Hair comes trouble now

Stephen Roberts and his wife Rochelle. Picture / Paul Estcourt

Like hairdressing apprentices all over the world, Stephen Roberts spends a lot of time pushing a broom, shampooing hair and trying to impress his boss. He's new to the industry and dreams of becoming a stylist like his mentor at the Art of Hair salon on Auckland's North Shore, senior hairdresser Rochelle Roberts, who closely supervises her pupil's attempts at simple cutting and styling.

Stephen Roberts is an unusual apprentice. He's 43 years old, a former banking executive, and joint owner of the Milford salon with Rochelle, his 34-year-old wife.

Stephen's business acumen and Rochelle's creative flair, bolstered by her 19 years' experience, mean the Roberts represent a new face of hair-dressing. In an effort to stamp out problems of exploitation, poor business practices and burnout, the industry's professional bodies want all salons to do business like the Roberts; with disciplined management and professional employment practices.

New Zealanders spent $326 million on hairdressing last year alone, an increase of $108 million since 1998, according to Statistics New Zealand. Consumers spent $275 million on shampoo, conditioner, colours and hair products, both applied at home and in salons - an increase of $114 million in just five years, according to figures compiled by the Cosmetics, Toiletries and Fragrances Association of New Zealand.

With that kind of expenditure growth, this should be an industry in brilliant health. New, budget hairdressing chainstores are springing up in shopping malls. The ultra-glamorous salons have turned cutting hair into a ritual involving ever-growing applications of time, champagne, expertise, massage and money. In the big cities, few women escape the cut-and-colour experience with change from $150, and even a bloke's haircut, once a strictly $15, five-minute affair, can now cost nearly $100 in the plusher pockets of suburbia.

Each year, hundreds of graduates emerge from the hairdressing academies and nearly 1500 apprentices are working towards their qualification certificates within salons, while sitting theoretical exams at official provider colleges.

Successful hairdressers know they have found one of the most delightfully fun careers around; but the unglamorous reality is that for many of New Zealand's nearly 4000 hairdressing operations, this is still a hardscrabble trade of perpetual staff shortages, razor-thin profits and mounting debt.

So where's all our money going?

Across the industry, there's a common answer: many hairdressers lack the business skills to properly manage staff, control stock and investments. Nearly all the salon owners who spoke to the Herald said they struggled to keep prices down, and found themselves absorbing rises in inflation and costs. Often, junior staff are not only underpaid but under-utilised and bored; leaving the trade after a few years in frustration.

Department of Labour research in 2005 showed, despite the steady flow of enthusiastic young people entering the industry, only 42 per cent of hairdressing jobs were filled within six weeks of advertising. The department's study attributes the problem to low wages (on average, $13 an hour or just over $32,000 per annum for a 40-hour week, compared with the hourly average of $19.50 for all trades) and poor working conditions, including physically demanding work and constant exposure to harsh chemicals.

This was not a "shortage" but a "recruitment difficulty", the report said - that is, there are plenty of hairdressers around but many simply don't like the industry.

"I spend my entire day getting hairdressers to appreciate that although they are extremely creative, they are meant to be running a business," says Jim Matson, manager of L'Oreal New Zealand's relations with salons.

He travels the country encouraging salon owners to undertake professional development and business training so they can focus on their "hidden talent" for improving clients' self-esteem. "They can make you feel good about yourself and that's priceless. If I was to have a frustration it is that hairdressers undervalue what they do," Matson says.

Research by the Hairdressing Industry Training Organisation, which monitors training standards and oversees the certification process for apprentices, has identified a widespread lack of management skills and staffing problems.

HITO chief executive Erica Cumming says hairdressing is "not a cottage industry any more. We want to give upper-level training, to educate employers that it's not smart business to have an apprentice [simply] sweeping the floor, for example. There are better ways of getting good returns from staff, and the progressive owners are finding if the apprentices are active from day one, dealing with clients and working with other stylists, they become valuable staff members much more quickly."

The HITO is frustrated by government limitations on its ability to train employers, Cumming says. "We receive funding for educating the trainees, but it would be wonderful to be able to help the employers develop their management skills to a greater degree."

Cumming says it's unfair to suggest that haircuts are generally overpriced. "In fact, hairdressing is one of the few industries where prices have not kept up with inflation. Years ago it would have cost a week's salary to have a service like a perm; now it's nothing like that. The reality is that a lot of salons have felt that they couldn't charge a realistic price for the time and expertise and products that go into their services, and have spent a long time trying to keep the prices as low as possible."

Clients themselves must decide what a haircut is worth, says David Russell of the Consumers' Institute - although he confesses to being a $15 barber-cut man himself. "It doesn't matter if you pay $20 or $200, the Consumer Guarantees Act means you can expect a competent, professional job. Basically, for $200 you can expect a whole lot more fussing and puffing around, and perhaps a bit more creativity from the stylist, and better salon premises, but beyond that it is a very personal decision about how much you feel like paying."

