Phenix Brings Wonderful Euro ‘Boot Camp’ and 3DeLuXe Demos to U.S. Salons

Robert Edick, Vice President of Education for Phenix Salon Suites, training in Denmark.

The week is referred to affectionately as “boot camp,” said Robert Edick, Vice President of Education for Phenix Salon Suites.

Edick recently attended the seminar with members of his Phenix Education Team in Denmark, assigned a frenetic schedule so packed and fast-paced that it sounds like an impossible mosh pit of salon activity, complete with all the razor-sharp shears snapping and flashing. But the outcome of this creative think tank is a DVD, 185-page procedure book translated into five languages and a collection of new hair designs and cuts that Edick and his team are teaching FREE to Phenix Salon professionals in coming months throughout the country. These field classes are offered in the salons where art must apply itself to the real world appetite for style and the undeniable forces of business. Integral to these classes is training in the 3DeLuXe Professional Colour Line made in Milan, a product of unparalleled quality, says Edick.

This boot camp is Hair Construction, a cutting edge hair school of the highest regard in Europe, led by founder and artistic director Palle Freese.  Edick of Colorado Springs has been attending these seminars in different cities of Europe for several years. At the recent seminar in Copenhagen, … he was there specifically for Phenix with fellow Phenix educators Anna Cruise of Colorado Springs and Tanya Owens of Westminster, CO. A key mandate of Hair Construction and Phenix, said Edick, is that designs and training must be applicable to the real-world where salon professionals sell their talents and skills. This is where the rubber of genius and artistry meets the road of the real-world salon. Rules of the jungle apply – the styles and techniques must sell.

The Phenix Education Team was among two dozen salon professionals who converged for the bi-annual weeklong crash course. They left with a treasure trove of technical and creative information to disperse among Phenix professionals throughout the United States. This January seminar is always held in Denmark, the most fashionable nation for hair on the planet, Edick believes. The June session migrates and this year will be held in Barcelona. Phenix will be there, too, and return with a new curriculum of hair designs to once-again share with Phenix colleagues across the country.

The hair stylists are broken down into 12 teams of two each at boot camp. Early in the week, they check their phones. There she is, the model to which they must apply their inspiration. The first morning is brainstorming, said Edick. Stylists pull up pictures, films and other inspiration, on the internet mostly, that have caught their eyes. They break for lunch and return to mannequins and begin plotting a strategy and specifics – how must their inspiration fit the structure of the models face? How can they manage the color?

Day Two – the model arrives. Flesh and blood. The stylists must bring the ephemeral imagery in their brains to the tangible hair of this model – shape, texture and color must all materialize.

Each hairstyle by each team is filmed for the DVD, photographed and recorded for the book. Voila! All is done by the third day. The models are taken to photo shoot. “Then we have to learn each other’s haircuts,” said Edick.

“We really leave our egos at the door,” Edick said. “It’s not about me, not about Robert. It’s about coming up with an image that’s going to inspire hairdressers, but not some ridiculously complicated and fancy thing that no one can do” or sell, he said. These must be designs that will make money. These are cuts, he said, designed to increase the value of the hairstylist. “Everyone is working behind the chair. We try to really teach top quality fundamental haircuts that have a lot of value.”

Now, with that mission in mind, the DVDs, the books and mannequins, Edick and his crew are travelling around the country to Phenix Salon Suites, presenting the hands-on classes including training in the 3DeLuxe Professional Colour Line. “The shine and depth of color is natural but enhanced with vibrancy ,” he said. “We’ll show them how to apply 3DeLuxe so that they can do it on their own cuts. They use our color, see how it applies, see how it shines. You do it, you experience it,” all in their own Phenix salons, behind their own chairs.

In fact, Edick said, professionals can take clients while the in-salon seminar is underway. “We get right in their shops with them, and I am six inches from them,” so different from the typical, expensive classes where stylists fill a meeting room at a hotel and watch the instructor complete a handful of haircuts from a distance.

“This is a jam session,” said Edick. These are talented, successful professionals in the Phenix salons and he learns, too. “That’s what we want it to be like … We start playing music with them and together we make a cool song.”

See the calendar and watch for the flyers for seminar dates in your salons.