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I'm Britt Siva, social media and marketing strategist just for hairstylists and this is the Thriving Stylist podcast. What is up? And welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I'm your host Britt Siva and this week we're going to talk about a topic that I think makes people a little bit uncomfortable. I did a podcast talking about retail in the industry and the fall of 2025. It's episode 406 and I talked about kind of like the retail sales structure collapse in the industry. This is not a new topic. I'm not the only coach who's talked about it. It's been something that's kind of been buzzing for the last few years. The reason I chose to tackle it head on now is in the last, just over a year, like, I really started to see things get shaky for salons in early 2025. That's not to say there weren't issues really at scale. Started to see problems when I was looking at Salon's books in 2025. And I had this realization that I can either play nice and sit back and say nothing and let salon owners figure it out for themselves. And if I chose to go that direction, at what point am I just being complicit in the downfall of retail programs in the industry? And I got to a point where I was like, me turning the blind eye. And only salon owners who are paying for me to come in and look at their books and analyze what's going on are able to have the feedback. Like, it just. It started to feel icky to me. And I felt like I needed to tell anybody who chooses to tune in and listen what I'm seeing so that they can make informed decisions for themselves. So when I really started to see these drastic falls in numbers in retail programs, it just became something on my heart where it was like, we have to talk about this. We have to get transparent, and we have to give the opportunity for honestly, distributors and hair care companies to change. Because I do think that we're still in a position where there is hope. Like, retail programs don't have to have a negative energy around them, but something has to change for them to be successful. The other thing I want to talk about at the top of this episode is that I, for many years, was a huge proponent of retail. Anybody who's coached with me from 2012 to 2024 knows that I had an entire program dedicated to retail sales. It was called Retail therapy. And I taught thousands of stylists and salon owners how to sell more retail and shared where the margin was and how to make a program that worked for you and how to optimize displays. All kind of stuff. A whole program on selling retail. Because I believed in it so deeply. And I felt like retail equaled retention and literally all the things I had to pull it back because it stopped being something that I could like, really fully believe in because I was watching retail cripple businesses in such a huge way. But it couldn't be all about it anymore. And like I said, I think that question has been raised about retail for a while, but we're not having the deep conversations around what has changed and what would need to change to make retail work in salons. Because for me, on the flip side of this best case scenario is retail programs become alive and well in salons again. When I'm looking at salons that I'm coaching right now, that's not what's happening. And I think that we're at this critical point of either something has to change or we're going to see retail move out of salons at scale, like the vast majority, sooner than later. So when I released episode 406, something I didn't expect to happen happened. And what happened was hair care companies and distributors came to ask me some questions and what I was talking about was my concerns about the way that retail has been changed position wise in the industry, which we will talk about on this episode. And a couple of companies came to me to have really actually very professional, lovely conversations about how they did not agree with some of the things that I said. And it was interesting because the things that they weren't agreeing with were not like the facts and the data. Nobody came at me for those things. The things that people were saying was they didn't like that I used the phrase get curious. And if you go back and listen to episode 406, I didn't come in with as direct facts and data as I'm going to come in with today. Today I'm going to be a lot more direct. I was probably 30% direct on that one. I'm going to be 100% direct on this one. So the reason why I took a softer approach is because I did not want haircare companies to think I was like trying to start a rebellion. That was not the whole point. The point was this is an opportunity and I would be much more clear about what the opportunity that I think exists. I'm just going to be very transparent today because I think that's what the ask is for. The reason why I kept saying get curious, which I guess landed as vague, is because I didn't want to come in as hard as I'm going to come in as hard right today. I wanted to give the opportunity for salons to just look at their own numbers and make their own decisions and not feel like they have this like biased viewpoint. And I guess in me saying get curious rather than coming in with the hard facts, it felt too unclear. So let's Just be clear. So I'm going to do that. The reason why I said the phrase get curious is because in that episode, just like in this one, I don't think enough stylists, if you have a studio suite or something like that, or salon owners who run retail programs are looking at the actual numbers, like the deep numbers, looking at the actual profit margin, the free revenue that is becoming available to actually reinvest back in the business. I don't think that most salon owners or suite owners or people who carry retail lines are actually looking at what's happening. I think they see the super sexy top line number and they're like, well, our program does, you know, $25,000 a month in sales. The sales is whatever. It's. It's the profit margin that's left over and the retail and inventory that's tied up on