Blackhorse
Active Member
Ok so i have seen loads of threads about fake products and how to spot them and just thought I would put together this information for those who already do or who are considering buying from the likes of ebay and amazon to save a bit of money....DON'T DO IT! Here's why
...
...We all know that gel colour and other branded products are expensive but our prices need to reflect that so we can still make money and save our industry and maintain its integrity not to mention the integrity of your own business or work. I appreciate it is difficult to compete with non standard salons based on price etc and often many of us are left thinking how can i possibly compete with those low prices?! Its simple really, don't compete against them with price; heck you can even use a higher price to your advantage depending on who you are targeting! Value your service and skill and don't undersell yourself! There are so many ways to avoid a price war and gain more loyal clients...any way back to the branded buys on ebay and amazon....
Most are fake - This is totally and utterly true! There will be plenty of you out there who swear you have had genuine products from these sites and I have one word to say to you: STOLEN! Gel color and other branded items such as high end polish etc and even removers, primers and dehydrators that are super cheap are cheap for a reason. They are either fake or stolen unless they are pre-owned and already used and even then someone could be passing off product that didn't wear properly and they suspected was fake or was stolen. No one wants to miss out on money these days but unfortunately they forget their morals along the way especially with people they don't know or can't see as it the case online.
Buy only from authorized distributors unless you want your clients to potentially have a reaction, invalidate your insurance or simply have your clients say gelish(for example) is rubbish because it doesn't last and that client then disappears off to the salon down the road who does opi or shellac and uses genuine products. Gelish in this example will have been unfairly represented by fake products and the client will have a false impression of their products which directly harms Gelish or whatever company is the one concerned as well as the salon.
Insurance companies are there to make money just like everyone else and they will not want to pay out if there is the slightest chance they don't have to! Don't kid yourself into believing that just because you have insurance that you are invincible. If you have a client who has a reaction to a product you bought from non authorized sources and tries to claim they will flat out say your insurance isn't valid and you will have to personally foot the bill! If on the other hand you have used a genuine product then the likely hood is they will either pay or try to shift the blame on the manufacturer. The manufacturers insurance will be the same, they will want to know that the product you used is actually their product and is 100% genuine as they won't want to pay out for a product that is not theirs and understandably so! Legal fees and compensation can amount to huge sums that could bankrupt you and screw over your finances for life! All of a sudden the saving of £5-£10 doesn't seem like such a saving does it!?!
Buying from non authorized retailers promotes and funds crime on a massive scale and puts you and your client at risk all to save £5-10 on a polish...not cool! It also causes loss of jobs in companies trying to provide us with great products who work hard to make our industry what it is and it is also a smack in the face of technicians who are legitimately buying their products and working by the book to ensure they provide a brilliant service.
You should also not forget the seemingly small but important fact that by buying through these channels you are you can well and truely consider yourself to actually be the NSS salon/technician you are criticizing and apparently trying to compete with...don't lower yourself to their standards! Ever!
Businesses take time to build and getting a good client base is hard work but nothing worth having in life was ever easy so if you aren't making enough money then you either need to up your game or look at other areas where you can branch out to make more, not cut corners by using crap on your clients just to save a penny or two.
Gel colour is supposed salon only and there is no way that it is legit and or legal when sold on ebay or amazon for less than the manufacturer sells it for and anyone who thinks this is just not the case really needs to get down from nail tech fairy land and back into the real modern world where it is becoming more common that crime pays(mostly because we don't as a society seem to have a backbone to stand up to it and because human nature is inherently selfish so we often think of out own pockets before the bigger picture and thus fund crime even further). People can't even blame the likes of salon services or other outlets since to buy gel colour form these places you need to have a trade card and show your certificates in most places and besides that they aren't selling the products for anywhere near the price they are going for on amazon and ebay and taking into account paypal and ebay fees which amount to approximately 13% of the total sale price and the fact they have to ship the item it is impossible to consider that folks are buying them form beauty supply stores and selling them at a loss when they could be sat at home watching jeremy kyle and loosing money...its not going to happen and if it did then they wouldn't do it for long!
'But i can spot a fake a mile away' i hear you cry! Maybe so...until people started publishing openly on line how to spot a fake...where do you seriously think the fraudsters are going to look when trying to improve their products so they can sell more and make more money without getting caught out?...the places where people are telling them of the mistakes they made. These 'how to spot a fake' articles are quite literally production guides for creators of fake products!..good job the folks who write these articles aren't in charge of MI6 else we'd be in real trouble!
Fakes are increasingly hard to spot nowadays so much so that companies are changing their packaging fairly rapidly not just to keep with the times but to try and deter criminals from producing more and more accurate fakes...help them out and only buy from authorized distributors! take the new OPI packaging for example, that will be a lot more inconvenient at best for criminals trying to make copies but rest assured there will be fakes in the new style packaging appearing soon.
You don't even need to know how to spot fakes if you are buying from authorized distributors.
So my message to anyone considering buying or already buying from these channels is STOP doing it or better still don't do it in the first place! Stop inadvertently helping to destroy our industry and instead help protect it and buy genuine from the proper channels. If a client tells you they can get an upsell polish you are trying to sell them from ebay cheaper say to them that they can but they cannot be sure of getting a genuine product and there are lots of fakes that are so accurate now you would find it difficult to tell until you used the product and it either didn't wear as well or worse they suffered a reaction thanks to the unregulated ingredients they pump into them to make money. If they still buy there instead of from you who cares, that's their problem and at least you tried to warn them and at least you have not compounded the problem by supporting organized crime.
