Toronto hair salons are bracing for another potential lockdown
As the COVID-19 numbers rise across the city, all of Toronto is preparing for another potential lockdown annoucement on Friday — and that includes hair salons.
Earlier this week, Premier Doug Ford strongly hinted that another lockdown might be put in place on Friday, stating that the province is seeing extremely concerning numbers in Peel, Toronto, and York Region.
At daily briefing, Doug Ford describes #COVID19 situation in Toronto, York & Peel as "extremely, extremely serious" and warns of possible lockdown there. The Ontario premier says he expects new measures "to be discussed at cabinet & announced in the coming days." #cdnpoli #onpoli pic.twitter.com/CTGyRkvKFa
— CPAC (@CPAC_TV) November 18, 2020
As a result, hair salons in Toronto are bracing themselves and preparing to potentially close up shop yet again. This includes BANG Salon on Danforth Avenue.
"Since this won't be our first rodeo, we had a system set up before where we were offering colour kits to existing clients, root touch-up kits, and we're offering products as well," manager Madelyn Amson told blogTO, adding that they will be offering the kits and full range of what they sell in the salon to clients again.
"So we basically would have a system where we take orders online, package them all together, and deliver them to anywhere in the GTA."
Amson also said that some clients have been trying to move their appointments up to an earlier date in anticipation of the lockdown.
"It's a little bit all over the map," she said.
"The importance now more than ever is that small businesses are being hit really hard and to continue to support small business, local business so that when it comes time to reopen we can continue to serve our awesome clients."
At Untitled by Flaunt on Queen Street East, owner Ivan Gibski is working on a few different promotions he can offer to clients.
"The other fear that we have is January is typically slow for us, so we're trying to do a three-step promotion where people are coming in now and if they buy a retail product, they get a discount in January," Gibski said to blogTO, adding that once Toronto went in to the red zone, business was signficantly down already.
In addition, Gibski said that he is working on a Black Friday sale.
"We're trying to pour a lot of focus into our online business because that's how we survived last time. Online is enough to keep the lights on, not enough to pay the bills fully, but it does help."
Besides this, Gibski is trying to book in as many appointments as possible, while taking the proper precautions and keeping up with safety standards.
Similarly, Rachel Dabah, a self-employed hair stylst who works out of Oggi Salon in Yorkville among others, is offering clients who had an appointment booked for the holidays the opportunity to come in sooner.
"This is the time of year where people hold back a little bit because they're waiting to come for the holidays. They want their holiday hair, their holiday roots for their photos, for their holiday parties," Dabah told blogTO.
"Although this year there might not be as many holiday get-togethers, there will still be a lot of holiday Zoom parties and people are still going to want to look good in Zoom and in pictures. So basically everyone who I had pre-booked for the holiday season, if they'd like to come earlier just in case we close down, then that would be a good idea."
Also in preparation for the lockdown, Dabah is helping clients by shifting them to a low-maintence colour look so that they don't have to worry about their hair colour as often. This is something she was doing earlier in the year as well in anticipation of a second COVID-19 wave.
"It will help them go a few more weeks without having to worry about extremely grey roots or their hair turning brass-y."
Reposted by Dabah, originally posted by @lovesinthehaircom.
As long as you follow safety procedures, now might be the time to get that hair appointment in.
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