I honestly don't even know where to start. I will just warn you now this is a very long review, but if you want a good idea of what it’s like to work at an Amazing Lash Studio, it’s worth the read I pinky promise. I could list many reasons why I was disappointed with my lash stylist position that I intended on working as for 2 or more years when I first started.
The first warning sign should have been when I interviewed for the position. There were comments made about how they couldn't imagine doing lashes, because it would be so detail-oriented and tedious. They did not know anything about lashes or the beauty industry. I had already had classic lash training, but was attracted to the position anyways by the offering of paid training to learn volume lashing and since I didn't know a lot of people in the area, I would have a clientele come to me. I joined on before opening and was with this location for about a year.
The classic lashing technique taught in training was hard to pick up at first as the way they teach it makes the lashes very prone to clumping together if you are not careful. If I had never done lashes before, I would have never picked up on their technique, because they don't cover the basics of lashing, they just skipped right through to teaching their one eye at a time, poor isolation technique. I quickly realized that I would not be learning actual volume lash training as well. Many stylists who have never been exposed to other lash trainings or the lash industry do not realize how poor the training is here. When we would ask the trainer about volume, our questions were brushed it off and we were told to just place the pre-made volume fans every 3 lashes and to not put any more than 5 on each eye due to the weight of them. Now if you know anything about volume lashes, you know that this is not actual volume lashing at all. We were advised to tell clients that volume is "event volume" in other words, too heavy for everyday use, even though you get pushed to upgrade clients to volume as often as possible without educating them that this is not the volume they think they are getting. On top of this, their pre-made volume fans are made with classic lash diameters of .15 and .20 millimeters, which by lash industry standards can even be too heavy when you use those diameters for just classic lashes (which is also the only classic lash diameters offered at ALS as well as only 1 curl option so that appointments take less time) much less using 3 of them in fan form. They will say that the volume fans are engineered to weigh less but still have the bigger diameter, but there's no way that's true if you can only put up to 5 on one eye.
Continuing on, it didn't take me very long to realize that the ALS glue is the worst product I have ever had to use on a client. It is more than likely manufactured to only last 2 weeks or less so that clients will HAVE to come back for extra fills and/or touch-ups to keep their lashes looking good. Clients would come back in after 2 weeks with retention that looked like it had been a month or more since their last appointment, if they even had any lashes on at all. There was the occasional client whose retention would be decent, but the majority of clients would complain or not know any better. Especially if the client had any volume fans in, those would be gone within days not only because they are way too heavy and damaging to natural lashes, but because the glue was so terrible.
The poor retention then leads me into appointment times. They have expectations of full sets in an hour and a half and fills in an hour as a junior stylist and an hour and fifteen minutes for a full set and 45-50 minutes for a fill as a master stylist. They also offer 30 minute touch-up which are ridiculous, because by the time you tape, clean-up the existing extensions, prime and get started, you have all of about 5-10 minutes an eye if you are quick about it. They also will occasionally let clients book 30 minute touch-ups 2 or more weeks out when they actually need a full fill AND there were instances where they would purposely book clients in for a 30 minute touch-up when they knew they needed a full fill just because there wasn’t any more room on the schedule for a full fill that day, but they squeezed them in there anyways. All of which are very unrealistic expectations when you factor in the amount of lashes clients are coming back in with, taking time to actually do quality work, and when the client shows up. If the client is 10 or more minutes late, you are still expected to take them back, which can be fine SOMETIMES, but generally you are left with anywhere from 30-50 minutes for a full fill (sometimes even when they have ZERO lashes left on) and an hour or just over an hour for a full set. Completely unrealistic times and sets each stylist, especially new stylists, up for failure and guarantees that the rest of their schedule will run late for the remainder of the day. Even if you somehow do manage to get them to schedule you any kind of break, you end up working straight through the day. The quantity over quality mindset was unreal here and directly correlates back to the lack of industry knowledge and/or outdated knowledge. For being a company that claims to be "setting the bar in the lash industry" they are sure lacking the training and up-to-date knowledge of an industry that is constantly evolving and growing.
