Hi Wildilocks fans!

Sadly with the Stage 4 Melbourne lockdown we are required to close for salon appointments, and are no longer offering in-salon services as of today. Wednesday 5th August. We hope to be back to appointments by mid-September and will follow government requirements for re-opening.

In the meantime, we are still making and shipping WeFu fabric face masks – we have been constantly improving the design and have been given great feedback – plus we are still shipping out other items ordered online too, and can offer contactless pickup from the salon by appointment as well.

Please stay safe everyone, and we will see you on the other side!

xx

Wildilocks

Sadly, we are continuing to see discouraging numbers in Melbourne for Covid19, so we have decided to pause salon appointments again until the the figures are looking better – despite being very confident Wildilocks won’t be a point of transmission due to our excellent safety protocols from day one, we don’t want to encourage any travel for any reason at this time.

We are encouraged that the DHHS is now recommending masks for any public interactions (which we recommended months ago) and if people en masse follow this advice, coming out of lockdown we will have less chance of going backwards!

If you need reusable fabric masks- we’re still supplying them, and we have some great new patterns including sugar skulls!

So for now, as much as you can – please stay home, stay safe, and we’ll see you with our next announcement once the numbers start to turn around.

Hi folks!

It’s been an exceptionally quiet month @ Wildilocks, as we have mostly just been sending out mail orders and making masks! But now the month is soon to be over…

We suspended appointments from 23rd March and have been monitoring the Covid19 situation very closely. Fortunately Victoria is doing very well in lowering numbers of new infections, and given we are still permitted to trade (a situation in the early weeks we were not confident would remain the case given nearly all countries that have locked down have not allowed hairdressers to trade), we are now planning to accept appointments again from May 1st as long as the risk remains extremely low and our clients take our required extra steps to reduce risk beyond the standards set by the Australian government. Our personal benchmark of health and safety practises are well beyond those legally required, and we believe minimise risk significantly and follow practises in countries that are managing covid19 most effectively.

To be accepted to book an appointment from May 1st you must:

• Confirm the number of people in your isolation “bubble”, describe how strictly you are self-isolating and what practises you are following to mitigate your risk
• Confirm you are working from home (generally we are not considering accepting appointments currently from people in essential services, though some exceptions may be made for lower risk professions on a case-by-case basis).
• Confirm you and any bubble buddies have been wearing a mask or face covering (eg bandana) in public for any visits to allowed businesses for at least last 7 days before your appointment. This does not include exercising outside as long as following required social distancing rules.
• Confirm neither yourself, nor any of your bubble buddies have been ill within the last 14 days
• Wear a mask for your entire appointment. We will provide a disposable one for you free of charge if you do not have one, but recommend buying one of our washable & reusable ones if not so you can have something more sustainable for future use: we strongly believe in the highest level of personal responsibility, and Germany has just announced they will require masks to be worn as they start to relax some restrictions) and you will be required to sanitise your hands on arrival and on leaving. We have just had stock arrive of the most amazing hand sanitiser which we will be using and also selling in purse size packs – scented with organic rose geranium essential oil, you’ll want to carry this with you everywhere just because of how lovely it smells.
• Be willing to have your temperature taken with a non-contact temperature scanner with the understanding that if you are running a fever on arrival we will not be able to proceed with your appointment.
• Confirm you will use your own bathroom before attending your appointment as our bathroom will be closed to customers during the Covid19 crisis to minimise risk of spreading infection.
• Understand that we cannot serve our usually lovely teas and coffees and snacks, as we require a mask to be worn the entire time you are present in the salon, no exceptions for any reason. However you are VERY welcome to purchase snacks to take home!
• Agree not to bring any other persons to your appointment with you, as we are only allowing one stylist and one client in the salon at any time, to minimise risk of exposure.

This list of conditions may seem extreme – especially the one about required mask use of anyone in your bubble for 7 days before your appointment – but we to take the situation with Covid19 incredibly seriously, and believe that mask use should be mandatory globally  until a vaccine or proven treatment is available, and is the best and simplest measure we can take when coming anywhere near others not in our bubble. The choice to even consider seeing clients again is one that has been difficult to approach ethically, but on long reflection we realised that we could potentially make a stronger impact by providing a “carrot” to our clients – we will be very happy to do your hair, and we want all clients to feel safe, and also to not feel as they are being irresponsible choosing to get their hair done – and we feel that the best path forward for us all is to encourage our clients to make a commitment to protecting our community together with us. This has twin benefits of having potentially measurable impact on the spread of the virus, and give you the opportunity to feel good about your personal actions.

We are also very aware that our industry has a unique role and want to acknowledge the importance of mental health and the difficulties of self isolation, especially for those living alone. We know that the more extended contact we need to have to do our job does have risks, but it also has many benefits for mental health even during normal times, and they are even more important now. Not being touched in any way for weeks or months can be deeply distressing. By making our services available only under the strictest of of rules well beyond those required by our government, we can feel confident that we offer those important mitigations of suffering and an element of normality with the most minimal risk possible.