your shelves and the way that support has change, like, that's the nuts and bolts. And we're just kind of like not looking at that and we're listening to what we're being told, or we're assuming everybody's doing it this way. And when you see salon struggling right now, I think this arm of the business is one that we have to have a real conversation around and look at the numbers and look at the trouble spots with that. I think that we're sitting on a huge opportunity for either distributors or salons, whoever chooses to do so, to free up more cash and to create a stronger relationship and a better dynamic on the flip side of just being honest about what's happening and what's changed and figuring out a way forward together. For many years, salons and hair care lines and distributors were in deep partnership with each other. And it was like this beautiful symbiotic relationship. I remember sitting down with these amazing hair care companies when I was in the salon, and they would sit down and talk to me about the possibility of bringing their line in. And it was like were almost going into business together, and the way that they cared for us was just different. And the way that we needed each other was different. And it just has so drastically changed. And I think we have to look at retail for what it is now and not reminisce about what it was in 1997, because it's just simply not the same thing. So let's talk about what has massively changed. And then we're also going to talk about a player that came into the space and really disrupted things in a way that has worked extremely well. And I don't think that we can ignore it. So things really changed when distributors and hair care lines started going directly to consumer. It is just way harder to sell retail in salon right now. I know all the sales strategies. I know how to sell without selling. I know how to create FOMO for things. I got it. Sales is my game. I totally understand how to do it. The stylist with the best sales verbiage and the best sales strategy is struggling now more than ever. I got a DM from a brand representative, somebody who's worked with a major hair care line for many years. And this person was like, brit, I have been teaching product knowledge classes and giving my salon support for many, many years. And in the last 18 months, no matter what I do, we cannot move the sales numbers. How do I convince these stylists to sell more? And I had this very transparent conversation, in my opinion, where I was like, I don't think it's about convincing the stylist to sell more. I think the system is so changed that stylists realize it's kind of like fighting a battle that's really hard to win. And so when stylists are saying things like, yeah, but my client picks up their phone and takes a picture of the product and then just goes to the website of the hair care company and orders it from there, how do I combat that? How do I compete with that? Honestly, I can't. Because when you order directly through the hair care line's website, you get free samples and free products and points. And I watched the Black Friday sales that all these hair care companies ran. How is a salon ever going to compete with that? I don't know. I seriously don't know. Like, how can I coach my way around that? The fomo, the FOMO factor is, you need to have this product today. That's the only thing I have in my arsenal. But for a lot of clients, they're like, yeah, I could have it today or I could have it in four days and get all the free samples and save whatever percent the haircare brand is offering today and get points. It's just. It's hard. It's just like so, so challenging. When all these hair care companies went direct to consumer, it puts salons in a position where they are now competing with the people who used to be their partners in the game. When I first jumped into the industry in 2008, the best hair care was only available in salon. You could not buy it online, you couldn't buy it at Sephora, you couldn't buy it at Ulta. Like, if you wanted amazing premium hair care, you had to get it from a salon. And so for us, we had a good chunk of clients who didn't even come to us for hair care services, but came to us for their shampoo and conditioner and styling products. And, I mean, tens of thousands of dollars in sales a month, no problem. It was easy, to be quite honest, because we had this, like, retail hub and retail arm of our business. It just worked. And so we were able to move inventory at scale and run the successful program. And these hair care companies needed us because we were the ones making the recommendation. We were the salespeople. We made the recommendations, we sold the product, we carried the inventory. Like, we did it. They did it. It was working. When these retail companies started selling through their own websites and selling through big box stores, the partnership was no longer a direct partnership. And now we're in competition with each other. And it's this weird thing that, like, we're not supposed to talk about. For some reason, that is what has happened. Stylists are having to compete with online retailers. And it that competition is very, very challenging. And for many years, I watched the industry do things like it's diversion. Diversion's the problem. Diversion's not the problem. The problem is the online sales that you're seeing are often completely approved and sanction by hair care brands. It's not diversion that can't be stopped. It's a business decision. I understand why the brands are doing it. They have to make money, too. Like, trust me, I get it. But then we also have to have the. The honest conversation that, like, the model has changed. The model simply has changed. The other thing that is concerning to me, and I always struggle with when I coach salon owners, is the reinvestment suggestion. There is a very widespread suggestion that a salon should take 52% of the previous retail sales and reinvest it to the next order. 