On Thursday afternoon at the Just Cuts salon in St Lukes shopping mall in south-west Auckland, six black-clad stylists hover, scissors at the ready.

They cater for adults who want a professional, fashionable haircut but don't need a colour, a treatment, a cappuccino, a head massage or an $80 bill. Here, a cut and style is $21 for men and women alike, and extras like shampooing and blow-drying are $5 each.

The idea has hit a market. Just Cuts salons trim 10,000 heads a week, and the clients are split 50/50 between men and women. "We only employ senior stylists, and we have no appointments, which means everyone who walks through the door knows they're going to get excellent service regardless of who cuts their hair," says Just Cuts master franchisee Scott Wallace. He would like to open more outlets, but the Just Cuts franchisees (who pay between $110,000 and $180,000 to buy and outfit a salon) simply can't find enough qualified staff.

"There is a real shortage of qualified hairdressers, and I think the Government needs to be told, because they should be subsidising salons to employ and train young people."

Wallace says it is a "complete fallacy" that a haircut has to be expensive to be high-quality. "That's just people's perception and it's completely wrong. We get people from across the financial spectrum."

The ever-growing Rodney Wayne franchise chain has kept the cost of a "shape-and-style" to $59 for women and $42 for men by focusing on other ways to make money. At the franchise's Mission Bay salon, owner David Sheary says his stylists can earn commission-based salaries of more than $70,000, according to their success in selling treatments and products to clients.

At the Ruben Blades Academy in Christchurch, 21-year-old Kylie Rutland has nearly finished a 36-week, $7500 hairdressing course and in April will start work at an Ashburton salon. Rutland has a $14,000 student loan but doesn't know how much she'll be getting paid at her first job. "I'm not worried about the money at all. This is something I have always wanted to do and I love," she says.

Ruben Blades owner Eelco Wiersma says Rutland is an excellent, enthusiastic student who will do well, but he worries that many salon owners don't display the same qualities.

"So many young people get into hairdressing and then leave after five years because they are treated very unprofessionally in 95 per cent of salons," Wiersma says. "It's diabolical. A high percentage of salons use the young people as slave labour, don't have an employment agreement, don't pay the minimum wage, give them only $5 or $6 an hour, and don't train their apprentices as they should."

Raymond Henderson, who owns a self-titled studio on Parnell Rd, wants government regulation to ensure all salons operate to minimum standards.

"At the moment anyone can open a salon and start cutting and colouring, whether they have qualifications or not, although they do need to be qualified if they want to conduct training. So many industries are properly regulated; doctors, dentists, even builders now - the Government should step in and police hairdressing. How many people have to have their hair mucked up before something changes?"

The New Zealand Association of Registered Hairdressers wants to bring a new mood of professionalism to the industry, and has launched a guarantee-of-quality service, signed by all its 700 members, mostly salon owners. The Government rejected requests to create regulatory legislation, so the association is attempting self-regulation of employment and health practices, as well as providing business and management training for employers.

"We want to stamp out the salons where the owners are not training their staff, they're not clean and tidy, they're implying incorrectly that they have fully qualified staff, because we just don't need the cowboys any more," association national president Fay Haakma says. "We want all our hairdressers to cotton on to the reality of running profitable businesses; actually having regular pricing reviews and being realistic about the need to raise prices, working out their overheads, adapting to changes like the introduction of four-week holidays and paid maternity leave. Our industry has always been good at running competitions and setting the fashion agenda, but now we need to run better businesses."

Raymond and Irene Saussey, who ran the successful Waves for Hair in Remuera for 25 years, find it frustrating that so many hairdressing operations struggle. "The real focus of the industry should not be upping the prices; it should be training business owners, who in turn have to train staff, into the demographics of hairdressing," says Saussey, former national sales manager for Wella.

"Too many owners just don't understand business; they are running on tick, in debt up to the hilt, they're working for the landlord. Salon owners must start thinking about what market they are really in, what sort of clients they want to attract, not just setting their prices according to what a nearby salon is doing. The solution is not just raising prices. You can't just start charging $100 unless you know you've got the clients to sustain that price, and many places don't."

In 1980, the Sausseys identified the clientele they wanted - professional city workers - targeted them with advertising, and ran the business tightly with constant reviews of staff performance, closely supervised training and disciplined management of stock.

"By far, though, the most important attribute for a hairdresser is integrity, because clients always, always reward integrity with loyalty," says Irene Saussey, who works at the Newmarket salon Barnaby's, owned by former Waves stylist Jo Yule.

"This is a business, but it is also about personal relationships. During the 1980s when the economy was so difficult, I had clients who told me they just couldn't afford to keep coming in for colours. I took those women to the pharmacy and showed them the right colours to use at home - and every single one of them came back to me when their finances were better."