Thursday, June 13, 2019

Theft of products: Asia Fadeeva, Skolgatan 4 D Slottsbron, Värmland, 66440


On 30th March 2018, we received an online order for a large quantity of cosmetic glitters. from Asia Fadeeva who claimed to own a beauty salon in Skolsgatan.

Because there is a high degree of protection for sellers in Sweden, as each individual has a unique ID card, an address that can be confirmed and the option of using the government debt collection agency called Kronofogdemyndigheten, we agreed to supply the products with later payment by bank transfer. But only after receiving this photo of her ID card.

No payment was received and subsequent requests ignored. The case was reported to Kronofogdemyndigheten and after investigation and attempts to recover the funds, we were informed this was not possible.

If anyone has information of her current address, a reward is available. Contact: ikoniqnails@gmail.com

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Is salon insurance any guarantee of product safety or legality


Over time, I have noticed a number of NT in the UK commenting that BrandX is legal or safe because they were able to purchase salon insurance. This rather intrigued me, so this post is about some quick research that I did. 

I called the broker that supplies most nail salon insurance in the UK, to find out how our products could be accepted for insurance purposes. It appears from the information that I was given (and this assumes the person who gave this information was accurate); that there is no specific product registration or confirmation, and that they rely on the NT stating that they are qualified and using pro products. However, in the event of a claim, they have clauses in the insurance that can be used to avoid payment in the event that the information supplied was not accurate - by deliberate intention or accident.

In fact, it is difficult for any insurance company to do otherwise. Any company can create a SDS (was MSDS), and any company can register on the EU CPNP database and either submit fake documents, not actually register products or not register all products - i's very unlikely that anyone will check what is registered against the products on the webshop. Not all registrations or documents are checked. In the Uk, only Trading Standards and medical staff can look into the CPNP database and according to one TS office I spoke to some months ago, their budget has been slashed by 50% and they didn't have anyone there who knew about the EU cosmetic laws or CPNP. 

So being able to buy an insurance is no guarantee that the product is legal or safe. If a client sues, depending on the situation, the insurance company will probably allocate an investigator. It will then be up to the salon owner to prove "due diligence" - that they took adequate steps to ensure the product was legal and safe, that they are sufficiently educated and used the manufacturers recommended application technique together with their recommended UV lamp.

If for example, there are customer reviews on Amazon, blogs or Facebook claiming allergic reactions due to a specific brand, this would not be very helpful to the defence. Or if the importer/distributors company address was an apartment or house which contained more flammable products than permitted, or they had no experienced trained NT working in the company, or if the information on the product label did not follow the EU cosmetic laws, or if the documents submitted to CPNP were direct from a factory in China and these didn't include a toxicity assessment from a EU laboratory, or if they had never hired a lawyer, etc. It is also possible that what ingredients are stated on the label and SDS, are not the same as in the bottle (two inspections in Sweden and Germany in 2012, found a large number of discrepancies).

Although it is easy and relatively cheap to create a brand, buy products ready filled from factories with negligible minimum order value, put up a free website and print labels at home, this is the tip of the iceberg. Creating a brand where the company and products are legal, requires a much higher level of investment and business competence - for example, outside of the scope of someone who uses a free website builder, rather than paying £10,000 to £20,000 for a professional webshop. 

Understanding the EU cosmetic regulations takes someone who is used to dealing with complex documents or hiring a lawyer. Ensuring that the documents supplied by the factory, especially if located in China, means you need to check with the testing company who supplied those documents originally and ensure that they are genuine. If you are the first European importer or rebranding the product under a new name, a toxicity report will be needed from an EU laboratory and a Product Information File the contains the product formula and method of manufacture. Toxicity reports are expensive. Then to submit all this information, together with copies of all product labels on the CPNP database, requires someone with the ability and time to manage this process or significant financial resources to pay consultants to do this. 

So what to do
As you see this is a can of worms. So my first advice is to always ask the importer/distributor for a signed letter confirming that the products are registered with the EU Cosmetic Products Notification Portal and meet all requirements of the EC Directive 1223/2009. Then the NT should have adequate due diligence, assuming they applied the product correctly and used the recommended UV lamp...