52%. Can we talk about what that would do? So let's say that I buy a bottle of shampoo for $5 from my distributor and I sell it for 10. That's called Keystone Markup. You buy it for five, you sell it for 10. That's pretty standard advice. So I sell it for 10. And the basic math, this is, in my opinion, not the full math, but the basic math is I buy it for five, I sell it for 10. I've made $5. Well, now the distributor says, well, now you're going to spend $5.20 and invest a little bit more and invest a little Bit more and invest a little bit more. Where does the actualized profit come from? So I didn't actually make $5. I spent 5, 20 to put another bottle on my shelf and a little bit more because you're telling me to REINVEST not just 50% but 52% when I go to make my next order. Now, over many, many, many, many, many sales cycles, a profit margin can be obtained. You are in such volume that it becomes extremely challenging for a lot of especially sweet owners, man, but also salons to move product at that scale anymore. It's just become so, so hard. So let's talk about healthy retail programs because as I'm saying these things, some of you were like, no, seriously, like we've turned profit in our retail program every month and if you do that, amazing, like keep on keeping on. I'm not saying that nobody's making money in retail. I'm saying it's incredibly challenging. And in order to do it, you have to sell at such a scale and volume that it is, it's hard. And when you look at business advice that has nothing to do with me, like if you were to bring in an independent business advisor to evaluate your retail program, somebody who knew about retail and running profitable programs, they would say, in the beauty sector, you want to be doing a sell through percentage of somewhere between 30 and 50%, meaning you're selling through 30 to 50% of what's on your shelves every single month. So if you have $5,000 in hair care sitting on your shelf right now, you should be selling, you know, 1800, $2,500 in product every single month. If not, the sell through rate is not high enough to sustain the program. And a lot of salons have so much tied up in inventory that they can't move expired product products that they bought as part of a launch that they just don't enjoy using. So they're not selling all kind of things cause product to run stagnant and then you've invested in this inventory that you can't move and so the profit never comes on it. It's just an expense. Now the other thing that's the challenge and it's interesting. Like this piece, like it's exciting for me. The hair care brands listen to this conversation. I think it's an important one and a transparent one that we should all be having. One of the things that salon owners are telling me specifically, if you work for a hair care brand and you own a hair care brand, one of the, the pieces of feedback that I'M getting from salon owners is that the way that the points work and the way that the support works from the hair care company is no longer working for the owner. Like, they're not seeing it as valuable. And it's interesting because I've had this conversation on both sides. So one of the. Actually pull up the quote, hold on. Okay, so I'm going to read you pieces of this exchange I had with this representative from a hair care brand, But I'm going to be as vague as I possibly can be because it's actually completely irrelevant what this brand is. It doesn't matter. It's a huge player. I will say that doesn't matter who they are. And I don't want anybody making the alignment because it's irrelevant information. That's not the whole point of this. First of all, they agreed that retail sales is more challenging. But they were also saying, you know, but there's still so much value. And I was, okay, great, tell me what the value is. I'm here to learn as well. And they said, we do our best to support our salons. I do think that is true. Like, I think these hair care brands think they're doing their best, but what the hair care brands see is their best. It's not landing for salons. And that's the piece I want to have the conversation about. So this person is saying, you know, for every dollar you spend on buying products to sell to clients, you earn, you know, a specific amount back that can be used towards station product and backbar. So I'm certain that there's a different scale for any hair care brand. But for every dollar you spend, you get, you know, x amount back that can be used towards station product and back bar. What's interesting to me is when I talk to salon owners and I've had this conversation with dozens of salon owners. I've coached one to one, and I've seen hundreds of P. Ls for salons at this point. And I'm seeing the correlation across the board of these struggling retail programs that cannot run profitably. And then I'm watching salon owners spend so much money to stock back barn station products. And it's like, they're like, it's a bleed, it's a wash. Like, where does the money come in? And I'm like, I don't know. I can't find it for you. Like, I'm trying. I don't. I don't see it. And so what this system actually ends up being is if you want more back bar if you want more station powder, buy more retail. And so these salons are like, okay, I guess I'll keep buying more retail. Hope my stylist can sell it, as they're competing against the hair care brand themselves, because I got to put shampoo and back bar there. And so when you look at, like, well, what I get is free back bar. You don't get free anything. You're having to buy and stock your shelves more to get this thing that you need to operate your salon, you have to have shampoo and conditioner on the back bar. You have to have station styling products to do a blowout. So the certain percentage back to stock the back bar only works if stylists are selling product at scale and at volume. And we know that that is the breakdown is it's so much harder to sell at scale and volume because they're competing against the hair care brand itself. So that alone is causing this friction point. And when I talk to salons, and this is new, in years past, I would go into salons and they were like, well, look at our cabinet