Hairdressers Journal – March 2026

Summary

British Hairdresser of the Year Efi Davies takes the guest editor chair for Hairdressers Journal International's March 2026 issue, focusing on apprenticeship growth and industry talent pipelines. Inside, Wella Business Network Live and Phorest Salon Owners Summit key insights, L'Oreal Colour Trophy 2026 regional semi-finals, and business strategy for year-round colour column booking.

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Hairdressers Journal's March 2026 issue is guest-edited by Efi Davies, reigning British Hairdresser of the Year, who brings an apprenticeship-development focus to the editorial lineup. The cover and opening features explore how the industry can attract, train and retain young talent beyond traditional salon models. Wella Business Network Live and the Phorest Salon Owners Summit are both covered with key speaker insights and actionable takeaways for salon owners. L'Oreal Colour Trophy 2026 regional semi-final results are reported, tracking which colourists are advancing to the national finals. Business strategy features cover year-round colour column booking through consultation upselling, retail attachment rates and pre-booking systems. The issue balances technical education with commercial strategy, positioning itself as a practical tool for salon owners navigating the spring season.

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Content Guide

▸ Cover / Guest Editor

Efi Davies On Building Talent Pipelines
The British Hairdresser of the Year, serving as guest editor, shares her philosophy on apprenticeship development. Davies argues that the industry's talent shortage is not a recruitment problem but a retention problem—salons invest in training but fail to create career pathways. Actionable framework: Davies recommends a four-stage apprenticeship structure (observe, assist, execute under supervision, execute independently) with clear progression timelines at each stage.

▸ Industry Events

Wella Business Network Live: Key Takeaways
Coverage from the Wella Business Network Live event, featuring speaker presentations on pricing strategy, team motivation and client retention. The coverage distills each session into actionable bullet points. Key number: salons that raised prices by 15% in Q1 reported 8% client attrition—lower than most owners predict.

Phorest Salon Owners Summit: Strategic Insights
Reporting from the Phorest Salon Owners Summit, covering sessions on multi-location management, employee equity structures and technology adoption. Strategic insight: salons with 3+ locations benefit from a centralised booking system but decentralised creative direction—standardised operations, individualised artistry.

L'Oreal Colour Trophy 2026 Regional Semi-Finals
Results and coverage from the L'Oreal Colour Trophy 2026 regional semi-final rounds, profiling advancing colourists and their winning work. Competition insight: judges consistently prioritise technical execution over creative concept—perfectly executed classic work scores higher than ambitious but flawed innovation.

▸ Business Strategy

Year-Round Colour Column Booking
A business feature on strategies to maintain colour service revenue across seasonal dips. Techniques include pre-booking at the backwash, retail attachment programmes and seasonal colour-upgrade promotions. Revenue rule: every colour client who does not pre-book their next appointment represents a 40% chance of never returning.

Consultation Upselling: The 5-Minute Add-On
Training colourists to identify add-on services during consultation without feeling salesy. The feature provides script frameworks for suggesting gloss treatments, bond builders and root-touch-up packages. Core principle: an add-on is not a sale if it solves a problem the client did not know they had.

Retail Attachment Rates: Turning Product Into Profit
Strategies for increasing retail product sales per client visit, from display placement to recommendation timing. Data point: salons that display retail at the backwash station achieve 3x higher attachment rates than those that only display at the reception desk.

▸ Technical Education

Spring 2026 Colour Techniques
Technical step-by-step guides for spring colour trends: lived-in blondes, soft grey-blending, and rich brunette tones with dimension. Each technique includes formulation ratios, processing times and sectioning patterns. Technical note: grey-blending requires lower volume developer than full coverage—20-volume for blending, 30-volume for full.

▸ Inspiration

Editorial Salon Collections
Finished work from leading salons, presented as client inspiration boards. The spreads are designed to be torn out and used during client consultations. Consultation hack: laminate the tear-out pages and keep them in a consultation binder—clients respond better to printed references than phone screens.

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Editor's Take

Efi Davies' guest-edited March issue is one of the strongest Hairdressers Journal editions this year, precisely because it has a clear editorial thesis: the industry's talent problem is a retention problem, not a recruitment problem. Davies brings credibility that a staff editor cannot manufacture, and her apprenticeship framework is specific enough to implement on Monday morning. The event coverage (Wella Business Network Live, Phorest Summit) is efficiently distilled—readers who could not attend get the value without the travel cost. Weaknesses: the technical colour section is thinner than usual for a spring issue; there is no step-by-step blonde transformation or grey-coverage deep dive. The L'Oreal Colour Trophy results are reported but not analysed—winning looks are shown without explaining why they won. For salon owners focused on team development and business systems, this issue delivers disproportionate value.

Strengths
• Efi Davies' guest editor thesis on talent retention is specific and actionable
• Event coverage distils key insights for non-attendees
• 15% price-rise data point is a useful benchmarking reference

Weaknesses
• Technical colour section is thinner than expected for a spring issue
• L'Oreal Colour Trophy coverage lacks judging analysis

Verdict: Recommended — The strongest HJ issue of the quarter; buy it for the retention framework, supplement with a technical-focused issue for colour education.