Ba-Bling!

For a story on how celebrities support charitable causes in the March 9 issue of The New York Times Magazine, actress Natalie Portman posed for the cover with Martha Villaseñor Antunez, a Mexican business owner who received a microloan through the Foundation for International Community Assistance. (Portman is a huge supporter of the organization, also known as FINCA.) For the cover shoot, Portman not only showed up with dark nail polish on her fingers, but Antunez sported white enhancements inlaid with metallic flowers and striping on the free edge. The black-and-white shot brings out what both women are wearing on their nails, delivering a spark of energy to a powerful image that promotes an admirable cause.

Are You On The List?

The law requiring the use of autoclaves in Texas has long since been repealed, but if you brought your salon up to code before that, take note. A new resource recently went online to help consumers locate salons that use autoclaves as a method of sanitation and disinfection. WeSterilize.com, an offshoot of podiatrist and author Dr. Robert Spalding's DrSpalding.com, allows nail technicians and salon owners to submit their salon information to the site via a simple Web form. The site's staff will review and consider the application, adding the salon to the searchable database if it passes the appropriate criteria. "Anyone can then click on a state in our map of the United States and find a salon nearby that sterilizes with autoclaves," Spalding says. "We're going to make this website available to the public by way of the national press in many health magazines and newspapers." For more information, visit www.westerilize.com or call 423/756-3668.

Best of the Best
In an issue devoted to celebrating every color of the rainbow, the April In Style named its 141 Best Beauty Buys. The list included a number of familiar polish shades, which were chosen by a group of well-known nail techs, such as Melissa Bozant, April Foreman, Ashlie Johnson and Gina Viviano. The honored hues included:
 
• Best Reds: Essie Cosmetics A-List and OPI Products Big Apple Red
• Best Pinks: Essie Pansy and Exposure
• Best Corals: OPI Cajun Shrimp and Essie Canyon Coral
• Best Neutrals: Essie Allure and Mademoiselle
• Best Darks: Sally Hansen Pat on the Black, Essie Wicked and OPI Lincoln Park After Dark
 
In addition, Seche Clear Base and Vite Top were named the Best Base Coat and Best Top Coat, respectively, and the Best Nail Strengthener honor went to Duri Cosmetics Rejuvacote.
 
On the skincare side, St. Tropez Auto Bronzant Lotion won the Best Self-Tanner for Body award, while the Murad Age Spot and Pigment Lightening Gel was named the Best Spot Lightener.

Popularity Contest
Potential clients now have another way to wade through dozens of salon listings. Sites like Citysearch.com, Yelp.com and even the Yellow Pages on Yahoo.com or Google.com now feature user ratings and reviews, detailing what someone liked or disliked about a particular business. Since these sites only require a username to express an opinion, all it takes is one bad review to skew your salon's reputation.
 
As it turns out, unfiltered opinions are exactly what draw consumers to these sites. "If a salon is terrible, a newspaper isn't going to write, 'Well, this place just stinks!' but a Yelp reviewer certainly will," says Amy Spalding, a marketing coordinator in Los Angeles who used Yelp to find her current salon. "It's great to read strong opinions as well as hear about more than just the quality of service--ambiance, employee attitudes, etc. are all covered by Yelpers."
 
Of course, this may not be comforting if your salon earns a thumbs-down, but there's still something to learn from the situation. "I think salons should definitely be aware of all the websites that review businesses, especially those like Yelp where the reviews are so frank and detailed," Spalding says. "If they consistently read complaints about one particular aspect of their business, then they should work on improving that, and if they see a lot of praise for something, then they should make that a focus of their marketing efforts." She adds that the salon she eventually chose from its positive reviews on Yelp--Frenchy's Beauty Parlor in Burbank, California--didn't even know that it had been so well-received online.
 
