to tell you that is not what people are upset about. They’re happy to not be able to teach the method. They just want to learn. They want to feel supported. If you’re touting community, you better make sure everybody in the community is showing it, right? That everybody in the community, if somebody does reach out and say, “Hey, can I have some help?”, and if this person’s an educator, they should help. If this person’s not an educator, we don’t have to expect them to teach. But what it sounds like is this person is an educator potentially with the brand and is still ghosting this person and/or misleading them.
I don’t expect everybody to be a perfect community member in any community, so let me make that clear. But here’s where this falls flat. If I reach out to somebody and say, “Hey, I love what you’re up to. We work within the same brand. Would you be willing to mentor me?”, and that person says yes and then flips the script, I do think I have the right to be upset.
Now if I reached out to the stylist and was like, “Hey, I’d love you to mentor me,” and they were like, “Hey, thanks. Honestly, I love what I do. I love extensions. I’m simply not a great teacher or I’m not certified to do that,” or whatever, fair enough. We can’t expect everybody in the community to also be a coach and also be a mentor and also be willing to give their time. But you may have people in your community doing this to people and then when they turn their back on your brand and you’re confused as to why, it’s not because they can’t teach it. It’s because they can’t learn it. I want you to be very well aware of all that’s going on.
A couple people said it’s starting to feel like an MLM, I’m getting some MLM vibes. It feels like I’m supposed to be recruiting others. It feels like a huge part of my job is promoting the brand, not promoting myself. Some of the quotes that came through, I’m actually not going to say because they feel a little accusatory, so I’m just going to give examples of some of the phrases that were brought up. Emotional manipulation, ostracizing outsiders, pitting stylists and brands against each other, trapping stylists within the brand.
I could go on and on. I’m actually trying to keep it classy. Those were the classier of the quotes. But not feeling good.
One of the other things that was brought up that felt icky to stylists is the thought of don’t customize the application. You’ll ruin your client’s hair. Like extremes. Not just “This is the way we prefer it to be done. Play with it. See what works. Let’s learn from Mary. Mary, what’s working for you?” It’s the black and white. Do it this way or shave your client’s head. The extremes are just feeling like a lot.
Next point that came up. Some of these stylists said they’re to pull away from brands they had previously been loyal to for a lot of the reasons that we already talked about. But they’re two main points of why they’re choosing to pull away and go independent or go with a micro brand or just literally do their own thing, for a while, it was twofold.
One, they felt that brands were focused on asking stylists to promote the technique. I thought that was interesting and it very much fed into the very first thing I brought up, that eight months into the industry, a stylist who’s now locked into a one-year promotional contract with an extension brand. The locking us down does seem to be this resounding concern.
Here’s just my take on that as a business coach: I understand why you do it. I totally understand why you do it. It’s why Apple doesn’t allow their phone designers to go and work for Android. Why there’s that non-compete. Because you don’t want that cross-pollination. I understand why you’re doing it. I understand the thought process behind it. And P.S., you love the techniques that you are sharing and you love the quality of hair that you’re selling, what you offer is good. I totally understand that.
Here’s also what I know. If the quality of your education, the quality of your technique, and the quality of your hair is better than the rest, you don’t need to tell people. And you’re in a non-compete and you can’t go anywhere else and don’t even look at this other person. They’re the worst. If your product, your community, your application technique, your education is truly the best, friends, you don’t need to worry about the wandering eye. You don’t need to talk bad about your perceived competitors.
One of my favorite quotes and anybody who’s educated with me will hear me say this all the time, eyes on your own paper. Stop worrying so much about what anybody else is up to and simply make your product, your efforts, your actions, your community, your education the best and all the rest will stop mattering. So much concern about control is potentially causing people to lose faith overall.
It sounds like a lot of people are actually disappointed. They’re like, “I wanted to stay with the big company. I liked them, but things have gotten so strange.”
I don’t think it has to be that way at all. Think about what you can do to shift the narrative with the stylists who partner with you to be, “Listen, this is not about—don’t look at your other options. It’s not about everybody else’s bad. It’s all about we want to serve you at our highest.”
I think if that can sustain the message, whoa, I think that stylists are going to feel so much more supported and everybody’s going to get a better end result.
The other piece that came along with that was judgment for being associated with any given brand. A stylist feels like—let’s say they do choose a new brand to partner with and they go in and maybe somebody asks them, “Oh, what extension line were you using before?”, and they say, “Seva brand extensions,” or whatever. And this new brand goes, “Oh, well, you’re going to be really glad you came here,” it makes this stylist feel really stupid and intimidated.
Think back to high school. I think high school—I always use it as an example ’cause I think it’s such a relatable time for all of us. Everybody had a different high school experience. Some of us loved it, some of us did not like it, right? But imagine going into high school and let’s say you’re a freshman and you walk into a senior class and the subject matter is art or something. It’s something enjoyable, okay? A senior turns to you as the freshman and says, “Oh, you’re here to learn more about painting. Do you have any experience?”, and you say to them, “Well, I’ve just done the freshman art class.” The senior goes, “Okay, well, you have a lot to learn now. You’re going to be really glad you’re here.”
