Monday, October 23, 2006 A hair academy By Jenara Regis Newman
CHANCES are your favorite hairdresser learned his/her trade on the job, the better ones have probably been through an occasional workshop or seminar. To provide that training to upgrade the industry and industry workers, Elizabeth Gan Go, who bought L’Oreal to Cebu and the Visayas – Mindanao region some 15 years ago, has come up with a hair academy, the L’Oreal Gan Go Technical Center in Banilad.
In Cebu, to start the center was Anna Andres, L’Oreal technico-commercial manager in charge of the education of hairdressers of L’ Oreal Professional which carries the brand’s hair color, perming, rebonding, treatment and retail products (shampoos and conditioners available only in salons).
The center, she said, was opened to current users or salon customers of the company, of which there are 83 in Cebu and a total of 298 in the Vis-Min area. The center upgrades their skills so they can continue to advance in different hair services. When they attend a session at the center, they are given a “passport” which shows the classes they have attended. After they have passed all the seminars or workshops in the passport, they are considered L’Oreal specialists and they can present their passport to any salon in the world where they may wish to apply to show their proficiency.
The center, says Andres, will also serve as a venue to launch new products and the color collection of L’Oreal. At its launching, Andres bought with her Borge Aloba (whose father is from Cebu), hair colorist, and Jasmine Lisbona of Hairworks in Greenbelt Makati, guest artist/hair cutter. The two have given several workshops to the different salon workers in the city, with Borge showing how to use L’Oreal colors and the L’Oreal Club Elite, a pool of selected hair stylists associated with L’Oreal Professionnel.
They are sent abroad for annual training so customers are guaranteed to get the best results when they visit their salons. The only Cebuano member of this elite club is Francis Lee of Bridges Salon in JY Square.
Go says the center fills a need for professionalizing, upgrading the industry. She adds that there’s only one place in the Philippines where you can get a salon management course, and that’s in UP, Diliman. With the center, there is finally a place for learning hair handling skills in this premier city of the South.