full of, like, free station product and conditioner. At least there's that. And it's like, yeah, at least there's that. That does. Like, that story has changed. And they're like, we're honestly having to buy a lot of it because we can't move enough product to even get that. So it's like that starting to kind of crumble. And then they said in those. These other incentives that you earn as well, and for this specific brand, it's things like we bring in. In salon education, we do. Like, I know this is really common, like a coffee machine for the salon, or sometimes they supply, like, back bar towels or things like that, or like, tech stuff like iPads or cameras. I was just. I went out of state earlier this month, and I was at a salon, and they had something like, you know how the points look like you're a billionaire. It was like they had, I don't know, 600,000 points or something. It was, like, a huge amount. They should equate to, like, thousands of dollars. She was like, we have, you know, a gajillion billion points with this brand. And she's like, and I don't want any of the prizes. Like, I'm gonna give my team iPads. Like, what? I don't need a coffee maker. Like, what am I buying? Like, what is even happening? And so they're accruing all these rewards that they can't even see as valuable because the stuff that's being offered is not good. And I was like, this is so interesting. I was like, what would you want to use the points on? And she was like, well, if they were redeemable for backbar in a powerful way, that would be great. These points that she happened to have could not be used for backbar. They were allocated for something else. And I'm sure every brand does it differently, but she couldn't use it for that. That's not what they were meant to be. It was for, like, stuff. And she was like, I can bring in educators, but the quality of educator that comes in when I use these points is not what my team wants. And that's the awkward conversation that I think somebody has to have. And so I'll just have it. Salon owners are saying, I was looking at a different. Not that person, somebody else I was on a call with. And I said, how much do you spend on bringing in educators to your salon every year? She said, $40,000. She spends $40,000 to bring educators to her salon every single year and has a huge retail program. Again, this is another salon, has a gajillion, bajillion points. But her team doesn't want the educator who they've never met before. They have no affinity for, who is this person? What is their specialty? Why are they here? Like, there's no oomph behind it. It's not interesting. It feels kind of biased because it's this educator coming in who, quite honestly, like, has this additional objective to, like, sell the product. It just. It doesn't feel good. It's not the kind of education that the stylists are craving. So the salon owners are like, I guess I could do, like, another one of their, like, people comes in and does the class. She's like, but my team is, like, not jazzed about it. There's not an interest there. Versus if they could use the points, if there was some kind of exchange for cash value where they could invest in having the educator that they want to come in to come in. My gosh, you'd have salon underneath eating out of the palm of your hands. Like, that is what they're looking for. They want to make the choice. They want it to be the person that their team is amped on, because that's something they can actually build culture around. And that's what they're saying. They don't want the random person that the brand is willing to send or the who the brand has hired to be with them or whatever. If their team is not jazzed. About that person. There is no intrinsic value to it, so it doesn't matter. And here's the thing. This is like another one of those pieces where it's like it just didn't evolve. Like, I remember being in the salon in, like, 2009. 9. And we would have all these points and we would be like, let's bring in an educator. And we'd bring in educators a few times a year to teach classes. And the team was happy. This was before the era of Instagram. Like, this is before we all drool over Instagram educators that we find or YouTube people that we find. And so our awareness of education was so hyper limited to whatever the brands presented to us. Like, we didn't even know who else was out there. You were, like, loyal to a brand. They had. We called them platform artists at the time. And the platform artists you, like, really wanted to be able to see, but you had to, like, travel to go see them. But then they had these other more regional artists who would come and they would come to the salon, and it was whatever was on the menu is what you could pick from. That model is not working anymore. And the reason why it's not working is because stylists and salon owners have eyeballs now and brains now and the Internet now. And they can see there's a whole world out there. And stylists don't care who's on the menu. They care who's on Instagram. And they want to see who they want to to see. They want to learn the technique. They want to learn. It just is what it is. And so salon owners are like, yeah, I could use the points to bring in the educator. My team's going to grumble about it, be mad that they have to be here on a Monday to watch the person. They're not going to learn anything. But I guess I'm burning the points. It's like the offering that used to work just doesn't work anymore. That's the feedback I'm getting from salon owners now. I have kept this brandless on purpose, very, very intentionally, because this is not about any specific brand. It's about the way that the retail mod in salons has changed as a whole. That's the whole point and purpose. I'm going to talk about one specific brand, and I'm not going to drop their name. And you can figure it out if you want to. If you don't know, you don't know. That's totally fine. The name doesn't matter. What they've done to Disrupt the industry matters. There is a hair care brand that came on the scene more than a decade ago, if I'm recalling