Our great friend, colour specialist, and L’Oreal Ambassador Paris Artist, Jack Howard is passionate about creating gorgeous colour and believes there’s a whole generation of people the industry is forgetting about – our older clients! A side note: we’ll be seeing Jack back in London very soon at our Colour World event. So, if this inspires you and you’re interested in seeing Jack live at work, grab your tickets HERE.
Let’s hear more from the colour legend himself…
“I don’t like the word mature, but I don’t like the word anti-ageing either. I mean, you can’t anti-age. And I don’t like the phrase ‘you look good for your age’ because we don’t say that to people who are 20-25. But when we’re looking at people in their 40s and 50s, there are changes in their body and hair,” he explains.
For women going through menopause, or pre-menopause, there are numerous concerns due to hormonal changes. Some people experience hair loss or may have more grey’s hair appearing, while for others their hair texture can feel different.
“I think as an industry we’re missing an opportunity to embrace these clients,” Jack stresses. “We are all guilty of posting younger clients on our social pages, but generally we have a varied age of people that come to see us, and I think we are all guilty of ignoring and forgetting our older clients. There’s an opportunity we can take to build relationships, offer services and products, and really make a difference to our bottom line.”
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Here are a few simple ways Jack inspires his older clients.
1 Consultation is key
Everybody should have a consultation; new clients to figure out what they want to achieve from their colour service, but it’s also important to build in time with older clients to address any concerns. You wouldn’t go to the dentist and expect them to do the same as last time. You’d expect them to check in with you. It’s the same with us; we need to check in with the client and find out if they have any concerns and how we can address them.
2 Go up a level
When working with all over, global colour, make sure that you go a quarter to a half a shade lighter around the face, so it’s soft and has a more youth-like fresh, modern, quality. Balayage is great for this age group but make sure the hair isn’t monochromatic. We know that we can create illusions with hair colour, so if somebody has got hair that’s thinning, we want to make it appear thicker. This means if we over highlight it, it’s going to look thinner because lighter hair looks thinner anyway.
3 Scalp care
Educate your clients about keeping their scalp clean. Scalps can get ‘tight,’ so we want to make sure that we’ve removed any build up and get the blood flow going. Always offer this age group a good scalp massage to get the circulation pumping and recommend products such as the Scalp Advanced range from L’Oreal Professionnel.
4 Consider their lifestyle
Skin tone changes as we get older so we should always be looking at tonal changes in the hair too. Look at the eyes and the skin, make sure that everything’s connecting nicely and be prepared for technique and tone updates over time. The clothes they wear will also influence the blonde or brunette that we choose. We must make sure their hair compliments their lifestyle as well as their skin tone.
5 Never take them for granted
It’s easy to take these clients for granted. We see our root tint and highlight clients as bread and butter, and we’ve not sat and spoken to that person about their hair in a long time. They say they want to be brighter, so we put brighter pieces in, but not really think the process through. What we should be thinking is, OK, they want to be brighter, but they’re already blonde. We need to add some depth to it, and give it more contrast. We do this with our balayage and our foliage clients but somehow this age group gets forgotten. There’s a whole market of women of a certain age who are just being ignored.
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6 Think about grey coverage
More women are embracing their natural greys, and we can be much cleverer with our grey coverage applications. There’s no reason why we can’t make it interesting and tailored to our client. Putting highlights all the way through isn’t the answer, you can end up with clients that are unhappy and waiting for some change. This is when we lose them to someone who is listening to what they want.
7 Recommend the right products
There’s lots of products that are perfect for this age group – Metal Detox from L’Oreal Professionnel is a no-brainer; It’s great for them to use at home to get rid of any mineral build up and make their colour ‘pop’. Recommend scalp cleanses, shampoos for irritated scalps; start with caring for their scalp and their hair will feel the benefits.
We hope this helps you navigate your older clients… And we can’t wait to see Jack teaching us more in person at Colour World 2024.
Looking for some more colour inspiration? Here you go: INSPIRATION