At ExCEL recently I went round all the major liquid & powder suppliers, researching availability, support, costs etc. and had test nails done. Every test nail was of a reasonable standard, but the NSI one had some lifting (very little). The NSI one and the star one seemed to shrink or something as it felt uncomfortable after a few hours. This was not the case with any others. Colour was best on creative & cetuem, Star was good if a little too pink (applied to thick I think?), average on all others, cloudy and greyish with NSI, but the white was nice.
So on to get some samples. I bought NSI as I thought it was easily available and wondered if the cloudiness was a dirty brush or something (it was just as bad when we tried it back home), Star Nails gave me a free sample (found the mix ratio very hard but otherwise good), and then tried to get Creative (they had run out). One of the creative team said to call him and he would send samples for free to me as they had sold out. These arrived just a few days later. I didn't have time to get to EZFlow which was the other one I wanted. I called EZFlow and asked them to send a sample explaining that in cornwall there is no other way of seeing stuff - they absolutely refused. (If you want to have my NSI samples - I will sell them. You can have the star for free if I am sending the other)
Then I researched the technology (This is what I found out which does not mean it is true - you should check for yourself) I found that all the decent l&p systems use cross linking technology - meaning tougher, stronger enhancements even when applied thinly. However, Creative have better technology - reinforced cross linking. This means that with creative it can be beatifully thin and natural and still have the strength. This means faster rebalances as well - less to file.
The next thing is the type of bond with the nail. creative retention+ has a covalent bond to the natural nail which is far superior and longer lasting to the hydrogen bond in other systems. I could not find another system using this - please correct me if I am wrong?
I also need images for use on brochures and website. My gel supplier (IBD) has always been very helpful with this. Both Star and Creative were helpful with this request. Cetuem were good too. (all subject to using their products). No others could help.
So as you can guess, I had figured creative was the way to go, but there was one last thing to check - are their products tested on animals. Answer - No, they are not tested on animals.
I did my creative conversion this week and as you can tell - still very very happy with the product but also the company and it's people. The rest of my team will convert in the next couple of months.
Sorry for a long text, but I have worked hard to find all this out.