My next advice is to ignore the flashy website and do some research on the company. Use Companies House to find out how long they have been trading and download their last financial accounts (if a Ltd company). Use Google Street View to see if they work out of a professional office or warehouse, or private house. Check their pedigree and experience - who are they, what is their history, are they qualified NT with years of experience and any national reputation? Do they continue to work in a salon part time, do they have a warehouse? What training do they offer if any at all? 

The experience together with the range and depth of the education, particularly if they offer classes in advanced skills, are the most important credentials. It's very time consuming and requires a lot of education to be able to create good education program complete with 100+ page foundation course manual. Plus, how can a company claim to offer good products, if their skills are not advanced enough to be able to judge the qualities of hundreds of different products available from all the factories?

Bob Giblett

Saturday, April 4, 2015

Nail Salon Air Filter System - Size Matters!



Nail Salon Air Filter System - Size Matters!

I've read a lot of discussions on FB and other forums about which air filter systems to buy for use in the nail salon. 

So I took this photo because I wanted to show that there is a big difference in the size of the actual filters inside different salon filter products.

The photo shows the filter parts of the Swedish filtering system we use in our salons and nail schools. This is the white cotton bag (Filter 1: large dust particles) and the big box (Filter 2: invisible dust particles and Filter 3: The active carbon filter removes chemicals from the air). I put a ruler and a carton of milk next to the big filter to give some scale. 

The small square silver filter is from one of the most popular filter systems sold in the US. This integrated square filter also contains all three different filter stages.

The total weight of this small filter is 20g (about 0.7oz). The weight of only the active carbon in the Swedish filter is 5kg (about 11.1LBS). 

We need to change the Swedish filters after 400 to 600 customers (depends if gel only, acrylic only or mixed services). If a different brand of filter only contains 500g (1LB) of carbon, then it would need to be replaced much more often. This also increases the risk of using full filters that no longer work. It may also increase the lifetime cost of the system when you calculate the cost of all those filters. 

The USA Nail Manufacturers Council (co-chaired by Doug Schoon) recommends that a filtering system contains minimum 2LB (1 kg) of carbon and that this should be at least 2 inches deep (5cm). The Swedish filter exceeds this by approx. 400%. 

Summary
So if you are looking for a nail salon air filter system to protect your health, it is the weight and depth of the active carbon filter that distinguishes if a product will work or not.

For more information about air filter design, see our earlier article here:
irynagiblett.blogspot.com/2012/08/is-you-salon-safe.html

Why using the correct UV lamp is important for safety and salon service reliability





The graph (supplied by Doug Schoon) shows the UV light output from a traditional UV lamp and a LED UV lamp. Notice the peaks in UV irradiance at different light wavelengths. 

UV irradiance is if you like, the amount of light energy (Watts) that falls on a 1cm x 1cm area. From this we can understand the amount to UV energy that falls onto a finger nail.

The amount of the irradiance is controlled by different factors: the type of UV light device used (different devices from different manufacturers output more or less UV energy), the distance from light device to finger nails, the quality of the lamp reflectors, etc. So depending on which UV lamp is being tested, these peaks will change in height. 

The position of these peaks on the wavelength axis can also change depending on the light device. In this example the traditional UV lamp seems to have a peak at 370 nanometers - but another UV lamp could have it's peak at 360nm or 365nm, etc. Same with the LED UV lamp. 

If you tested 10 different UV lamps the size of the peaks and the peak wavelength would all be different. This is a very important point. 

Now, if we take the UV lamp used for this graph that has a peak at 370nm, and we try to cure a gel that has a photo initiator which operates best at 370nm then both the gel and UV lamp are matched and you will obtain the fastest cure time. But if you use a gel that has a 360nm photo initiator this is going to get approx 80% less UV energy and that would increase the cure time by at least 4 times (it also depends on how much PI is in the gel). 

The problem is that the NT who uses the wrong gel for this UV lamp may not know that the gel is under cured. That's because gels appear hard when only cured at 50% of full cure. It's not possible for the average NT to know if a gel is fully cured without scientific equipment. 

Different gels use different photo initiators and may have more or less of this. There is no standard, just like there is no standard UV lamp design. 

This means that the gel chemist has to either:
a) design the gel to match a UV lamp that the company already has, or 
b) design a UV lamp to match their new gel. 

