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Friday, Mar 29, 2024

Beauty Pros Eagerly Take Eye Test

Three decades in the beauty business has taught Glad Lash Inc. a lot about its customers, but the Northridge firm still felt it had more to learn about the professional eyelash and eyebrow artists who buy the company’s products. “We saw a real need for people who are in the business to be able to compare themselves to others, to be able to understand the trends and know where they fit in,” Brian Greene, managing director at Glad Lash, explained. To that end, the company partnered with makeup lighting provider Glamcor to design and distribute an online survey to industry pros. More than 450 lash and brow artists took part. “We were surprised that so many people were anxious to participate,” Esther Bolkin, Greene’s mother and founder of Glad Lash, said. “(They were) excited to give us this information.” The survey found that around half of respondents earn up to $20,000 annually as lash and brow artists, with 3 percent bringing in more than $100,000 a year. The job satisfaction rate among participants was 80 percent, and around 90 percent had obtained a professional certification in the trade. “(The licensing rate) shows that our industry has very high standards,” Bolkin said. “It’s really a legitimate business.” Glad Lash’s in-house marketing team formulated the 10-minute survey, which included a mix of multiple choice questions on income, job satisfaction and marketing initiatives as well as open response queries. While participants neither had to purchase products nor be a past customer of Glad Lash in order to answer questions, all received a 5 percent discount for their time and were entered into a drawing to win free products. “We had responses from all over the world,” Greene said. Rather than relying strictly on its own social media platforms to attract participants, Glad Lash sent the survey to trade magazines, which distributed it to online visitors. The company recruited a third-party firm to analyze the results. “Once the data was analyzed, we had these great stories to tell,” Greene said. In addition to using the results to inform a white paper, Glad Lash also plans to include them in a number of upcoming articles, Greene said. While Glad Lash did not experience direct sales gains from the survey, the endeavor benefits both the company and the industry as a whole by offering potential artists a quantitative snapshot of the business, Greene explained. It also helps salon owners who are looking at eyelash extension and brow services as an expansion opportunity. “This gives salons … a real scientific approach to whether they should or they shouldn’t get into the business,” Greene said. “They can see real numbers, and it encourages them to add to their services.” – Helen Floersh

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