Coloring has always been the backbone of the salon hair care industry, but never before have so many facets of color permeated the market, with color-related products and services responsible for nearly every growth driver in our Kline PRO database, a powerful resource for the salon industry based on transactional data.
Let’s start with color services. Coloration services is the single largest service category, representing 31% of total salon service revenue in 2016. Despite already being the largest category, coloring services also managed to record substantial growth—up 7% for the year—making it the second fastest growing service type, second only to treatments, which has a much smaller share of the industry at only 2%.
Service Dollar Shares
SOURCE: Kline PRO
When we drill down to the segments within each service category, the story is very much the same. Out of the 10 fastest growing services in 2016, half of them are hair color services.
The Top 10 Fastest Salon Services, 2016
SOURCE: Kline PRO
It comes as no surprise that the hair coloring category outpaced all others with a 7.5% increase in sales. 2016 saw wildly creative expressions of style through the use of color. Interestingly, blonde shades still have the highest share of the category at 42%, but are not the fastest growing. That honor belongs to silver shades. Sales increased 58% over 2015, followed by bright shades (+ 26%) and black shades (+17%) rounding out the top three fastest growing shades.
The Top Three Fastest Growing Color Shades
+58 Silver Shades Growth |
+26 Bright Shades Growth |
+17 Black Shades Growth |
SOURCE: Kline PRO
The world of color extended its influence into other categories as well. Kline PRO Sell In data shows that, in both shampoos and conditioners, color care products were key drivers in category growth. The shampoos category overall grew 6% this past year. Color care shampoos make up nearly one-fourth of the entire category and experienced an increase of 16% over last year. The top three color care shampoos purchased by salons are Matrix Biolage Colorlast, Redken Color Extend Magnetics, and Redken Color Extend. Color Lover Dynamic Blonde Shampoo from Framesi showed the highest growth this year.
The Top Three Color Care Shampoos Purchased by Salons
Growth in the conditioners category was fueled by products related to color, but in two different ways: treatments that prepare the hair for color transitions and products to help extend the life of the color.
Conditioning treatment products were up 13%. The top three treatments are Olaplex Hair Perfector No. 3, Pureology Color Fanatic Hair Treatment Spray, and Redken’s One United Multi-Benefit Treatment. A few items to note, that while not in the top three, Pureology’s Colourists’ Solution Anti-Drying Pretreatment, Olaplex Bond Perfector 2, Malibu C CPR Color Pigment Remover, and Matrix Total Results Miracle Creator Multi-Tasking Treatment still had a significant impact on the category due to high growth in the treatment segment.
The Top Three Salon Treatments
Color care conditioners, as a whole, make up 16% of the category and increased sales to salons by 8% over last year. Conditioners with high growth over the last year that are focused on color care include Matrix Color Obsessed Conditioner, Vibrant Sexy Hair Sulfate-Free Color Lock Conditioner, and L’Oréal Professionnel Mythic Oil Color Glow.
The impact that hair color had on the professional salon industry this past year is undeniable. Early indications are that this trend will carry into 2017. To keep up with the latest trends in professional salon products and services, contact us to learn about Kline PRO, a comprehensive interactive database that enables users to access the latest sales performance data on the professional hair care industry like never before. Based on transactional data, it yields category, brand, and product-level sales and service data on a quarterly basis.