I recently did a hands on class in Urbandale, IA for an awesome group of students!  We shared techniques from our DVD iFoil in Color, which is our most advanced techniques from Product Club.  We dove right in and talking up hair color trends, trouble shooting with hair color results, and shared stories throughout the day of why they love to do hair and how many years they have been in the industry.  It created such a warm and energizing vibe.  The students themselves were fantastic!!  So eager to learn and picked up the techniques quickly and pretty fast too, very impressive.  Well Urbandale … it was nice to be in your town for a bit, hopefully I will making it back soon!

…and so is sunny Orlando, Florida! Orlando Premiere was rocking and so was Product Club. We had two great educators, Melissa Johnson and Adrienne Rogers, teaching fashion-forward, salon wearable foiling techniques to the many eager students at the show.  Along with assisting in Melissa’s class, which was fantastic and so fun, I  had the pleasure of getting to have some fun and even pop up on our demo stage at the booth.  Adam was invigorating new thoughts and ways to use the tools we already have by styling hair using our foils.  Laurie and Devon were great demonstrating some of the endless possibilities we have at our fingertips in changing the way we color hair.  The whole gang had a blast and can’t wait to do it again! Check out some of our action shots .

Thanks to everyone for supporting Product Club!

Cheers, Amanda Lenz

Adam's Technique

Adam creating curls using foil!

Laurie & Devon

As always I love this weekend! Lots of work.. great people and always find a new love (product/ technique) I arrived and was greeted by lovely Kristina, Alyssa and Melissa. We headed to our usual resting spot near the convention center, with a scenic drive through the area. The show was great, so many different types of hairstylists. What a great craft to be in with so many creative, imaginative people. I will have to say my favorite product seller is the tech track.. such a no brainer to have! It is such a useful tool, all colorist can have a seamless system. I love the amazing talent with our team, Adam is always fun to watch with his styling techniques and our lovely Amanda got on stage and rocked it! The best part is when one of the students actually got on stage with her for at least 10 mins. There is a intense student. Devin is fun to watch, he is such a great demonstrator and holds crowd with his techniques and visuals. And of course the trip would not be full unless we did something silly… So at the end of the 1st day some of us ended with somersaults. What a fantastic weekend!

The Premiere show in Orlando is always such a great show!   Great people and great energy!  I had a full class on sunday with 35 attendees in the hands on class for Beyond Basic Foiling. We began with understanding what foil placements create what types of effects and movements to  accent haircuts and how to space highlights to create different contrasts within the hair.  We then followed with a face framing placement to create a ribbon-y color effect by the face.  Followed by a pinwheel wrap using thermal wraps.  This is a very cool effect to create alot of movement in varying lengths of hair.  The pinwheel is great for both a conservative look or a bolder one.  We also covered splicing variations and paneling.  It was  a great class and I was personally greatful to have had the assistance of Amanda!

I also had 3 separate 1 hour classes where we covered a condensed version of the hands on class.  The time went so fast.  I also really enjoyed seeing our other team members on the demo stage sharing so many awesome ideas from Adam’s cool foil styling techniques, Laurie’s great highlighting techniques, Devon’s techniques and charming all the ladies;)  and Amanda’s way of helping people master their foiling mechanics!  You all rock!

I am looking forward to the cool new Great Grips line additions coming out!

Just remember to watch out for falling banners!  (fyi-my foot is almost healed!)

Until next time….

We recently exhibited at the Premiere Beauty Show in Orlando, Florida. This proves to be a great show for Product Club each and every year. The hairstylists in the southeast are always so eager to learn new techniques and really take advantage of all the education we have to offer. In addition to the ongoing education in our pavillion on the floor, we also had 2 hands-on classes with over 50 students total and 3 demo style classes each day.

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I foil in Color “unplugged” was what I called my class in Orlando. I tried to focus on the real world situations in the salon and talk about techniques I use and ways to use them for problem solving in real life salon situations. It’s kind of funny how hard this was.
Most of the time when I’m working at a hair show I really look for the ideal model to showcase an idea or technique that I’m featuring. It’s easy when everything’s “just so” but as we all know it’s a rare occasion at the salon when all of the planets align and we are able to do something perfectly. People’s hair history, condition, and expectations all come into play.
It’s with this in mind (and a healthy dose of MTV Unplugged nostalgia) that I moved forward with this idea. I think a good deal of the audience appreciates the reality that the Product Club team puts forward. And even though it’s harder, and not nearly as sexy, I think I’m really going to focus on this for the coming year. Blond addicts, color history nightmares, neurotic damaged clients… bring it on! I’m ready – and hopefully with our help so are you!

