Warning: This may be a long post but it is important to our salon that we maintain transparency and give some clarity on what has been going on behind the scenes and how we arrived at this decision. As some may have heard the recent gossip around the salon, we have been at odds with one of our product distributors as of late. The distributor, with whom we get Davines hair products through, handles all distribution of the brand in our region and works with hundreds of salons, many of which are also small businesses like ours. In the past few months, you may have noticed a dwindling inventory of Davines products.  We are happy to announce we are bringing a full stock of Davines back, but want to share the details of what went down and how Vivian stood her ground for a worthy cause!

Side rant, please bear with me as this is important for context: Vivian is the kind of business owner who values the success of her team members. To her, a thriving business means that each and every one of her team members are successful financially while also feeling fulfilled in their careers. Running a business, more specifically a salon, is expensive with very tight margins, especially when you prioritize the financial stability of your team members. As for clients, it is important to Vivian that we offer a range of products that vary in price so that clients have the option to use salon quality products at home to feel their best while also offering different price points. This theme will continue when (spoiler alert) Vivian stands up to a large product distributor on behalf of our salon and hundreds of other small business owners who are also being financially taken advantage of.

So back to it! A few weeks ago, while placing an order for Davines, we  realized a price discrepancy between what we were selling products for in the salon and what the price was being listed as on davines.com. Keep in mind, when pricing our products we usually just go based off of the order form provided to us and implement a standard retail markup (what we assumed would be the same and price matched to davines.com). Unfortunately, this meant that our prices ended up being more than what Davines had listed on its website. But how could that be? After some digging, it became clear our distributor has been charging more for wholesale without the salons knowledge.  This meant the price on the shelves was more expensive than the price on Davines’ website, Amazon, or Sephora.  If a salon were to price match to online pricing, every order would mean spending more of the business’ profits without realizing the impact.  This difference could cost a small business hundreds of dollars a month. What upset us more is that guests who looked online would think we were marking up our products without explanation. 

But how did Vivian become at odds with the distributor? Well, this is where it gets juicy. As a small business salon owner herself and as an advocate for hair stylists in an industry that does not always respect their skills, she took it upon herself to contact every salon in the region that carries Davines and works with the distributor directly to inform them of the distributor’s up-charge. Yes! You read that right. Vivian contacted hundreds of salons across Ohio and Michigan to inform them of a big distributor’s unethical practices with salon small business owners. Small businesses are the foundation of how this distributor is even in operation in the first place! 

Vivian heard back from dozens of those salons and every one of them responded that they were never informed of this up-charge. They were either price matching the website and unknowingly eating the cost or doing what we did and unintentionally charging more for a product that was being offered at a lesser price online. To no one’s surprise, this caused a lot of chaos for the distributor and led to the CEO reaching out to Vivian directly (eventually- he didn’t get the memo that Shawn was no longer an owner and he called Shawn first).  He was upset so many salon owners were calling their sales reps angry at the price increase they didn’t know they were paying.  After going back and forth, the distributor finally agreed to sell at actual wholesale instead of the marked up wholesale- but not without dropping a touch of misogyny and condescension (he said she was “well reasoned and articulate for a hairstylist”). Vivian continued to stand her ground for her salon and for every salon owner just trying to make it. 

Despite the win, Vivian and the management team have gone back and forth on the status of our relationship with the distributor. At first, we were set on no longer carrying the product line due to the unethical situation even though they ended up conceding to our demands.  Vivian had a hard time with the compromise because she doesn’t want to give the distributor any money.  However, compromise is an act of maturity.  

We have ultimately decided to continue to carry Davines and we will still happily order your favorite Davines product if we are out.

Our problem was with the distributor and not Davines corporate.  Thank you all for the patience with us and for being so understanding with this debacle. And thank you for reading all the way to the end!