SAN ANTONIO – The stay-home orders in Bexar County, Texas and around the country have inadvertently started a new beauty trend or two. Natural beauty may be making a comeback but also the idea that anyone could be a kitchen beautician.
Like during our great grandmothers’ time, home haircuts, at-home hair color and natural aging may become the norm again.
City and county orders have closed any cosmetic procedure that requires a person-to-person touch, so along with massage centers, beauty parlors and med spa clinics are down for the count. As a result, men and women who depend on salons and estheticians for beauty treatments are now having to think outside the box, or more appropriately, open a box.
If you want quality anti-aging treatments or products, you may have had no choice but to buy it at the drug store or order it online. It’s a good opportunity for some businesses. A perfect example is Tina Zillmann’s Skin Rejuvenation Clinique. Her four locations may be shut down during the “Stay Home, Work Safe” orders, but she’s not out of business. In fact, her 6,000-square-foot warehouse is humming along with activity.
“This distribution center has been a blessing because now we can still get product out to everybody, not only locally but nationally," Zillmann said.
She’s directly selling on behalf of estheticians around the country.
“We drop ship from their homes, so when their clients call for product, we put it in a box, we charge them and they charge their client," Zillmann said.
She said skincare is more important than ever as more people are cut off from their salon professionals, and that certainly goes for hairstylists too.
“I think we're going have some color corrections when we go back. But that's going to be good. I went dark before. It is not easy. Blonde is much easier," Zillman said.
If you are frightened to try your own hair color, Zillmann recommends trying temporary hair powders to cover the gray and get you through the next month, or try the trendiest hairstyle of 2020 and go completely gray.
Some retail stores, like Sally’s, are doing curbside delivery of hair color kits, but once you get it home, “kitchen beauticians” might want to check out Youtube tutorials to make sure they get the result they want.
Zillmann said her staff has even added video blogs on her website that are interactive.
“You have to face reality. So they were concocting the product and showing how to do it at home, like microdermabrasion or a light skin peel”, she explained.
One of the most popular sections of her website was where customers of her 24-karat gold mask posted pictures of themselves, their husbands and even their pets covered in their “stay-at-home masks.” You can check them out at www.skinrejuvenation.com.
One service that does not have an at-home option is Botox injections. There are few doctors willing to go through the trouble of a home visit. For that, Zillmann says it’s time to go old school.
“You know, there are creams and lotions out there that will help with that Botox wearing off. Those peptides are really important,” she advised.
Another service that many women depend on, eyelash extensions, has been curtailed. But Zillmann said that may be a good thing since you should periodically give your eyelashes a break from the glue. She suggests using this time at home to use growth serums to enhance your natural lashes instead.
Zillmann said in her 30 years in business, she’s never seen a situation quite like this. She said she believes when the stay home orders are over, there will be plenty of business for cosmetologists, estheticians and medical spas to get back to work.