Temporary Tints

If a great cut and smart hair-caring don't give you the boost your brown needs, coloring offers a noticeable change. Even if you choose a permanent color, tampering with hair's tone calls for using developers and tints that won't dry and dull it. In fact, coloring can actually fortify the texture of fine, fly-away strands.

Temporary color consists of large, nonbleaching pigment molecules that just coat the cuticle and don't penetrate to the cortex. The resulting tone will last four to six weeks and either match or deepen your existing shade. Which way you go depends on the color you're starting with and the tints you choose. The blue and violet pigments that characterize color washes will counterbalance hints of yellow and orange in brown, intensifying your natural hue to a deep mocha

To recapture radiance around the face, ashy depth can be complemented with warm gold, auburn or copper highlights at the crown or sides, says New York-based colorist Louis Licari. Ask your stylist for advice, but remember that the beauty of semi-permanent is just that-you can experiment. So whether your hair needs a swift clip to bring out the shine or more punch in the hues with a tint or a permanent color fix, be prepared to stand out. Brown is back and glorious.

Hair care: New products fight for shelf life

Launching a new hair care product is almost like jumping off a burning building into a safety net held by firemen. The risks are apparent, and so are the rewards.

In this category, manufacturers believe they have no choice but to keep a panoply of new products in front of a fickle public, because hair care feeds on newness. Besides, manufacturers don't need a big market share to make lots of money.

While this constant flow of new products opens up opportunities for drugstores, it presents problems to buyers because of the limitation of shelf space. A buyer has to constantly weed out products, even if they're selling, to make sure the newest ones are on hand for customers.

To a large extent, hair care manufacturers are selling "image' to the consumer, much as the cosmetics industry does. That image can appeal to the young, health-oriented consumer, in the form of a "natural' product, or to the treatment-oriented consumer, through a therapeutic item. But, in the end, the consumer will buy image only if she likes the product.

In the past two years, there's been a trend in hair care toward more natural products with a cosmetic orientation. The short life cycle of hair care products can add opportunities as well as problems. The pressure can result in the cannibalization of a manufacturer's own products in an effort to get new business.

Drugstore retailers are willing to put money and space behind this category because the number of consumers that use hair care products is staggering. How will retailers handle the proliferation liferation of products in this category? The established brands are going to lose some of their facings. If a brand has an oily, dry, and normal formulation, for example, and the oily product isn't selling well, then a retailer will drop that formula in order to make space for a new product.

Most manufacturers spend substantial time testing new products in selected markets before going national with them. Yet, despite sophisticated testing techniquest, product failures are common and costs are high--some industry sources set the tab for a new product launch at $ 50 million.

The main thrust today is taking market share away from the competition, with the emphasis on market research and segmentation rather than product research and development. The appeal is to the consumer's desire for an abundance of new products for special needs.

Among the hot, new hair care entries are the mousses--a styling or conditioning foam considered perfect for today's hair styles. Aimed at both men and women, these products command a sizable potential market.