We will be contacting clients that have had appointments deferred since salon suspension, but understand some may prefer to remain deferred until lockdown is formally lifted or even the pandemic declared over (though this may be some time away!) We are looking forward to seeing those of you happy to commit to our new community-protection standards – in the meantime, stay home and stay safe!

xx

Cass @ Wildilocks

Hi everyone.

It is with a heavy heart that we have had to make the decision that we knew was coming – we are not flattening the curve fast enough, and it’s time to ramp up the social distancing further.

While the measures announced by the Federal Government last night do still allow hairdressing salons to operate at this time, the requirement to limit appointments to 1/2 hour means the majority of our services wouldn’t be able to be performed, and we are also very much aware that hairdressing, much as it is our livelihood and in wartime in past eras was a booming industry – in the current war we are fighting, it’s something we need to temporarily take off our list of collective priorities. The risk of further COVID-19 spread at this point is just too great, and despite our excellent protocols, we want to make sure we help rather than harm.

So effective immediately, Wildilocks is going sales-only, no services. Sales have always been a smaller part of our income, but if you’d like to support us during our mutual incarceration at home, you can still buy all your favourite hair-care (and other!) products from our webstore, and we intend to be shipping out once or twice weekly, depending on demand, and will update here on the blog if the situatuon changes. For now we will still have opening ours but only for product sales, and these may change at short notice.

The next few months are likely to be extremely challenging for everyone. We hope we can get through this and open the salon again after the danger passes.

We will be contacting all clients with upcoming appointments, and putting into place immediately our offer to put a deposit of 25% on your usual service, for which you will then receive a 25% discount on your balance on delivery to help our immediate cashflow (and thank you for your trust and support!)

If you don’t have an upcoming appointment booked but would like to support us regardless, either with a deposit or even a donation, drop us an email to organise or even just surprise us with Paypal funds to: sales@wildilocks.com.

We have another important announcement planned for the very near future so watch this space!

Stay safe (and please, stay home!)

Cass @ Wildilocks

So the last few days have seen the fluid situation of the Coronavirus outbreak shift and after some serious consideration of an immediate shutdown, we have weighed our relative risks and decided to make some changes to the protocols we announced in our last post to protect our community without losing all our income immediately and making our clients sad!

Our new measures take some of the options previously offered as now mandatory, plus adding some new requirements:

• Please avoid using public transport to come to the salon. Driving, cycling, walking and rideshare are all acceptable. Cycling (or ebiking) makes us happiest! 🙂
• Washing hands thoroughly with soap & water on arrival will be required by all clients, no exceptions.
• Masks are required to be worn by clients at all times during appointments. Single use disposable masks are currently available for clients at no charge but if you have your own please bring with you – we only have so many! If you have your own disposable one we can spray with alcohol for you to make more sanitary.
• Customers are requested to not eat or drink during their appointment (which is not possible while wearing a mask anyway!) We are sad about this as we do love to offer you tea coffee and treats, and are usually happy for you to bring your own food and drink in too, but it is a higher risk than we want to take in the current situation.
• Staff will wear masks during all appointments, and no staff will work if even slightly sick.
• Only one staff member and one client will be present at any time in the salon, to minimise as much as possible any risk of infection, and we will distance as much as practical during appointments. We can afford to do this as a small salon.
• Please do not bring any other person into the salon with you when you come for your appointment.
• All styling stations fully cleaned between clients with 100% isopropyl alcohol, which we have always had in the salon for cleaning  (though we also use and recommend probiotic cleaners too!)
• if you have been caretaking a sick relative or friend within the last 7 days, please cancel your appointment.
• If you are not feeling well yourself, PLEASE cancel your appointment! – we definitely appreciate your thoughtfulness: and we WILL ask clients who are visibly not well on arrival to go home, for the protection of our staff and community. We really would appreciate not being put in that awkward position, though.
• We will communicate these new requirements to all clients before their appointment, so they have a chance to decline if the requirements are too stringent. But we want all our clients to understand their health and the health of our community is of the utmost importance to us.

We also want our clients to be aware there is the potential and even likelihood of all salons being shut by government order if the pandemic risk grows too great, as has happened in several countries and cities. Be prepared for this.

If we are required to close, we would like to be able to continue to pay staff a percentage of the wages they would be earning if working, so we are offering something special to our clients: if your appointment is rescheduled, we offer you the ability to make a 25% deposit on this appointment. When we are able to service you, your appointment will then have a 25% discount on the balance – a thankyou for your trust in us. Of course you do not need to take us up on that offer if you don’t want to – but we know many of us will be doing it rough for the foreseeable future and want to acknowledge that.

So that’s our plan for now. We will update here if things change. Stay safe!

Cass @ Wildilocks