Tips on Selecting Wax for Your Salon

Lilliane Caron explains what to look out for when selecting waxing products for your salon services.

1. Packaging & Convenience
There is little variation in the market on how strip wax is packaged. A jar or in a roll on cartridge are the most general. Most can be microwaved to the point of assisting with pouring into a wax heater, not enough to be at usable temperature (unless you want the actual jar to melt also). As for hard wax, in recent years, the need for a hammer has really declined. There’s plenty of packaging options available to us such as discs, melts, microwavable formulas and even powdered form.

Convenience of use should be a high priority and taken into consideration!

2. What suits your clients?
There are a lot of waxing products to choose from. Your decision should be broken down by two important factors:

Performance – The actual ingredients within the wax itself.
Aesthetics – The preference of colour and fragrance of the wax your clients will enjoy.

To make a truly informed choice, you need to look at the core ingredient in wax — resin. This ingredient is the base of all strip and hard waxes. There are two real categories we can put resins into, those derived from the sap of trees (generally pine or fir trees) and those that are synthetic (man-made).

What works best for one client may not for another so it’s important to have a selection available.

3. Colour & Fragrance
Look out for waxes with a strong acid/chemical smell and/or a very dark brown, dirty colour. These types of waxes are usually very cheap to buy and more likely to cause a client reaction. Try to find waxes with pure (not dirty looking) colour and fragrance. If you’re in a supplier’s showroom, have a look and quick sniff at the product before purchasing if possible. Alternatively, contact a manufacturer to see if you can obtain a sample.

4. Price
As the saying goes, “You get what you pay for”. This definitely relates to wax products. Most good quality waxes are generally priced $20 and above per kilogram (obviously there can be special offers, but still remaining at an ongoing average price of around $20). This price range generally indicates the wax is a pine resin formula that has been somewhat refined to help avoid causing contraindications. They may have some added colour and fragrance. Although not the pinnacle, they will do the job well enough without causing harm to the client.

Top of the range synthetic resins are much safer, more consistent in production batch to batch and easier for the therapist to work with. Synthetic resins are usually declared as hydrocarbon resin or polycyclopentadiene. High quality synthetic resins are easy to colour and fragrance and often appear fresh and clean. Pure white waxes can only be made from the best synthetic resins available (otherwise they look yellow). They will not go brittle and rarely cause client allergic reactions.

Lilliane Caron is the founder of Caronlab Australia, for more information visit http://caronlab.com.au/