But the fact is that most manufacturers, even some famous brands, are not developing their own gels. They buy standard products from the catalog of one of the acrylic / gel factories - in other words they are private labellers and not real manufacturers. 

In most cases they are never told, and don't know to ask, what photointiator is used in the gel and what amount of UV energy is needed to correctly cure the gel (and the curing time). That makes it impossible for them to find a matching UV lamp. 

This begs the question of how a private labeller can know that their UV lamp will cure the factory gel, especially when they don't have a laboratory with the required test equipment and a chemist to make the tests. Perhaps some hire an outside laboratory to make the test, but I suspect that many of them stick a glob of gel on a tip, cure it for 2 minutes and see if it looks hard - which as you know now is no kind accurate test. 

So when a supplier says that their UV lamp will cure all gels, ask them how they know what the peak UV irradiance and the peak wavelength required by the photo initiator in your gel is. Without that information, how can they possibly say that their UV lamp will cure your gel?  


Saturday, December 13, 2014

New IKON.iQ Revolution Colour Gels / Gel Paints



New IKON.iQ Revolution Colour Gels / Gel Paints
Why buy two products when one will be enough? That was the thinking when we set out to create the ultimate colour gels. Before we create any new IKON.iQ product we research, research and research. What can we do better? What is missing? How can we improve the users experience? Our goal is to create products which exceed the capabilities of any product of the same type in the market today - we have absolutely no interest in creating "me-too" products.

We talked to our Educators - all expert Nail Technicians, many are competition champions - and we compiled a list of the common features of coloured gels and gel paints:

  • Many coloured gels and gel paints require two layers to get good colour depth
  • Nearly all have a dispersion layer that needs wiping
  • Many coloured gels are rather thick - good for full cover reliability. 
  • Gel paints have lower viscosity making them more suitable for fine detail nail art, but not can be compete on reliability with traditional colour gels
  • Curing times are typically 2 minutes for full cover and 60 seconds using gel paints - when creating a nail art design, that's too long a time to wait between adding new design elements or colours!
  • Few products cure in a LED-UV lamp

So our design goals were set:

  • Must be highly pigmented so that it covers the nail in one gel layer
  • Must not create a dispersion layer - let's save time and money by not wiping!
  • A viscosity that allows the gels to be used as gel paints - one product two uses!
  • 30 seconds cure time in a traditional 36W UV lamp and 15 seconds in a LED-UV lamp - saves up to 10 minutes per customer!  (the price of one gel colour is paid back with the first service!)
  • 3 seconds cure time in a LED-UV lamp when painting nail art - let that creativity flow!

All these design goals were achieved - hence the name IKON.iQ Revolution. These new colour gels are a real revolution - nothing else compares in the market today. This is the future!


All designs below were created only using the IKON.iQ Revolution colour gels.









Thursday, September 25, 2014

Nailympia competition - the biggest and best!


Judges: Tom Bachik, Vicki Peters, Iryna Giblett, David Fowler, Stefanie LoRe
and non-judge Bob Giblett


The 10th anniversary of the Nailympia Competition attracted competitors from 32 countries, taking 654 seats across 11 categories. That is a massive increase on 400+ competitors the previous year and makes Nailympia the biggest nail competition in Europe, and far larger than competitions in the USA. 

For information about Nailympia 2015, see here: http://www.nailympialondon.com


Monday, July 14, 2014

IKON.iQ Ultimate Acrylic System



IKON.iQ Ultimate Acrylic System 
Uses a totally new manufacturing technique that produces the smallest polymer granules. The advantage of this is that the monomer is absorbed more evenly and it produces a super creamy acrylic ball that that delivers superb sculpting control. There are four colours: Crystal Clear, Perfect Pink, Cover Pink*** (camouflage polymer) and Champion White (the white and clear can be mixed to create a more natural white if required). The Clear is like glass, the pinks are very natural looking and the White is the brightest white we have seen.

Key features:
  • Supplied in 22g jars (other sizes to follow in the future)
  • Easy to apply, super sculpting control, no bubbles, does not yellow
  • Polymerisation time is a little quicker than the KUDOS acrylics, but not too fast for students
  • Easy to file
  • Low odour monomer



Competition nails created with the IKON.iQ Ultimate acrylic system