17. Antony Whitaker: 10 Trends Shaping the Future of Salons

Hey, everybody, and welcome to The Connector, Intercoiffure's weekly podcast connecting salon owners and professionals with the leaders, artists, and innovators shaping the future of the professional salon industry. I'm your host, Gordon Miller, General Manager of Intercoiffure America Canada, the industry's only not-for-profit association representing employment-based salons across the U.S. and Canada. To learn more, visit interclefure.com and be sure while you're there to sign up for our free weekly newsletter. Keeps you up to date on everything that we are doing, as well as a lot of other information. Good stuff. Check it out. Also of importance, ICA's annual and iconic New York City-based Fall Atelier is coming up fast. It will be held October 3rd through 5th. Stay tuned for updates at innercorefuhrer.com

or

by way of our newsletter. All right, on to today's guest. Antony Whitaker is the host of the very popular Grow My Salon business podcast. Actually, one of my probably top five podcasts in the entire industry to listen to. I cannot recommend it enough. He is also, in my opinion, one of the best salon business educators, presenters, and coaches anywhere in the world. Anthony joins us today from London, and he is making his second appearance on The Connector. I am excited to speak with him about his perspective on the current state of the industry, but most importantly, where he believes it may be headed next. Please join me in welcoming my friend, Anthony Whitaker.

Gordon, it's always a pleasure. Um, I've been loving what you've been doing with the integral fuel podcast. So, uh, it's, uh, it's a great honor to be invited back for a second one.

Well, and you're back in large measure because people want you back. I got so much great feedback from the first episode that we did together. You were episode number two. We'll put a link to that. But great, great insights. And one of the categories that we are living in with this podcast are great business insights. And you're one of the best resources, I believe, on the planet today for the industry. So again, thank you for being here.

No, it's great to have this opportunity to share with you and the integral viewer audience in North America.

in North America, America, and Canada. We're here to talk about a recent podcast you did that really excited me because it was really kind of about, you know, the forces economically and otherwise that are shaping the future of the industry. And you and I love to talk about this topic. And I love the insights that you have because you look at it from a global perspective. And there's a lot of commonalities and a lot of things that maybe aren't so common, but they always seem to ripple out and somehow touch every part of the global salon economy. Big picture, what's the episode about?

It's about the changes that are happening in the industry. I mean, everyone's running around talking about the industry's changing, the industry's changing. And I'm a similar age to you. We started in the same year, 1978, in the hairdressing industry. And it was a very different industry then to what it is now. I mean, I can remember... Well, that was an era where perming was a big