Editor's letter: myth busting and troubleshooting

Working in a salon or spa environment can leave you feeling isolated. While your team may be as close-knit as a family, the nature of busy, small businesses means it can be hard to keep up with what’s going on in the industry at large.

Often salon owners and therapists feel as if they are the only ones who’ve had to deal with a particular weird request from a client, or struggled to achieve results with a certain treatment. But as Hellen Ward shares in the current issue, even the most established salons sometimes experience nightmare clients and outlandish complaints. In reality, salons and spas up and down the country are facing many of the same challenges on a daily basis.

So our December issue is about myth busting and troubleshooting. Our soak-off gels feature is dedicated to solving the most common problems that techs and therapists told us they experience with the popular treatment. According to our Insider stats this month, damage caused by improper removal is the number-one gel-polish issue faced by nail salons, while spas struggle with shrinkage and beauty salons find lifting causes the most problems. Find out how to tackle all these issues and more in the December issue.

Meanwhile, our employment advice feature focuses on overcoming common misconceptions about employee rights and pay. From queries about holidays during maternity leave to misunderstandings over Sunday pay and entitlement to paid breaks, our checklist will help you keep on top of things. In fact, managing time is another common issue faced by salon and spa managers and was one of the biggest problems identified by those taking part in the first Global Spa Mentorship Program this year. Read about the solutions they came up with in the current issue.

Boosting retail sales and motivating employees were just some of the other hurdles identified in the mentorship programme, suggesting that no matter where in the world you are, the challenges of running a beauty or spa business are not that different after all.