Case Studies

Coastline Education

The Brief

The beauty industry is constantly changing in terms of techniques, products, trends, and customer demands. The best salon owners pursue continuing education to remain up-to-date, relevant, and profitable. Coastline Education provides salon owners a robust curriculum built around chemistry, design and business to help create profitable salons. Instructors would travel to salons across the country performing in-person education and selling products related to the in-person instruction. Competitors provide education to stylists and salon owners, but only within one brand. For example, if a salon uses L'Oreal products, they are only allowed to receive L’Oreal education. Coastline's biggest differentiator from the competition is that they provide brand-free education. The company’s president, Lisa Kelley, is arguably the single most well-rounded salon educator in the country. With 33 years of experience as a hairstylist, chemical formulation expert, and author of over 10 professional color manuals, her ability to help salon owners view their business from all essential angles is second to none. She has written the professional-use instructions on the bottles many of you hold in your hands every day, and she is a leading expert witness in court for hair color lawsuits throughout the country, called on by both sides to provide testimony regarding the science and painful chemical repercussions of improper hair color use, lack of proper clarification, and product failure. As the former Director of Education for a large distributor in the Northeast, and National Director of Education for a privately owned manufacturer of hair color products, she worked in the labs with chemists from the biggest companies in the world, learning how they develop, market, and upsell overpriced products through sales presentations, passed off as “product education” to their biggest customer - the salon owner.