The next poor business practice was the pay structure. It had the potential to be a good set-up, but was poorly executed and if you didn’t know all the fine-print details, sucked. They advertise making $30,000+ a year, which was factored together by a hypothetical work day average consisting of commission rates for back-to-back appointments, unrealistic estimated tips, and retail sales. The understanding and explanation I got of the pay structure when hired was that it was hourly pay or the commission rates per day depending on whichever one is higher for the day. They actually group it all together for the 2 week pay period, so unless you are working back-to-back every single day without any kind of break you won't get commission pay for appointments. Don't get me wrong back-to-back appointments are great, as long as you get a break. I have to eat throughout the day or my eyes hurt and my hands will shake through appointments as well as the all-embarrassing stomach growling right next to the client's ears in the middle of an appointment. The studio I worked at was good in the fact that even if you were only getting hourly pay, they would still give you request, retail, and upgrade commissions. However, the retail commission is the saddest rate you will get anywhere you ever work. It was 10% split with the front desk associate processing the purchase, so you would get 5% commission on any product sales that you were required to force on every client no matter what even if they already had purchased said product. So say you sell an $18 lash brush (which really were pretty easy to sell) you would get a whole $0.90 cents out of it.
On the subject of product, it is also the worst. They sell a lash coating that will supposedly help to keep your lashes on for an extra week or so, but really it just gooped up lashes and didn't really do a dang thing. Most of the time, they would try to sell it to clients to help even keep the lashes on in general for the usual amount of time that they are supposed to be staying on for anyways. "Oh your lashes aren't staying on? Here pay an extra $40 for this product to get them to stay on longer!" Nope. Terrible products, terrible lashes. The tweezers provided were cheap, very easily bent, and would be dull and useless after about a month and a half of use. The face washes are good for washing off makeup and that’s about it. No active ingredients to be of any use to skin nor can you use them on the lashes. They do have a lash cleanser now, but before that we were supposed to tell clients to use hand foam soap on their eyes, which just burned. You basically get the idea here so I will move on.
Just a few more brief things, they micromanaged like there was no tomorrow. I won’t go into too much detail, because this is already a huge essay, but this detail is what ultimately led to me resigning from my position. I am very passionate about lashes, esthetics, and the beauty industry and their form of “leadership” and management of the studio made me absolutely hate coming to work every day, dislike doing lashes, and I went home after each shift so stressed and upset to the point of tears by the time I finally quit.
They ask someone in the studio to train the new hires and would throw said person in without any type of training on how to actually train girls and at some points said person wouldn’t even know they expected her to do it until she would go in and they would have given all her request clients to other stylists or moved them to different days. All while not having an instructor’s license either so she was being forced to train girls without the proper licensing or training to do so.
I could probably go on for quite a while about other practices of this business that were very disappointing, but these were the main ones that led to me leaving. Before they will even talk to you to train you, they make you sign a non-compete agreement that, among other things, states you can’t do lashes within 100 miles of any studio for a one year period after you quit or are fired. Not only did I quit because I hated it, but because I moved away and it was a 30-40 minute drive to work every day, yet I can’t do lashes even this far away, because I’m still considered too close. Even if I moved away across the country nowhere near the studio I worked at, I still couldn’t do lashes if there was an ALS anywhere within 100 miles of there. I can understand a reasonable non-compete, but now I am unable to even use skills I attained before working here or develop new, up-to-date skills or take new training courses without the threat of getting sued. Of course I signed the dumb thing, but at that time I had the expectation of this being a long-term job and did not foresee moving either. I had the biggest request clientele in the studio and this led to being repeatedly told and threatened that they would “send their attorneys after anyone if they even thought about contacting a former client.” Word for word quote. I was told this 3+ times during my last week of work there. It was a very hard decision to leave as I loved my coworkers and clients and I love doing lashes, but just not there. I could not handle the stress and miserable feelings. I ended up getting a desk job closer to home and was sadly 150% happier in the environment there than I ever was at ALS. A side note as well: the turnover rate for employees was/is incredibly high. This studio has not one of the original 15-16 employees that they started out with just over a year ago.
All in all, it had the potential to be a good job, but the pay was low, the management was not trained or knowledgeable of the industry, corporate knowledge was far behind the rest of the lash industry standards, products were terrible, etc. Really if you are wanting to do lashes, it is so much more worth it to pay to take a training from a good company, practice like crazy, and put in the effort to build up your clientele. It takes time, money, and patience, but in the long run will be so worth it. In hindsight, had I done that I could be completely established on my own by now yet here I am having to wait until my year is up and I can’t further my lash education or skills without the threat of a lawsuit with their unrealistic distances set in the non-compete agreement to which they have continued to repeatedly threaten other former employees as well. I am probably forgetting to add in lots of other things, but I think this will do. Steer clear and find yourself a reputable company to work for is the best advice I could give anyone now :)
