The fifth Salon Melbourne finished with spectacular results in visitors counts, education and overall exhibitor satisfaction, Sophia Wang reports.
Salon Melbourne 2014 was an outstanding showcase of the creativity and technology behind the Australian hair and beauty industries. Reed Exhibitions experienced unparalleled growth this year with a boost in exhibitors, pre-event tickets, registrations and the largest visitor count yet. Introducing new education areas this year, a new Medi Stage was added to the floor to showcase equipment and technology in action. As always, Salon Melbourne’s Main Stage was packed with talent and inspiration with presentations from industry experts.
As the most popular annual mingle-ground for the hair and beauty industries, this year’s show provided exhibitors a perfect promotional ground to educate visitors, meet potential or existing clients, and tap into every market of the wider industry.
A diverse crowd
This year’s crowd provided a good mix of students, therapists, hairdressers, nurses and salon owners. As the industry experiences continual convergence and salons are expected to offer a broader range of services, it’s more important than ever to be across all fields. Salon Melbourne creates an ideal environment for visitors to extend their knowledge beyond their expertise and discover new areas of growth. For Dermalogica, the diverse crowd was a launch pad for their expanding vision and bespoke packages. According to Julia Ramanadhan, Dermalogica marketing manager, those who visited the stand were a solid mix of students, therapists, and also serious spa and medi-spa owners – a new area the brand is venturing into. “Our industry is quite segmented in that people all have different needs; we’ve been customising bespoke packages at Salon Melbourne to suit their needs,” Julia said.
3D Lipo, who launched to the Victorian market at Salon Melbourne also experienced this diversity – “we had a lot of different people visit our stand, everything from nurses to therapists, even students who are looking at setting up their own clinic. It’s been great to demonstrate our technology to them,” said Melissa Liberato, 3D Lip national sales manager.
Salon Melbourne’s main point of difference is the mixing of the hair and beauty industries – after all, we are all catering to the same customers. The open show floor layout provided a great environment for the networking of these two industries. “There’s been a lot of mingling between different industries – hairdressers, nail technicians and therapist are all coming together and blurring the line between their trades,” said Ellie Phillips, PR coordinator for Pacific Nails & Beauty (CND distributors).
Andrea Taylor, CEO of Mediterranean Tan is ahead of this trend and brought her tanning, waxing, mineral makeup and teeth whitening range to the show – “every business has to diversify. You can no longer just be a tanning or beauty salon, you really have to offer a one-stop shop,” said Andrea.
Education and exhibitors
Education is always at the forefront of Salon Melbourne and those who attend are always hungry for the latest information and products. This year’s technology-savvy crowd used the Salon Melbourne app to navigate and plan their trip. “This year a lot of people turned up knowing exactly what they want and the questions they wanted to ask. Visitors talked about the app and how it helped them to make the most out of their visit,” Ellie from Pacific Nails & Beauty said.
Visitors are also having conversations with the stands, coming with their own questions and insights; they want more in-depth knowledge – especially in relation to the certification and cruelty-free claims of products. “Visitors are more interested in the ingredients behind products this year, I think there’s been a massive cruelty-free push,” said Andrea.
Rob Tamburro, director of Bodyography also experienced this at Salon Melbourne: “we have had a lot of people asking about our ingredients, product formulation and PETA certification. A lot of our products are gluten-free, vegan friendly and cruelty-free so there’s definitely been a lot of interest around that”.
A successful promotional floor
Every year, brands choose to launch new products and services at Salon Melbourne because of the attention it attracts. Dermalogica used the show to promote their Face Map Our Nation consumer initiative and launched Dermalogica Connect to clients – a web-based solution for stockists. Bodyography also showcased their latest launches as the makeup partner at the Sunday Night Show and on Main Stage.
Growth for regulars
Regular exhibitors like Mancine Cosmetics and Pacific Nail & Beauty also reaped the rewards of loyalty from returning year after year. “Salon Melbourne has many regular exhibitors like us so people know who we are and what to expect,” said Ellie from Pacific Nail & Beauty. Mancine Cosmetics used this to their advantage and established a firm reputation for themselves over the years. “We are regulars every year and it’s been great seeing the growth. We’ve gathered a lot of leads, seen many old clients and caught up with them,” said Brenton Price, CEO of Mancine Cosmetics.
Salon Melbourne will return in 2015 between March 1 and 2.
For more information visit https://www.salonmelbourne.com.au/