Adding advanced services like skin peels and microneedling to your menu is a great way to generate additional revenue and tackle complicated skin issues.
Angela Taylor, Dermalogica’s director of education for the UK and Ireland, explains how you can achieve it in your business.
How can beauty professionals tap into the consumer interest in skin health and glowing skin?
Even if you’re not active on social media, it’s good to stay abreast of trends and to understand what’s having an impact because we need to have that dialogue with our clients.
So, if we see a trend like glass skin, we need to be able to have that open dialogue with our clients to be able to either leverage the treatments that we do or the right home-care products that are going to help to achieve that look.
You can also correct any misinformation, so when you see the wrong trends coming into fruition and influencing clients, you can steer it in the right direction.
Conversation is one thing, but the other thing is thinking about whether your menu includes services that are going to benefit the health of the skin in the long term but also give an instant result, because people are looking for shifts in the skin where they can really see a difference.
For example, last year Dermalogica launched Luminfusion, a supercharged service that combines exfoliation stacking, luminosity through red light therapy, and nano-infusion technology to infuse actives into the skin.
Since we introduced Luminfusion, a lot of accounts are experiencing increased demand from clients looking for services that have no downtime and show instant results but can also be used as a steppingstone or maintenance for more advanced treatments.
These create a better revenue stream for businesses because they allow you to charge a higher price point.
Are there any skin concerns that might pose a problem for achieving glowing skin?
One of the concerns that affects a lot of people is pigmentation, which can be frustrating because hyperpigmentation can make the skin look dull as it prevents light from reflecting.
It’s not a prevention for you doing treatments but clients can feel quite self-conscious about their skin looking dull, and that’s a challenge across the Fitzpatrick scale.
How do you safely treat pigmentation on a range of skin tones?
When we look at pigmentation, there are two cells which are very interconnected – the melanocyte cell which produces melanin pigment, and the Langerhans cell which is connected to immune inflammatory response.
When we get inflammation in the skin, we can produce melanin, and equally when we have a nervous response from the brain – from stress, for example – we release certain neuropeptides as well as melanocyte-simulating hormones that stop the inflammation which is being induced.
By stopping the inflammation, you can trigger pigmentation.
So if inflammation is induced in melanin-rich skin, it can be more prone to pigmentation. Sometimes aggressive peels or resurfacing treatments have been more difficult to use on melanin-rich skin without invoking an inflammatory response.
Nowadays, its better because we have some great technology that can treat all Fitzpatrick skin types, but we always need to consider controlling inflammation.
Which skincare ingredients would you recommend for treating pigmentation?
For the exfoliation side of treating pigmentation, look at the hydroxy acid group because the acids can be multifunctional – salicylic acid is also anti-inflammatory and lactic acid has brightening properties.
Strengths and pH are important because we need to be sure that the skin can tolerate it and we’re not inducing too much inflammation.
Azelaic and tranexamic acid are also fantastic for targeting pigmentation because not only do they inhibit the tyrosinase enzyme and interfere with the cascade of melanin production but they can also help with cell turnover.
We also need ingredients which tackle the actual production of melanin, for example tranexamic acid again, but also niacinamide which helps to block the melanin pathway between the melanocyte and keratinocyte cells.
We recently launched the Melanopro system which uses a lot of these active ingredients that resurface the skin to remove pigmented cells while also addressing the melanocyte cell itself, and is suitable across the Fitzpatrick scale.
This can also be combined with homecare with the likes of vitamin C and peptides, as well as SPF which is non-negotiable.
This is a sponsored post in partnership with Dermalogica.
