Loxa Beauty, the e-commerce website and mobile app that specializes in selling salon products to consumers while offering salon professionals an online sales commission, has recently launched. Beauty Systems Group, the professional distribution division of Sally Beauty Holdings, acquired Loxa Beauty in 2013. MODERN SALON spoke with Danielle McDowell, Marketing Director and Loxa Beauty Co-Founder, to understand how Loxa Beauty will be working with the beauty professional.

 Why did you start Loxa Beauty?

“My career started with bringing new brands and products to market, specifically in startup technology marketing. Consumer acquisition and driving consumers to adopt a new product was really a specialty of mine. When I met Janelle (Janelle Shaffer, Managing Director of Loxa Beauty), she had a vision for an online resource for the salon and the stylist. Both our roots are in technology and in managing those teams that bring technology to market. We know how to drive consumers.

We discovered that there was a huge hole in the market in that there were online retailers selling all of this product that wasn’t going through legitimate distribution channels and was going around the salons and stylists. Our goal is to bring this revenue back to the industry. With Loxa Beauty, every purchase made is credited to a local salon or stylist. There is no investment or contract needed from the stylists or salons in order for them to get the commission.

 How are you keeping the stylist at the center of the shopping experience?

We’ve really put a lot of effort into ensuring salon owners have control of permissions and of their profile online for their salon and their brand. We’re making sure they can manage their presence on LoxaBeauty.

We make it very transparent to the general consumer to help them find the salon or stylist in the sign-up or ordering process so those salons and stylists are credited.

The consumer has confidence knowing that stylists are recommending looks in our editorial content. We insert the voice of the expert into every piece of content we produce. We are tagging stylists who are credited with certain styles or stylists who are giving us insight into how to achieve a look.

 How will it help salons and stylists prosper?

We’re incredibly committed to salons and to stylists. If you have a client who generally buys from you they do it because they believe in the stylist and they have a need that must be met. We’re not going to change that –they will continue to shop within their habits. We were not created to replace in-salon merchandising; we deliver a benefit in that we’re providing additional revenues that they did not see previously. Every sale on Loxa pays a commission. We’re going after those consumers who are currently purchasing online, capturing those sales by people who are searching and looking to purchase on line.

 How do you ensure that the person answering questions on the site is a licensed professional?

We are managing the questions that come through and vetting the questions with licensed pros that we work closely with. To create a profile, stylists in salons have to give their license number and within a couple of working days, we put that up against a local database and verify them. If we can’t verify it, we communicate this to them and we change their user profile to that of a general user, not a professional.

Stylists can create a full profile with photos and their reviews of products and their tips for haircare. We’re also communicating to salons and stylists on how to grow their business through the Loxa Beauty blog, The Layer. We want to deliver communication to our members on how to continue to sell in the salons. We want to be a resource for the beauty professional.

 www.loxabeauty.com