L'Oréal Together With Salon Industry Communities & Entrepreneurs Apply Strict Security And Safety Standards During Pandemic

Jakarta, 18 May 2020 – Two months after the call for large-scale social restrictions (PSBB) due to the spread of COVID-19, the industry sector began to feel its impact, especially for hairdressing and beauty industries. As a global partner for hairdressers for over a decade, L’Oréal together with Salon Industry Communities and Entrepreneurs (KIPS) in Indonesia seek to address this pandemic by increasing security & safety measures as well as training to equip the industry with tips for dealing with 'the new normal'. “As an essential hygiene service provider, salons are one of the creative industries that continue to prioritize cleanliness and high sanitation standards. The need for standard cleanliness operational guidelines has been planned so that the industry can survive and return to normal activities as soon as PSBB is removed” explained Rudy Hadisuwarno as KIPS representatives.

To ensure that the virus does not spread across the salon area, L'Oréal proposed preventive security and safety measures that has been implemented by the industry since the beginning of the pandemic, which includes the following:

1. Practice sanitation continuously and constantly such as washing hands and using or providing hand sanitizers; clean and sterilize work equipment and supplies;
2. Mandatory use of masks and gloves for all staff and customers;
3. Body temperature checks for all employees and customers before entering the salon area and prohibiting sick employees or customers to come to the salon;
4. Implement physical distancing practices inside the salon, by reducing the number of service chairs so as to ensure a minimum distance of 2 meters between each seats, giving border line in cashier queue, limiting the number of people in the salon and the type of services that can be done;
5. Limiting customers using "by appointment only" system and declining services to customers without reservations;
6. Limiting the type of services provided for customers to haircuts, hair care and retail product sales using delivery system;
7. Limiting salon operating hours, from 10:00 to 16:00 WIB;
8. Implementing a non-cash payment system to customers.

As self isolation is encouraged to ensure people staying at home except for urgent conditions, this creates new routines within the society which is limited by space and mobility. A number of public figures and people has taken initiatives to cut or dye their hair on their own. Within these group, more than a few complained regarding the difficulty of doing it without the help of hairdressers, and were not satisfied with the results. “This phenomenon shows the importance of hairdressers’ role in our daily lives. Considering the large amount of time for studying and training to acquire the various knowledge and skills required to become a haridresser, easy is not the word to describe this profession. Hairdresser's experience and hours of handling various customer hair make this profession even more irreplaceable” added Michael Justisoesetya, PPD General Manager of L'Oréal Indonesia.

As an illustration, the hairdressing and salon industries in Indonesia is a market with an estimated value reaching up to 13 trillion rupiah. There are approximately 101 thousand salons and 5 thousand barbershops in Indonesia at the moment, with an estimated creative workforce of more than 500 thousand people. DKI Jakarta is the largest concentration of salon business which contributes to 55% of the total market and utilizes more than 300 thousands of workforce. In addition, the involvement of Indonesian labor for salon industries coming from vocational beauty majors in 2019 has reached for up to 50% or equivalent to approximately 3500 graduates per year.

L'Oréal's commitment towards education, inspiration, and innovation, encourages the company to always support the industry to be creative in all kinds of conditions, furthermore to encourage business partners such as salon entrepreneurs and hairstylist to overcome challenges in doing business and work, while prioritizing employees’ health and safety, and at the same time pay attention to the welfare of the industry and consumers. Therefore, a number of solidarity actions have been channeled by L'Oréal Indonesia's Professional Product (PPD) division, such as providing payment relief, donating a large amount of hand sanitizers to salon partners, as well as providing various training so that the business activities of the salon partners can continue adapting "the new normal" scheme.

“We strive to maximize online training materials provided by L’Oréal Academy for the three PPD brands (L’Oréal Professionnel, Matrix and Kerastase) including social commerce training and temporary “home service” facilitation. The training not only teaches technical skills, but also business skills so that salon activities can still run. In collaboration with the Industry Communities and Salon Entrepreneurs, we have also designed some bounce back strategies, especially in terms of ensuring strict safety measures with the aim that after this PSBB period, the Government can consider salon business activities to continue its operations, to such an extent that both salon entrepreneurs and workers will be able to bounce back straight away” closed Michael.