what makes a Non standard salon?

If after 6 months of a new salon opening down the road from you, you start getting fresh faces through the door complaiming about the new salon saying things like.

"Their all oriental looking!"
"They wear masks!"
"Theres a very strong chemical smell!"
"They dont have an air filter like you do!"
"They wear gloves all the time!"
"They never preped my nail at all!"
"I asked for gel, but it looked like l&p to me!"
"It took just over half an hour!"
"They used a drill to smooth it down!"
"When I had them removed they ripped most of it off then clipped a bit and electric drilled the rest!"
"But they were only £20 and yours are £35!"

Most of the posts regarding NSS mention one or two of the above statments and jump to the conclusion that the salon must be Non standard . In my opinion, even if all of the above statments are true they do not categorically prove that the salon is working illegally.

Near us we have a number of salons that fit many of the above criteria. We have also seen the devistation they have caused to peoples nails. But i do not consider them to be non standard, i consider them to have a very low level of workmanship. Which may i add, has been of great financial reward to our salon.

The Quality of workmanship usualy start with the Quality of the training you recieve. if you recieve your training from a council collage and the state pays for your course (eg: you have just left school, career development loan, or unemployed) you are trainer usualy by a beauty therapist with a teaching qualification who's every day life is to teach what she knows on paper, and probobly does not apply enhancments for a living. also the state will only pay the collage if the trainee PASSES the course ....So they get very little practical training and are garanteed to pass and then cause havoc in the nail world legaly.

There are only two reasons i can think of that makes a salon illegal:

1, They operate with no insurance
2, They have no formal training / qualification

As you may have noticed i have not used the "Methyl Methacrylate" word yet!

So... here goes... Sadly the use of MMa for nail enhancments has not yet been made illegal in the UK and i believe this will be the case for many years to come. If the salon down the road is using MMa what can you do about it when its not illegal?

What if the badly trained salon down the road says " hell yer i use MMa, iam qualified and have insurance to prove it" what can you do

She's done her training at collage where she passed before she started!
She uses MMa which is not illegal and she has got insurance.(i have never seen an insurance policy for nails techs that states you should not use MMa)

She is working within the law! maybe not what we call "standard" but she is working legally.


So whats my point......dont jump to the conclusion that bad workmanship means their a NSS, and if you could prove they are using MMa theres not much you can do, other than educate your new found customers.

I run two buisnesses of which one has a "CODE OF PRACTICE" heres how it works!........ you pay an anual fee and sign to say that you abied by the code. Your anual fee is used to randomly check without warning that the members are following the code. These checks could be anything from chemical analysis of the products you use, to ensuring you are registerer with the data protection agency. if you fail the random checks you lose the use of the "CODE OF PRACTICE" logo. This Logo is used in all your advertising to reasure your clients of your compitence and commitment to better standards.

What do you think...... is it feasible for the nail industry?


If you managed to read this at the bottom thanks for your patience.

The ramblings of Mr H Munster

I am all for this sort of thing - this to me is far more preferrable than blanket insistence that you hold the NVQ - as we all know the standards of NVQ training in some colleges is awful, but hey an NVQ is an NVQ.

Very good post Mr Herman!

Emminently sensible advice! I agree with every word.

Frankly I am sick of MMA wingers. It is there .. it is not illegal ... the public is not totally stupid ...

Get on with your own businesses and quit worrying about the guy down the road ... keep your head down ... do things professinaly, correctly and safely and cleanly and beautifully, and you will prosper.

Not strictly true, the college i attended for my NVQ unit 19 (and the other units within the level 3 qualification) brought in a creative trained nail tech to teach us, who was very experienced , knew what she was talking about etc yes she is also a beauty therapist and she had her teaching certificate.no- one on my course was garanteed to pass , we did it through sheer hard work, practise,practise ,practise and determination. The training i received was very good , so dont tar them all with the same brush.