You may be powerless over existing reviews, but you can still take some cues from Spalding and pump up your online exposure. Keep up to date on how your salon is depicted online and note specific points that reviewers address. Sites like Yelp and Citysearch often hand out stickers to place in a business' window, indicating a relationship with the website to potentially draw more clients. You can also ask favorite or cyber-savvy clients to put in a good word for you on the Web. As Spalding says, "Word of mouth has always been the best way to find a salon, and thanks to sites like these, you don't even have to know anyone in a town to spread the word!"

go to last month's news

Healing Hands
Many of you serve clients with disabilities, and so does Clean Logic Body Care. The skincare company, which promotes The Inspiration Foundation (a nonprofit organization that aids the disabled in gaining independence in their daily lives), recently added braille labeling to the packaging of its body washes and lotions to help the visually impaired identify the product. Not only would these make great retail items for your vision-impaired clients, but Clean Logic imparts its products with nopal cactus, which is known to have healing and anti-inflammatory properties. It might not provide a miracle cure, but it will deliver enough soothing to erase the stress of the day--a feat in and of itself.

A Breath of Fresh Air

Nearly 20 years ago, Modern Solutions set up shop and began doing business by producing chemical solutions that provided dust and static control for the graphic arts industry. It was seven years ago that the company got into the salon business after buying Cox Industries, for which Modern Solutions had been a distributor. It took on the manufacturing of an air-purification machine specifically made for the nailcare market and nothing has been the same since. "We're seeing much more activity these days. This area of the business has doubled over the past few years," says Jeff Cardarella, president of Modern Solutions. "In some ways, we've taken on leadership roles in the industry. We educate the customer, including those who speak Vietnamese, and have the lead in occupational safety. All of our products exceed OSHA standards." Modern Solutions has also teamed up with BAU USA to make the Sunflower, a comprehensive product that captures impurities at their source and removes them from the air. And Modern Solutions added activated oxygen to its purification systems within the past year to help with monomer and acetone odors. Cardarella says that these are just the start of the technological advances that will push Modern Solutions into its next 20 years.

Mix & Match
In last month's Nailpro, we gave you a guide to custom-mixing polish colors in our feature "Colors of the Rainbow." Just as we went to press, CND came out with a recipe guide for several of the shades that its techs blended together for this spring's fashion shows in New York. Part of the job of CND techs was to perfectly match polish colors to the fashions strutting down the runway, which required creativity and experimentation. If you want to get some practice at the (im)precise science of blending polish, check out their summery combinations of CND enamels.

Sheer Elegance

	Ellen Page
	Diane Lane (with husband Josh Brolin)

Several celebrities took advantage of Oscar-week pampering parties to make their nails look flawless for the big night. Actresses Jessica Alba and Ellen Page went with Orly and SpaRitual products--Alba enjoyed a hand-and-foot massage with SpaRitual Instinctual Moisturizing Lotion with Indonesian Ginger and Eloquent Toner, and followed it up with sheer Orly First Kiss polish on her fingernails and Orly Velvet Rope on her toes. (Both lacquers are free from DBP, formaldehyde and toluene, making them safe for use during Alba's pregnancy.) Page went with Orly Calcium Shield to bolster her fingernails followed by a simple coat of Orly Glosser, and chose SpaRitual Hunk of Burnin' Love for her

toes. Both ladies were attended by celebrity manicurist Jenna Hipp.
 
Meanwhile, CND set up shop at the Thompson Hotel with other beauty brands as part of the Elle Magazine

Jessica Alba

and Biolage "Get Glam and Give Back" Salon and Spa Suite, attracting a number of famous faces. Oscar-nominated actress Diane Lane and her daughter stopped by, with Lane asking for the sheer iridescent Cold Shoulder on her fingernails and her daughter requesting Sheer Contentment after her SpaManicure. Tamara Podemski, Independent Spirit Award Best Supporting Actress nominee for her role in Four Sheets to the Wind, received a French manicure with Retro White and Clearly Pink, two colors from the new CND Plexi Pop collection. Clearly Pink was also the choice of Ali Landry, but she counted her bottle of Stickey as her true prize. "Everyone should have Stickey," she said, noting that she has used the product for years.