This years Premiere Orlando show was great! Had a great time with all the team members. The first day was great we were jam packed at the booth and all of our class rooms went awesome as well. Demo stage in the booth went awesome too. This was the second show that i have got to do our new styling with foil on demo stage and again the response from everyone at the show was amazing. If you haven’t got to see our styling with foil yet, try to get out to our next large show and check it out, its a lot of fun and really simple. The second day was great as well, a little bit lighter on the turn out but still a great day in the booth and the class rooms. Most fun of the trip was our forward roll contest in the booth at the end of day one! (lol) Over all the weekend was great and can’t wait to get out there with the team again on the next one!

Next week, six members of Product Club Education Team are heading to Orlando for the Premiere Beauty Show!  The event kicks off on Saturday, June 5th with Hands-On Education Classes and Adrienne Rogers will be teaching an “iFoil in Color” Class from 1-5 pm. If you aren’t able to make that class, Melissa Johnson will be teaching another Hands-On Class – “Beyond Basic Foiling” on Sunday from 9:30am-12:30pm. You can pre-register for both these classes by visiting premiereshows.com – you’ll learn great new highlighting techniques and also receive a goodie bag of Color Accessories valued at over $65 and a mannequin head.

Also with your ticket to get into the show, you can come to any of our demo classes which are running most of the day on both Sunday and Monday in Room 222A. Stop by and check out the schedule so you can catch both Adrienne and Melissa’s classes.

Be sure to stop by our booth #4573 for great promotions offered only during the show. We’ll also have on-going demonstrations all day on our stage. Looking forward to seeing you all there!

I just came back from class in Kansas City, MO for Peels where there was a class given to 22 students at a school that was an hour away!  What an amazing concept!!! I have to tell you, every time I am educating at a show and it’s student day, I want to scream inside!! No matter what state I am in, students ask the SAME questions and have the SAME problems!! It drives me mad!  I was to honored to be asked to teach this class because it is something that I am so very passionate about and it’s raising the standards of education for our students and teaching them advanced techniques while in school.

So many salon owners, including the one I work for, spend alot of money on payroll to have assistants (we call the associates) in the salon.  Not only are they helping the stylists, but they are learning advanced techniques and education throughout their training.  Now, if a school were to teach advanced techniques in the very beginning, salon owners would not have to shell out high payrolls because the turnover for assistants would be faster and instead of having a year long training program, it could be reduced to 6 months, giving the salon an opportunity to make more money and for our industry to have a much higher success rate of stylists, we all know only about 8% of students who have graduated actually end up having a career in the beauty industry.  How horrible is that!!

So, anyway … it was great that a school wanted to rev up their education and put some inspiration in these young minds.  Highlighting doesn’t have to be done in an 5 block horizontal pattern that has been around since the 80s nor does highlighting have to be put in boring silver squares like we have always done.  These students are going to be graduating knowing that they want to work in a salon that uses professional colored foil and learned 4 highlighting techniques that give the result of “on trend” celebrity hair color.  How fantastic is that!! There is a movement on the rise for cosmetology schools and I hope that I am there to see it happen!!! Hopefully, myself or another one of Product Club’s educators will be at a school near you!!!

So, here we are again beautiful St. Louis! This weekend I was traveling with Rachel Bodt and our VP of Marketing, Mary Albanese to do the St. Louis State Show.  To be honest, it had been a while since just educating on the platform doing demonstrations of our foiling techniques and I was actually excited about that.  Well, we step into the booth to find out that Rachel and I were scheduled for 5 CLASSES!! Do even do a class takes at least a week to prepare.  Usually we need a powerpoint presentation, a completed flip chart, pre-done mannequins and anything valuable that will connect to the salon professional learning is what is needed for a classroom.  Needless to say, Rachel and I were sorely underprepared, but that doesn’t mean under delivering!  We immediately go our laptops out and sorted through our info to gather anything that we could.  We went on and did 5 classes at St. Louis and that included a couple of rotations on the platform stage as well.   To be honest, I felt that it was my best class that I have given.  Maybe because I knew I had to make it wok because I didn’t want to subject our reputation for putting on classes, so we stuck our necks out …. “arched” our backs a bit and pulled through!! St. Louis was a GREAT show and a WONDERFUL success!!