Q&A with Ellen Kavanagh, Waxperts wax
PB meets Ellen Kavanagh, Owner at Waxpert Wax the professional wax brand who manufactures professional wax solutions, with a no double dipping policy. Perfect for even the most sensitive skins or strongest hair types.
Ellen can you tell us a little about your company ??
Trish O'Brien and I have over 20 years experience waxing between us. That's a lot of brazilians!! Waxperts salon opened in 2008 with it's own unique wax and grew from strength to strength. So we knew exactly how the prefect wax should be for both the therapist and the client. Waxperts Wax launched to the trade in 2012 ?
What products do you offer?
We have a full range of Hot Wax, Strip Wax, Cleanser, Oils and ingrown hair products, have a look on our website if you want to know more about our product range www.waxpertswax.com
Can you tell us what is your most popular product and what do you think makes it popular?
Our Original hot wax. It is our hero product. Clients ADORE it and it has transformed some of our stockists businesses.
What makes your products so special over the competition?
Our hot waxes stay flexible and elastic. They never crack or break. Making it easier for the therapist and more comfortable for the client. Waxperts is a really strong brand that clients know and ask for by name. This helps our stockist to build their business.
How cost effective are your products when introducing them into a salon?
Super cost effective!!! Even though they are a premium product, we are salon owners so they had to be cost effective. You don't need to use a couple of hot waxes to do the job, nor do you need to build up patches and waste wax. 1 kg of our wax will give you 10 brazilians so you should be getting up to €500 return on a bag. Also our wax is pre broken into chunks so no wasted time breaking wax or no wasted product with tiny pellets spilling or sticking to your spatula.
Do you provide any extra services, advice or training programmes for professionals who use your products in their salons?
Yes we do! We have a selection of training courses available to suit everyone. We have a Pro course that does from brows to brazilians. A male waxing training course that includes male brazilian training. Our most popular course is "Below the Belt" this is an intensive hands on hot wax training in all bikini waxes. You will leave this course feeling confident in hot waxing any bikini and you'll never look at a strip wax bikini wax again! It's brilliant !!! It's honestly revolutionised some of our stockists businesses.
You are exhibiting at PB Ireland in October, what are you most looking forward to?
Chatting to our regular stockists and catching up and meeting new potential stockists. But most of all we love doing our demos and this year we will be on the live stage. So we can't wait!!!
I really admire and support the strong stance you and Waxperts have taken on a 'no double dipping' policy. Do you find much resistance to this in the industry or is it something that therapists are warming to as time goes by?
We do find a lot of resistance across salons in Ireland and the UK which is such a shame. Clients deserve the best treatment and that includes no double dipping. We have converted a lot of Irish salons to our way of NDD and we're working on making it a standard practice with all Waxperts Wax stockists. We admire the salons in the US who follow the NDD policy religiously and hopefully, we can encourage everyone through training and education to follow their lead.
The Waxperts packaging and scent is very feminine do you have any plans to create a 'male wax' or aftercare product with more masculine or neutral packaging?
Before we launched our salon we tried and tested our wax and branding on a group of male clients who loved our pin up on the logo the most. Then they loved the fact that the wax was dark purple in colour and not pink. But you never know, we may add a male wax to the range in the future
Will you actually present any new product at PBIreland this year?
We launched our newest Hot Wax Rosie Pearl earlier this year which has been a great success, so we're still busy promoting that. We would like to let stockists get comfortable with 'Rosie' before we launch any other new products…We may have something new for PBIreland 2015 though!
From a business/salon management point of view, we're really impressed with your customer service. Of equal importance is the way you highlight the differences between new waxing products. We changed our strip wax recently based entirely on this principle! We're absolutely delighted to see manufacturers who are developing products that offer something different to what's already out there and demonstrably so. We also take a great interest in the science and mechanics behind the products we use, so it's great to see the information is available. Well done
We try really hard to ensure each and every one of our products performs extremely well in order to make the therapists job easier and more effective, and for the client to ultimately have an enjoyable wax with great results. Our recipes are 100% unique and Waxperts Wax is made by us 'waxers' for fellow waxers. We like to make sure we support all stockists in every way we can, whether it's new potential stockists finding out about the brand and products initially or just catching up with an old exisiting stockists to see how they're getting on. We like to keep in touch with everyone and hear any feedback they might have for us. It's one of the most enjoyable parts of the job.
Waxperts Wax will be at PB Ireland on 5-6 October at the RDS Dublin on stand B38!
Trish O'brien will demonstrate Tips and Tricks with Waxperts Wax on Monday 6th October at 14:00 on the PB Live stage. Pre - book your session(s) here!
