Pros
- Amazing co-workers. I was fortunate enough to be employed at a store full of hard-working, passionate women, both on the retail end and the salon end. However, the environment we had was certainly not fostered by the corporate office, and often times there was an “us against the bigwigs” mentality in the store. - Continuing education. Even coming from a smaller city, the Ulta Salon truly did make education a priority. In my time with the company I attended several classes, became certified in new services, and had the opportunity to interact with other Ulta Salon professionals outside of my own store. It's a great introduction to professional networking. - Highly talented stylists. Some of the best hair dressers I’ve ever seen were the ones I worked alongside with at Ulta. Truly. - Dermalogica. - Opportunity to interact with a wide range of prestige makeup, skin care, and hair care brands. Ulta is quite unique in that they carry a plethora of high-end brands that are accessible for salon professionals. This is particularly wonderful for makeup applications, as not all brands are meant for everyone. I discovered some of my favorite lines to work with, and was able to compare quality and usability of products and lines in a way that wouldn't have been available to me had I been working in a small salon. - Great salon hours. It’s pretty rare for salons to be open seven days a week, and open until 9 on six of those days. While this can make for a long work day, or a frustrating work schedule if you don’t enjoy working nights, the extended hours did give opportunity for building business. This could be a pro or con, depending on what your looking for in an employer. - Opportunity for additional commission from professional product sales (with estheticians, it’s Dermalogica). While this is certainly not unique to Ulta, it was still appreciated. As an esthetician, you should be sending your clients home with good skin care products to maintain their skin health, so it’s a nice little bonus for doing something that you’re already be doing. - Free salon services. That was spectacular. Especially with the level of talent you were receiving.
Cons
- Constant steep service discounts specific to esthetic treatments that you are forced to participate in. Not bad for fresh-out-of-school estheticians trying to learn their trade and build business, but constantly running 30-50% any services conditions clients to only get treatments "on sale" and limits your ability to earn a livable wage. Continual service discounts says to clients “this is how much this service is really worth”. This could easily be avoided if specials and discounts were offered more sparingly, or with smarter specials and bundles. - Misrepresentation of services. I spent half of my day tactfully trying to explain that the Ulta Salon ads (mailers and in-store) were lying about not only the results from the treatments, but were misleading about the actual treatment itself. False advertising is hard to explain away, and having to do so in a way that doesn’t make the company seem like it's trying to swindle the clients is even harder. - No receptionist. It’s poor business to ask clients and salon professionals in a busy environment to have to constantly walk away from a service (sometimes up to a dozen times with one client). That’s not something that I would appreciate to have happen to me, and would not be a returning client to any establishment that treated the time I was paying for in such a fashion. Once or twice? Sure, it happens. Six, seven, eight, twelve times? That’s a good way to not appreciate someone’s patronage. - No policy for no-call-no-show, or late appointments, regardless of frequency. - Stifling service menu with few advanced treatments and no electrical modalities to enhance treatments. Most facial services were very basic, and the equipment that was available was in poor working condition. Most of the appliances in the treatment room were in some way broken, and I could not get approval to get them replaced. - Too small a budget to replenish used materials, and priority went to hair services. Very often I would be out of specific products and would have to substitute for less appropriate product. In essence, I was forced to give my clients a lesser treatment than what they deserved and their skin needed because I didn't have the proper resources on hand to do my work in the most effective way. Having a split budget between the stylists and estheticians could easily buffer this issue. - Ordered supplies regularly not showing up, and salon budget not being credited accordingly. Unacceptable. - Employees on both the retail and salon sides often went overworked and under appreciated. - Esthetician services frequently got lost in translation. Most Ultas only have 1-2 estheticians on staff, 1-2 treatment rooms (if any, as some locations have "pods", a partially enclosed space with a bed in it that is open for public view), and no training or reference material for other employees trying to answer questions about services when the esthetician is unavailable (which is more often than not when you have a strong client base). This situation could also easily be resolved with having a proper receptionist, or by making continuing education opportunities available to all employees. Or both. - Salon employees were often expected to work as sales associates when the retail payroll had to be cut. This not only cut into salon payroll, but also didn’t allow for the salon to be properly attended to in between client services. The bigger issue at hand with this, is that salon employees are only paid commission for the services that they perform, so requiring salon professionals to be on the sales floor means free labor for Ulta. - Poor communication and too few resources for both employees and customers. Misleading advertising paired with too small a staff in too large a store harbored an environment for dissatisfaction on all ends. - Shared washer and dryer for hair stylists and treatment room. Those hair clippings don’t just magically disappear in the wash, they end up all over the bright-white bed dressings even when loads are separated.