Go back to being that freshman and feeling so intimidated, so less than, like an idiot, like maybe you should never have signed up for the class in the first place. All those feelings are coming right back up for people. It’s coming from a place of that senior is probably trying to connect with that freshman and probably does feel a sense of pride for the program that they’re in now. But the way they go about it is making the new person feel intimidated, not embraced, stupid, not empowered.
I think that there’s a counterculture going on. That is unexpected.
Second to last, we have the perceived secrecy. I touched on this a few times, but I want to bring it up specifically that story I shared about the educator being asked specifically about quality and him saying, “I’m not at liberty to discuss.” He should have immediately, and maybe he did, gone back to whomever it is he worked for and said, “Listen, in a class, I’m getting asked about this. I’m now at the place where I’m saying I can either confirm nor deny.” This person’s having to be a politician about it. That should have been the time for the whomever it was, this person was working for it, to say, “We’ve got to make a statement to our stylists. If they’re asking about it in classes, if there’s these whispered—I am telling, I can’t express this enough.
I got dozens of DMs about hair quality, dozens of DMs, about poor culture within communities, very few DMs about “We wish we could teach the techniques.” That’s not even front of mind or part of the conversation. Not what was sent to me. These are the things that they want to be talking about. Talk about them, tackle them head on.
And then number eight, education quality overall has decreased as a result of all of these things. One of the things that came up is that education is hard to get. It’s often expensive, so people are avoiding it all together because they’re afraid of being in all these positions and situations. They’re learning it underground and it’s causing the quality to massively decrease.
The irony of it all is that I think a lot of these brands are trying to keep their techniques proprietary, which like I’ve said on previous podcasts, I support that. I said a few weeks ago, I totally understand and that’s not an issue for me. My issue is because reaching and learning these techniques is so hard, the barrier to entry feels so high. Sometimes it’s travel, sometimes it’s thousands of dollars.
Listen, you can price your stuff whatever you want. I’m not arguing against that. But if people can’t afford it, if people can’t travel, the byproduct is always going to be people are going to get weird and try to figure it out themselves.
We can try to gate keep all we want to, but people are always going to try and scrap it together. So when you say, “Well, our educators can teach the brand, you just have to pay them,” but stylists are reaching out to these educators asking to pay them, and the stylists are ghosting them. What are they supposed to do if they can’t afford to fly to your in-person training? Your local educator is not willing to respond to a DM. Their only choice is to go on YouTube and try and hope somebody has spilled your technique so that they can learn it because there’s no, it’s not accessible.
Then some people say, “Well, we offer online education.” Yeah, but we all know that to learn a physical technique online is not as effective as in person.
Is the price point right? Is the support there? I don’t know. To be candid, I’ve never been extension certified. I’ve never gone through any of these training programs. I don’t know exactly what the blind spots and pain points are.
No extension brand has asked me to come on in and sort it out for them. But what I’m saying is there’s something there. The fact that so many people felt the need to express these things to me, there’s just something there. My hope in sharing all of this is that brands can grow bigger and better, not smaller and slower. I think that there’s just been too much talk behind the scenes for too long and not enough straight-up conversation, not enough transparency, and too much focus on what the other competitors are doing and not enough focus on what’s going on within your own four walls.
My suggestion from here, I would suggest—and this is actually something that was brought up by somebody within this poll and so I want to thank them for that. They said, “I would love to see any major extension brand poll their audience on social media, by email, in meetings, and in classes, and ask openly “What are the challenges you’re having with our brand?” Be open to hearing it. Truly open, not defensive, open to hearing it. And they are open to going back and saying, ‘What can we do? How can we tackle these things?’”
Overwhelming outcry for conversation about hair quality matting specifically.
Then third, stop asking stylists to center around your brand or method and start instead centering around their own quality applications. Stylists, I’m not going to put all of this responsibility on the brands. Y’all need to speak up, gossiping amongst each other. I think gossip is so toxic. You will not catch me talking trash about another educator. You will not catch me whispering behind the scenes. I will go directly to somebody if I have something to say to them and/or I’ll say nothing at all, but I won’t whisper about it. I won’t gossip about it. I’m either going to go directly to the source or I’m going to say nothing and shut my trap. I encourage you to do the same.
Quit the toxic gossip and go straight to whom it is you have a concern with and make a noise so loud you can’t be ignored. That’s the only way you’re going to see a change.
I’m here for you. I’m always happy to bring up topics like this. I’ve now done my part. Now it’s time for you to do yours.
I encourage both sides to really talk this through, to have the conversation and to figure out how you can overcome these things. There are some extension brands I deeply admire and I really that there could be more camaraderie around stylists, creators, educators, distributors. Y’all are partners in this and you need each other to make it fly. Find that partnership. Get back to what made these brands good from the jump and don’t worry about anything else.
This is probably the longest podcast I’ve ever done. I don’t know if investigative journalism is for me, but I hope you’ve had some great takeaways from this. I’d love for you to leave a rating or review about this podcast. It’s a new format for me. Would love to know what you think. I would love it if you shared in the Instagram stories or the DMs, anything else that came up for you. I’ll try and share throughout this week some of the other things that come up.
As I always like to say, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
