Hi Claire, I’m glad to hear you’re getting on really well with your intimate waxing. You’re right, the demand for leg waxing is a lot weaker and you’re more likely to only get bookings from really hairy ladies as home waxing kits are easy to use. And it takes about 30 mins to do a full leg wax - in the same time you can do a Hollywood and charge a lot more.
However, it’s worth persevering, you get a lot of half leg wax bookings and you’ll get those done in around 12 minutes - it’s an easy upsell in the summer.
I used to be terrible at leg waxing! In the end I did a Groupon offer and did 68 leg waxes for pennies. You literally make no money from Groupon offers but you might pick up a few clients, I did the offer so I could train for free, I covered the cost of the wax and my other overheads but basically worked for nothing. I picked up a couple of clients for other things and one or two became regulars so it ended up being the best advertising I’ve ever done as I had lots of positive reviews and it pushed me up the google ranking. It was very successful as a training solution because I became very speedy indeed. Using pot wax I could do a full leg, underarm and basic bikini in 45 mins!
If you’re interested you’d earn about £8.50 a leg wax based on your prices. Timing is everything, I ran my offer in March/April time I think and only offered a deal on strip waxing services, if clients wanted to upgrade to an intimate they had to pay my usual prices and I explained that I was promoting my strip wax business and trialling different strip waxes to see which one I liked, not discounting my film wax business.
So it is about practise, practise, practise!
You do need to prep with outback Organics prep products to get best results from their roller waxes. Tricky leg waxes tend to be dry legs, with lots of ingrowing hairs. Their cleansing gel, followed by a spritz of oil helps enormously.
There are speed waxing techniques you can learn in a refresher training session - the main tips for roller waxing is to prep both legs at the same time, get the client to flex her knees and briskly massage gel into one leg from ankle to top of the thigh paying plenty of attention to dry areas esp knees, followed by the other leg.
You can apply roller wax to two legs in one go, but I never do this as my clients are usually hard work and I usually can’t work quickly enough. There are quite a few tips on leg waxing on this forum, lots of them from me, mainly about the waxing order and client positioning (hold the legs as if the client is riding side saddle).
The main thing is to have your roller wax hot enough so it flows quickly. You don’t need to press hard, just let gravity do the work by inverting the cartridge. Bond well. Remind yourself to smooth firmly against the direction of removal. Use the palms of your hands to bond, not the backs of your fingers or the side of your hand. You should bond with the other hand to your removal hand. Bonding with the right technique and in the right direction makes a big difference. I usually bond in the wrong direction and not with the palms of my hands because I’m dead lazy, but if that first strip comes off poorly, I sharpen up my technique to bond like a boss.
Then make sure you’re removing by whisking off by pulling at 180 degrees. Pulling at 90 degrees will have you pulling up towards the ceiling, you should be hovering a few centimetres above your client’s skin and “unzipping” towards her nose. You want a firm technique pulling hard enough that you carry on travelling a good 45 cms longer than the end of the strip with a good hard pull that’s not a snatch or a snappy yank, you want to lever the hairs out from the root, not break them.
Manage your client. Have her lying flat, not half propped with her tummy muscles tensed. “Wobble” her muscles if they are hard and remind her to relax the tension. Work systematically, leave tweezing until the end, and wax three sides of the limb with the client lying supine with her legs at the appropriate side saddle angle. Use hot wax on wobbly inner thighs, and check the fold under the butt cheeks before you turn her. It’s easier to get your client to lift her knees towards her chest while you control and position the leg rather than trying to work with her lying prone on her front.
Comment on the condition of her skin, giving pre and post waxing advice and do this right at the start of the service explaining what she needs to do to get the best results. Basically to moisturise daily both before and after her wax, to drink enough water and take an omega oil supplement to improve skin glow and reduce dehydration. You can also consider offering a leg exfoliation pre-treatment as an upgrade, do it well and you’ll get clients booking in for body scrubs!