correctly. And when they came on the scene, their model was that clients, like normal people, people who were not in the industry, could become representatives of this hairc brand, and they could sell shampoo and conditioner and styling products to their friends. Some of us call this model mlm. Some of us call it network marketing. You can call it whatever you want to call it, but it was in the era of like, do you remember Saint Makeup or Beachbody Fitness? Like, people could partner with these brands and become like, I'm gonna use the word ambassador. It's probably a bad word. But, like, ambassadors of these brands and sell this stuff. Oh, my gosh, like, Tupperware parties. Like, same kind of thing. Like, it just was like, build your own business, but you're just selling products for a bigger company. Okay. When this company first came on the scene, that was their model. And what's funny is the industry just came for them so hard. There's a few stylists who embraced them, but for the most part, salons were like, this is. This sucks. We're supposed to be the experts on hair care. And this brand has come in here and they're empowering clients to be the experts on hair care. We don't like it. We decided the brand was the worst. Like, there was this whole movement against the brand. Flash forward to the last, like, year. I've seen this huge turnaround with this brand. I am getting DMs of people who are saying, what do you think about this? This has really changed. I'm interested in jumping on board with this hair care company. And I kept asking lots of questions, and I was like, I don't know enough about it. I can't say either way, I don't understand. And finally, somebody who is a stylist who sells this hair care line shared with me kind of the back end, details of how the compensation structure works and how the payouts work. And I'm not going to say who did it, and I'm not going to say the name of the company because I don't want this person to get in trouble. I don't know if they were allowed share whatever. But I saw the documents, and what was interesting, the things that I think this company has done that have created such a Buzz is multifold. One, they're offering commissions that are well above 10%. So the average stylist who sells retail in their salon is offered a 10% commission, you sell $3,000 in product, you get $310 is pretty minimal. To move $3,000 in product and get 300 bucks, it's relatively small. And now I know sometimes there's additional incentives like, well, you get to make more commission, too. Well, first of all, I don't think tying retail sales into commissions is a good business practice. I think they're two different arms of the business. I think that it worked 20 years ago. I don't think it works today. That's a separate issue we're not going to talk about right now. But when you look at just that raw commission percentage, it's relatively small. This hair care company offers larger commissions, 15%, 20%, sometimes up to 30% commissions on hair care. So that's something that salons aren't able to compete with. 30% sounds amazing. Just at face value, it sounds great. The other thing that this company does is they don't require the salon or stylist to hold inventory. The client decides what products they want based on the stylist recommendations and it ships to the client's home. Because the salon is not required to hold inventory, it keeps the overhead low and what they sell is just money in the pocket. There is no loss. And because the commissions are higher, it's really freaking juicy. And so when salons are asking me what I think about it, I'm like, you know, it's progressive. It's a really interesting. It's like they understood that, like, these are the challenges with programs and they figured out a workaround. I just, I think it's interesting now. This hair care company does still sell direct to consumer. In the very limited research that I did, I did see that. However, because the stylist or salon does still get a really good end of the deal, it's working for them. Them. And the other thing, the reason I even bring this up is like, the commissions are great, that's cool. They're not having to hold inventory is pretty significant. But the reason I'm bringing it up is because the stylists who are selling this hair care brand are making post after post after post after post about how amped they are about this hair care brand. I don't know about you, I don't see many salon owners who are getting their stylists to make super excited, genuinely, authentically amped up posts about how excited they are about a retail brand. This is genuinely genuine excitement that I'm not seeing salons being able to generate because I think there's so many barriers and challenges to running the program profitably that the stylists just are not motivated to do it. So let me explain where I'm going with this and what my suggestions would be. Because to be fair, the hair care brands that reach out to me said, if you have a better plan, what's your better plan? And I said, I'm happy to hop on a call. Neither of them took me up on it. Totally fine. So instead I'll share here just some of the things that I think could be helpful. You probably already put the pieces together yourself. Also, I think there's a huge outcry from salons to have the quality of education that is available by redemption of points to improve. I'm not trying to throw shade at any brand educators. I don't know who you are. I've never seen your class. All I'm doing is sharing the feedback that is coming to me from salon leaders. I'm letting you know what the conversation and the buzz is. Do with it what you want to. I think it's an interesting suggestion that the points would be able to be invested towards the educator of the salon's choice. I think the hair care brand that goes that direction could become a real power. I just think it's like free advice. Take it. I think there's something that's really interesting there and I feel like that does feel like a real true partnership with your salons that you are working with. I think it's