buying salon-only products at drugstores? read on.

[sephora]

i just read this and got REALLY nervous about the Keraphix i just bought from my local BSS. i want to return it now (i haven't used it yte), but i wonder if they even take returns.

what's you guys' take on all of this? anyone out there ever experience any problems?

read on:

"it's called diversion and it's product that was intended for salon use but somehow accidentally wound up on a grocery store shelf. I am a professional stylist and I also teach cosmetology at the local community college and this is a hot topic for me. Since the grocery store obtained this product through some illegal source, you have no way of knowing what is actaully in that bottle. They did not get it from the distributor, I assure you, who gets it straight from the manufacturer, so in essense, it's as though you are buying the product from the teenage kid down the street off the back of his bicycle. It MIGHT be the real thing, but it also MIGHT be a bad shipment that someone returned, it might be overstock that was retreived from a dumpster and therefore full of bacteria, and it might be a totally different product put in those bottles to fool you. If you buy it, and it's not what it's supposed to be, and you try to return it, there are codes on the bottom that can track it to whereever it originally came from (salon, warehouse, etc.) and there are stiff penalties for the seller and diverter, so....you aren't likely to get your money back. It's your choice, but I prefer to think that my clients are entitled to the real thing with a guarantee, so I encourage them to get it from me. (I accept returns even if the bottle is 3/4 empty and someone just decides they don't like it.) Good luck."

YIKES!!

 

[Height]

I see 'salon only' products at the grocery stores here all the time.

 

[Victorian]

Re: buying salon-only products at drugstores? read

If you go to beyondthechair.com (it's a site for salon owners and stylists) and go to their message boards (which are poorly organized and maintained I might add

) you'll find out more than you ever wanted to know about product diversion.

I personally believe that most of the diverted products you see are the real thing; I don't think anyone is making up concoctions and putting them in authentic bottles and selling them. I do think that some of the product may be OLD, and therefore not good anymore. I've never bought salon products because they're too expensive, but if I do, I most likely won't have any problem picking it up at Target or Walmart if it's there--provided everything looks okay. By "okay" I mean that sometimes you can really TELL that these products are sort of..."black market," if you will, because the bottles are dented or there is only a very small selection of products or they just look old. In which case I'd rather just go on and buy them at a salon, since most of the time the regular stores sell them for the same amount as a salon. Most salon lines don't guarantee the quality of the product unless you buy it from the salon, in an effort to encourage people to avoid the diverted products.

 

[Shinka]

Re: buying salon-only products at drugstores? read

does this include CVS, my Cvs has the salon section for nexxus, paul mitchell....

 

[Victorian]

Re: buying salon-only products at drugstores? read

Is that a drugstore? sorry, I'm not familiar with CVS...although I should point out an important issue in the diversion debate: A lot of people believe that the salon lines are not being truthful when they say they sell their products ONLY to salons. In other words, they "divert" their own products, simply because they know a lot of people don't frequent salons, and they can target the Target-goers. There isn't a clear answer or even one that would be true for all the different companies, so I didn't mean, in my previous post, to imply that ALL salon products in drug stores are "bad." If it looks alright to you, go ahead

Plus I think brands like Nexxus and Paul Mitchell and Redken and a few other are found pretty readily at drugstores. I don't think they are as much into the salon "snobbery," or maybe they've just given up fighting the diversion. However you'll notice that there are certain brands you very rarely see in regular stores, like Alterna and Pureology, etc. They are more "high end" and wouldn't be caught dead in Walmart, heaven forbid

 

[Allandra]

[ QUOTE ]
zanzibardotcom said:
I see 'salon only' products at the grocery stores here all the time.

[/ QUOTE ]
Me too.

 

[ChasingBliss]

Great points BC!

 

[Supergirl]

Re: buying salon-only products at drugstores? read

I see them too, but I have made it a point to only get my salon products at salons