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By: Dr. Anthony Lloneau

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The term “retouch” actually means to redo that which was not done correctly in the first place.  In legal terms, no price should be associated with this service.  In other words, when you do a service that you advertise as retouch, you are advertising a service that your patron does not have to pay you for.  Morally he/she may be responsible to pay you, but legally he/she is not; the spirit of the law may dictate that he/she has to pay you for this service, but the letter of the law does not.

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The term “retouch” is costly because most beauty salons will charge a lesser fee for a service advertised as retouch.  For example, if you charge $35 for a virgin relaxer and $25 for a so-called retouch, then you have just cheated yourself out of $10.  Why cheated?  For several reasons:  If you actually timed yourself in doing a so-called retouch on one inch of new growth as opposed to doing a virgin head of eight inches, it will take you longer to do one inch of new growth than it would to do eight inches of virgin hair, because you have to be careful to not overlap beyond the point of new growth to keep from damaging hair that was previously relaxed by over processing.  This extra precaution requires more of you time, attention and professional know-how, yet you are charging less money for this service.  The only reason why is because you used a maximum of$1.50 worth of less product, but in terms of cost, this amount of product reduced your price for a service that is going to take you longer to do with more professional skill, by $10.

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If you check back on all the treatments that you have completed in the last 12 months, you will probably find 70% or more were so called retouches that you do for less money, and of that 70%, I believe you will find only a small percentage of them were patrons you or any other professional did the original treatment on.  The fact is, most virgin perms are not done in beauty salons, they are done at home with drug store kits, but they come to you, the professional, for this service because they know that you know how to do it correctly without damaging the hair and they don’t, and you can do it for less money.  If this makes sense to you then keep on doing what you are doing; if not, the following may be of help to you.

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If you are charging $35 for a virgin relaxer and $25 for the new growth treatment, then simply reduce the price of the virgin relaxer to $30, advertise this reduction in order to take advantage of the fact that you are coming down on the price of something, and then quietly, with no fanfare, increase the price of your so-called retouch to the same $30.  Owing to the fact that 70% of your relaxer services are retouch anyway, you are automatically going to increase your income without increasing your efforts to do so.

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WHAT TERMINOLOGY SHOULD REPLACE THE TERM RETOUCH?

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NEW GROWTH APPLICATION.  This is the correct term to replace retouch because it is implying exactly what it is.  When a person needs another treatment due to new growth, then you should call the service exactly what it is.  Don’t run the risk of advertising a service you may or may not be paid for.  This same information also applies to any service that may need to be redone due to new growth, such as tinting, bleaching, permanent curling, as well as hair relaxing.

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Many times a patron will come to you for a relaxer treatment and every time he/she comes back, no matter how long duration there may be between treatments, he/she always expects to pay the lesser fee.  If you insist on charging a lesser fee for the so-called RETOUCH, now known as NEW GROWTH APPLICATION, then this is your prerogative.  However, you should know when a retouch ceases to be a retouch; for example, the customer who comes at  Christmas and then comes back again at Easter, and then returns again sometime after the Fourth of July; then you are indeed hurting yourself financially and playing yourself cheap.  In actuality, a retouch should no longer be valid after five days and not longer than two weeks as a redue.  A NEW GROWTH relaxer is usually done every 6 to 8 weeks.  However, after 6 months it should be considered a whole new perm, and charged accordingly.

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