interesting. The other thing that I think we cannot. If you are a hair care company, the thing I think you cannot delay on, like, don't be the next Toys R Us. Does everybody remember why Toys R Us declared bankruptcy? Because they were too slow to change. Amazon was destroying them. Target was destroying them. And the reason why Toys R Us was was slow to the game is they did not institute free shipping fast enough and they did not shift their pricing model quickly enough. I'm watching hair care brands do the same thing. If hair care brands were able to offer salons the opportunity to not have inventory in their salons and instead ship direct to consumer compete with the prices that are on the hair care brand's website and offer the same incentive, the salons would be your partner in making money again. The stylists would see value in that again. This is now a program that people can jump on board with. The money is there, everybody can be winning and it just starts to meet the modern consumer where they're at. Like, we're all used to ordering stuff and getting it on our porch. I understand the FOMO factor, but there's also the factor of these salons that have dead inventory that they're either throwing away, they're trying to get the hair care company to buy back. It's collecting dust. We have to overcome that challenge somehow. Something has to give there. And I think that if hair care companies are going to sell online, that's totally fine, but then there has to be a gap bridged as well. Another alternative could be that the prices on the websites of hair care companies are higher than what clients can get hair care at in salon. I think that could be a really interesting model because then at least the salon has some kind of upper hand advantage and can move more inventory for you. And by the way, my suggestions, I believe are in the idea of can't we find a way for everybody to win? Like, let's just modernize and get with where we're at. The other thing is, I do think that the education provided to salons on how to sell retail needs to improve. When I talk to owners and I say, tell me about the sales education that's come your way. Well, it's not much. Oh, okay. How do you educate your stylists on how to sell retail? I don't really know what I'm doing, so I can't teach them either. And then I literally have representatives from hair care brands in my DM DMs asking me how they can sell more retail. Like, this is the person whose job it is to go into salons and teach stylists how to sell retail. And they're in my DMs asking me how to do their job. That's a huge problem. If the person you're sending into the field doesn't know how to do it, how will they ever teach a stylist or salon how to do it? I think we have to slow down and really tackle the issue at large that if retail programs are going to stay profitable and sustainable in salons, the model has to change. So I've given a lot of suggestions for like what hair care brands need to do because I honestly, honestly at this point, I have tried for many, many, many, many years to see how we as salons and stylists can tackle this issue. I'm running out of solutions because the model is so broken that it's just too challenging to compete. What can stylists and salons do? First things first, if you can't partner with a hair care company that does not sell direct to consumer, which there are several that do, I would look into that. I think it's a competitive advantage. I think it's interesting and I think it's something. Something that works. The hair care line that I use does not sell direct to consumer. I have to buy it from a salon that sells it. I'm a licensed professional and I cannot get a login on the website just to buy the product myself. I have to buy it through a salon. So there are hair care companies that are going that direction. It works. The salon gets my business, so it works. I think that that's a really interesting model as well. So if you can find a haircare line that does that, I think that's great. I think prioritizing hair care lines that do provide back bar at scale, station product at scale, quality education that really does support you and your team. I think that that's really, really worth it. And the more education any stylist or salon gets, the more retail that's going to be sold and the quality of the services goes up and everybody's winning and everything is winning. The other thing I'll say too is if you are a salon that has multiple lines, scaling back to one or two is a great place to start when you're looking to find the profit margin. Like you just might have too much going on. So scaling back is a great place. A lot of hair care companies will do a buyback of products that you can't move if you're discontinuing to prevent diversion because they have gone to online sales. The interest in buying back to prevent diversion has changed. But it's worth the ask for sure. But I'm going to say the phrase that I said last time that I know made some people upset, like literally get curious. Look at your program, look at your numbers, look at your investment, look at your sales. Look at how much inventory you have tied up on the shelves. Look at the actual actualized profit margin. Look at how much your stylists are making based on the volume that they're selling. Look at how much you're making based on the volume you're selling. Ask yourself how many hours a month you have to put into managing your retail program. Placing the order, unboxing things, labeling things, entering it into your system as inventory. Does the money you make feel worth it? And if not for me, I would really strongly consider partnering with the hair care company that wants to run a modern program with you. I think it's a huge opportunity. Opportunity. I don't think we have to abandon the relationships between hair care companies and salons. I think they have to change and evolve. My DMs are always open. My email is always open. Anybody that wants to continue this conversation, I am here for it. Always. So much love. Happy business building. I'll see you on the next one.