Ufortunately what Herman says is not inaccurate. YOU are one of the lucky ones and I am very pleased you are but the NVQ has not really succeeded in what it set out to do which was to create and guarantee a standard of work which was the same for all.
It could acheive this if it was taught properly, implemented properly and then only given out to those who produced that standard. But alas this is not always the case. We all know there are exceptions (thank god) and I am glad you had the good fortune to be one of them.

Ooops...... good point well put. But it just proves my piont that the Quality of workmanship usualy start with the Quality of the training you recieve. You have obviously been given training from a well trained nail tech. if you are not shown correctly in your training you will continue to do things badly at the expense of the general public.

this statement is correct and any collage that fails a pupil will loose around £800 in funds. All iam trying to say is, that in my opinion this system of payment to state collages should be changed. It does nothing to premote quality.

i congratulate you on your hard work, determination and persistance, keep it up and never stop learning

Say that louder so my dear husband can hear you, he thinks i'm becoming a professional student,

I do realise that I have been very fortunate where my nail enhancement training is concerned , not just from my tutor but from this site aswell, the support and encouragement you all give is tremendous and I thank you all for that ,so much so that i recommended this site to fellow students( and the tutor)

"Their all oriental looking!"
I agree with the most of your post but I don't believe that your first statement to be accurate. I'm offended by your over generalized statement. As for "They wear masks!" I was taught in my class to wear a mask so I wouldn't have the dust and filed nail particles flying into my face. Not to mention that unfortunately I'm very sensitive to the smell of acrylic. I hope that expressing my opinion will not upset you or anyone else because again, I agree with most of what you've said.

nope... I agree parkojin. People must be very careful about what types of generalisations are made... I think he was just relaying some of what clients say. Other than that... I thought his post was pretty decent.

I think you have misunderstood the piont i was trying to make!.... which was, that some people use the statments i mentioned as a verification in their eyes to call the said salon a non standard salon which in my opinion is unfounded..Please note i did not make any of the above statements they are "quotes" of what i have seen written on this site or have been said in our salon.

It was not my intention to insult any race or creed. i know the writen word doesnt always come across in the right way so heres a quote from me The issue of race is something i feel very passionate about. Racist people make my blood boil. Live & let live.

No offence has been taken and i hope you are not offended by my reply

P.S.... i did not intend to offend any face masks either (this is a joke)

Does any one have an opinion on the "CODE OF PRACTICE"

• Would it be feasible?
• Would it be implementable?
• Who would oversee it?
• How much would it cost?

Hi Lily - nice to see you under your own steam so to speak LOL.

I had a thread about this ages ago and there was something similar in the Nail mag about a licensing board.

I would like to think it would be feasible
Implementable - hopefully
Maybe it could be something that ANT could look into
Cost - this would be very difficult to hazard a guess at.

Me too!!! i'm fed up of having to fight with herman to get on the damm computer!! Herman believes ANT is possibly the only independant company that could do this although he doesn't have alot of faith in them at the moment!! Tho he has got plenty of ideas on the subject and what the code should contain
Amanda

I have just come out of college from gaining my NVQ (unit 19) and to work in the borough of Westminster (London), you have to have an NVQ. There was a salon in Oxford St that you could do a one day course and they would give you a certificate to say that you were a qualified nail tech. This place has since been closed down. I fully agree with Herman with regards to colleges and the teachers teaching a bit of everything. As I did the college course, I realised that I was only being taught the very basic foundations, which for me was a starting point and made me want to learn more as I am passionate about nails. I pushed and pushed my college tutor to bring someone in who was a Creative trained tech to do a demo, I questioned the poor girl to death. I am glad I have got my NVQ because It now means that I can work in Westminster but that is still not enough for me. I class myself as 'on the way to being a tech'. I have booked to do a Creative conversion on Monday. If you are as passionate as I am then you will go to the best and learn from them cos you want to be the best you can possibly be. Sadly, not everyone thinks like this and are in the business just to make a quick buck. See you all on Sunday.

Jaydee

herman, i do understand what your point is/was and I will say that it is incredibly sad and unfortunate that you are correct in what people tend to see in NSS. I just hope that a "Code of Practice" could be inforced in all salons.