Unfiltered with Robert Cromeans – Color Bars
Three VIRGINS walk into a bar… a Color Bar!
John Paul Mitchell Systems’ Global Artistic Director and A Robert Cromeans Salon Owner, Robert Cromeans says each of those virgins would be easy to convert if the first thing they saw was a Color Bar. He claims he stumbled on the concept of the Color Bar accidentally. “I was building my salon at Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas,” he recalls. “I’m working it out on a napkin, thinking about stations, take-home areas. I’m way above my pay grade here, but I wear the big hat so on I go! The architect I’m working with looks at the design and says, ‘Where’s the office?’ So I draw an office. Then they say, ‘Where’s the dispensary?’ OH NO! I didn’t have room left for a dispensary! But there was some space at the back of the salon so I thought, ‘I’ll put in four chairs and a floating island and the dispensary will be out in the open.’ Looking back, I think the Color Bar is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever stumbled upon.”
Join us as Robert Cromeans and BTC come together for his latest discoveries—on the importance of Color Bars and haircolor services in the salon.
1. “Color sales are in the billions. Fifty percent of the population has gray hair. On the fashion side, everybody’s into color. You used to have to get people drunk to do this stuff. Now, grandmothers want pink hair! We’ve never had it so good.”
2. “I didn’t invent the Color Bar as a fixture, I invented it as a concept. It’s 50 percent of the footprint in my salon, which guarantees my guests will see what amounts to 50 percent of my business.”
3. “My color guest is the nucleus of my business. She’s chemically dependent. She comes back 8 to 12 times a year. Those are really awesome numbers.”
4. “If you hide color in the back room behind a drape, it’s a secret. If you put it out in the open, everyone wants it.”
5. “At a Color Bar, our guests see us using multiple colors together and a whisk to create and mix the perfect shade of chocolate brown just for them.”
6. “The Color Bars in my salons are like the greatest hair show you could ever see. The guest chills, reads magazines, plays on her iPad. There are no mirrors so they don’t have to see themselves in capes and foils. They can relax, drool on themselves if they want to.”
7. “Why no mirrors? Mirror, mirror on the wall, who’s the cutest in 4G of them all? Nobody! They’re cute AFTER the haircolor service!”
8. “In the past, we would have never shown our guests the dispensary. When we tour our salon guests, the first thing we show them is the Color Cathedral, where we celebrate haircolor! Then we show them the Wash House, the styling stations, the restrooms, etc. I don’t tour each new guest because I think my salon is pretty, I do it to show them every way they can enjoy every service in my salon.”
9. “Sitting around the Color Bar, guests see your professional brilliance in action. They ask questions. If nobody sees you mix up color, they will try doing it at home. She’d have to buy six different boxes to even try to get your custom blend!”
10. “The floating chairs at the Color Bar make sense on another level. They keep the guest out of my styling chair so I can do another guest while they’re processing. So Color Bars multiply the pace, as well as increase the average ticket when the color conversation gets going.”
11. “The dispensary becomes wasted space, it’s where stylists go to gossip…”
12. “No money to build a Color Cathedral? Get creative. My friends at A Tracy and Anthony Salon in Connecticut have a salon in a house, so they turned one of the rooms into the Color Nook. At the very least? Mix up the color in front of the guest. Share your knowledge and show her what you can do.”
