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Store Bought or Salon Shelf?

How Do Drug Store Products Really Stack Up Against Their Professional Counterparts?

By Leilah GaineyPublished 3 years ago 6 min read
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Have you ever been sitting in a salon chair, eyes closed, relaxing as a hairdresser was applying styling product to your hair just before blow drying? And as they were explaining the product she was using and why, have you ever asked, “Can I get something like that at Walmart/Target/Sally Beauty?”

In this article, I am going explain to you why the answer to the question above should usually be, “No.”

Where Is the Line Between Professional and Not Professional?

First, I’m gonna explain what exactly separates salon bought products from store bought.

Professional beauty products are products that you can only buy through licensed salons and spas or other authorized retailers. This is why you can get your hair done at a Redken salon, or visit a spa that only uses Rhonda Allison products for their facials.

This is also why you will not be able to find Redken or Rhonda Allison products at Walgreens (or you shouldn’t, but we’ll get into that later in this article). These are some of those companies that only do business with licensed salons/spas or authorized retailers.

So remember, no matter how many Tresemmé commercials you see where there’s a good looking guy portraying a stylist saying, “I use this brand at my salon,” it isn’t true. Or if it is, then those salons are using non-professional products.

How Are They So Different?

Herbal Essences, L’Oréal, Dove, Joico, and Aveda all make color-safe shampoo and conditioner. Color-safe products all protect newly dyed hair from fading too quickly. If all those brands make a product that is supposed to do the same thing, then how are they different?

The majority of their differences can be broken down into just one thing: their ingredients.

Even though the list of ingredients on the back of the product is probably the most boring part of the entire bottle, there’s some pretty key things to bear in mind with those words most of us can’t pronounce. Ingredients make a big difference in results, product longevity, and quality.

A pretty good rule of thumb for beauty products is that the cheaper the ingredients, the cheaper the price.

Lower priced products (like the ones you can buy at CVS) are typically made up with more filler ingredients, like water and alcohol, than their salon counterparts. Doing this makes the actual production of that product more inexpensive for manufacturers, making it more inexpensive for you.

And as much as our wallets may be thanking us for choosing such a budget friendly shampoo, our hair may not be. These filler ingredients do absolutely nothing to our hair at best. And at worst... well, damaging, over-drying, and weighing our hair down are only a few potential problems. We all know what alcohol does to our skin, why would our hair be any different?

Source: botoxforhair.net

And that’s just the filler products. What about the ones that are supposed to be giving us the results it says on the bottle? Again, cheaper price equals cheaper ingredients. A great example of this is Pantene.

Pantene markets its products with what they call their “PRO-Vitamin B5.” Which sounds like something really cool. Outside of marketing, it has a much uglier name: panthenol.

Panthenol is a cheap, very heavy humectant, very similar to a wax. This is how they can market for giving you smooth, sleek, shiny hair.

And for your first few washes, it will be. However, after just a few weeks of using it, you may notice your hair looking dull, hanging limp, or just not quite curling how it used to. That is because of the panthenol sticking to your hair and coating it in wax. The shampoo is not strong enough (insert another reference to cheap ingredients here) or created to remove that built up wax whenever you use it. So all you’re doing is coating your hair in it over and over again.

Don’t believe me? If any of my readers are devoted Pantene users, I ask that you find a fine toothed comb if you have one, and backcomb at the ends of your hair quickly, as if you’re teasing the ends. Many of you will see teeny tiny white flakes in your comb and on your hair, kind of like dandruff. That is literally the panthenol being scraped off of your hair shaft.

Also, it’s important to know that the high water and alcohol content of cheaper products will actually thin that product out, meaning you need more of it in order to use it effectively. And using more of these products with bad quality ingredients will ultimately send you back to the salon with faded hair color and damage faster. Not to mention, you have to restock more frequently.

And on the other hand, professional products are typically more expensive because of their higher quality ingredients and the higher concentration of those ingredients. So in the case of professional salon and spa products, less really is more.

Product Diversion

If you’re like me, you’re always looking for a way to cut costs where you can, but still get good quality. Most of us love Amazon, am I right?

I’ve heard many times working in salons people talking about how they got their professional product off of a discount/wholesale website.

When you see a professional product, whether it’s haircare, skincare, hair color, or whatever, for sale on websites like Amazon, or even on sites like Walmart, it’s called product diversion.

Product diversion: professional products not being exclusively sold at authorized locations the way they should be.

In many places, it’s not necessarily illegal for these products to be sold through local retailers or e-commerce sites, but it’s almost always against company policy. And it costs the worldwide professional beauty industry billions of dollars in lost revenue a year.

Also, while professional products might be more expensive coming from approved sources, their manufacturing companies make a guarantee that that product is definitely what it’s being sold to be. They can’t do that if it’s being sold incorrectly.

Who’s to say that the Redken you’re buying off Amazon isn’t just Suave that was dumped into a Redken bottle?

And that happens for often than you think. Professional companies would never sell their products for cheap on e-commerce websites.

Wrapping It All Up

So for anyone who skimmed the excessively long and detailed explanation, the important key points to remember are these:

  • Cheaper products use more fillers like water and alcohol to get away with charging less money due to lower manufacturing costs.
  • Cheaper products also have lower quality ingredients that can dry-up, over moisturize, damage, or weigh down your hair, along with a myriad of other hair and scalp side effects. This ultimately will make you need more trips to the salon.
  • Professional products have a higher concentration of ingredients that are actually good for your hair, making the products last longer.
  • Just because a product is available on wholesale/e-commerce sites, does not mean it is the real deal. And products cannot be guaranteed if they are sold through incorrect means.

Even though I am a cosmetologist, I will not take a paragraph to try to sell you professional products. It is not my job to try to make a sale out of you, however, it IS my job to give you the healthiest hair I possibly can, and make sure you are well informed about which products are best for your hair. So I will not give suggestions about which brands you should use, which ones I like best, or which ones I sell at my salon. I will only ask this:

Are you really saving yourself money with the products you use right now?

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About the Creator

Leilah Gainey

Hello! I'm a passionate writer and cosmetologist, and I'm always looking for ways to inform readers and clients about all the beauty and diversity of products, methods, and tips of the trade!

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