Lastly but definitely not least; a BIG shout out to all of you amazing and wonderful techs who value our industry and buy through proper channels i.e authorized distributors of our favorite brands...you are a credit to our industry. Love to you all!
......We all know that gel colour and other branded products are expensive but our prices need to reflect that so we can still make money and save our industry and maintain its integrity not to mention the integrity of your own business or work. I appreciate it is difficult to compete with non standard salons based on price etc and often many of us are left thinking how can i possibly compete with those low prices?! Its simple really, don't compete against them with price; heck you can even use a higher price to your advantage depending on who you are targeting! Value your service and skill and don't undersell yourself! There are so many ways to avoid a price war and gain more loyal clients...any way back to the branded buys on ebay and amazon....
Most are fake - This is totally and utterly true! There will be plenty of you out there who swear you have had genuine products from these sites and I have one word to say to you: STOLEN! Gel color and other branded items such as high end polish etc and even removers, primers and dehydrators that are super cheap are cheap for a reason. They are either fake or stolen unless they are pre-owned and already used and even then someone could be passing off product that didn't wear properly and they suspected was fake or was stolen. No one wants to miss out on money these days but unfortunately they forget their morals along the way especially with people they don't know or can't see as it the case online.
Buy only from authorized distributors unless you want your clients to potentially have a reaction, invalidate your insurance or simply have your clients say gelish(for example) is rubbish because it doesn't last and that client then disappears off to the salon down the road who does opi or shellac and uses genuine products. Gelish in this example will have been unfairly represented by fake products and the client will have a false impression of their products which directly harms Gelish or whatever company is the one concerned as well as the salon.
Insurance companies are there to make money just like everyone else and they will not want to pay out if there is the slightest chance they don't have to! Don't kid yourself into believing that just because you have insurance that you are invincible. If you have a client who has a reaction to a product you bought from non authorized sources and tries to claim they will flat out say your insurance isn't valid and you will have to personally foot the bill! If on the other hand you have used a genuine product then the likely hood is they will either pay or try to shift the blame on the manufacturer. The manufacturers insurance will be the same, they will want to know that the product you used is actually their product and is 100% genuine as they won't want to pay out for a product that is not theirs and understandably so! Legal fees and compensation can amount to huge sums that could bankrupt you and screw over your finances for life! All of a sudden the saving of £5-£10 doesn't seem like such a saving does it!?!
Buying from non authorized retailers promotes and funds crime on a massive scale and puts you and your client at risk all to save £5-10 on a polish...not cool! It also causes loss of jobs in companies trying to provide us with great products who work hard to make our industry what it is and it is also a smack in the face of technicians who are legitimately buying their products and working by the book to ensure they provide a brilliant service.
You should also not forget the seemingly small but important fact that by buying through these channels you are you can well and truely consider yourself to actually be the NSS salon/technician you are criticizing and apparently trying to compete with...don't lower yourself to their standards! Ever!
Businesses take time to build and getting a good client base is hard work but nothing worth having in life was ever easy so if you aren't making enough money then you either need to up your game or look at other areas where you can branch out to make more, not cut corners by using crap on your clients just to save a penny or two.
Gel colour is supposed salon only and there is no way that it is legit and or legal when sold on ebay or amazon for less than the manufacturer sells it for and anyone who thinks this is just not the case really needs to get down from nail tech fairy land and back into the real modern world where it is becoming more common that crime pays(mostly because we don't as a society seem to have a backbone to stand up to it and because human nature is inherently selfish so we often think of out own pockets before the bigger picture and thus fund crime even further). People can't even blame the likes of salon services or other outlets since to buy gel colour form these places you need to have a trade card and show your certificates in most places and besides that they aren't selling the products for anywhere near the price they are going for on amazon and ebay and taking into account paypal and ebay fees which amount to approximately 13% of the total sale price and the fact they have to ship the item it is impossible to consider that folks are buying them form beauty supply stores and selling them at a loss when they could be sat at home watching jeremy kyle and loosing money...its not going to happen and if it did then they wouldn't do it for long!
'But i can spot a fake a mile away' i hear you cry! Maybe so...until people started publishing openly on line how to spot a fake...where do you seriously think the fraudsters are going to look when trying to improve their products so they can sell more and make more money without getting caught out?...the places where people are telling them of the mistakes they made. These 'how to spot a fake' articles are quite literally production guides for creators of fake products!..good job the folks who write these articles aren't in charge of MI6 else we'd be in real trouble!
Fakes are increasingly hard to spot nowadays so much so that companies are changing their packaging fairly rapidly not just to keep with the times but to try and deter criminals from producing more and more accurate fakes...help them out and only buy from authorized distributors! take the new OPI packaging for example, that will be a lot more inconvenient at best for criminals trying to make copies but rest assured there will be fakes in the new style packaging appearing soon.
You don't even need to know how to spot fakes if you are buying from authorized distributors.
So my message to anyone considering buying or already buying from these channels is STOP doing it or better still don't do it in the first place! Stop inadvertently helping to destroy our industry and instead help protect it and buy genuine from the proper channels. If a client tells you they can get an upsell polish you are trying to sell them from ebay cheaper say to them that they can but they cannot be sure of getting a genuine product and there are lots of fakes that are so accurate now you would find it difficult to tell until you used the product and it either didn't wear as well or worse they suffered a reaction thanks to the unregulated ingredients they pump into them to make money. If they still buy there instead of from you who cares, that's their problem and at least you tried to warn them and at least you have not compounded the problem by supporting organized crime.
Lastly but definitely not least; a BIG shout out to all of you amazing and wonderful techs who value our industry and buy through proper channels i.e authorized distributors of our favorite brands...you are a credit to our industry. Love to you all!
