September 24, 2012

Beauty on the Go – Mobile Beauty Trucks to the Rescue!

September 24, 2012

Beauty on the Go – Mobile Beauty Trucks to the Rescue!

Fresh passed out free lip exfoliant scrubs in June with their “Kiss and Tell” truck

Seems like food trucks aren’t the only ones who need to satisfy us busy folks who are constantly on-the-go. For all the ladies and gents who like to be well-groomed but just don’t have the time, there are now BEAUTY TRUCKS ready to serve all your beauty needs!

Lucky New Yorkers now have a chance for a beauty “pick me up” with services like Antonio Prieto Select, Manicube, and LeMetric Mobile Hair & Beauty Studioall ready to fix your beauty problem at your office desk!

Celeb hairstylist Antonio Prieto has a brick and mortar salon located in Chelsea and explained that “urban woman are so busy with jobs, families and life, and it becomes harder to find a couple of hours to carve out to go and see your stylist on a day and time that works for both the client and the stylist.” He decided to take his salon on the road with a truck staffed by a team of freelance hair stylists and makeup artists. He counts Corcoran, Google, Credit Suisse and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, as clients. While Prieto says that “convenience is such a luxury in this day and age,” convenience does come at a price. A blow-dry with Prieto Select is $150 (it’s $65 to $70 in Mr. Prieto’s salon), specialty styling is $200 (versus $95 at the salon), and a full face of makeup is $200 (instead of $125).

Elline Surianello, who has owned the LeMetric Hair Center in Midtown since 1987, recently bought a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van (LeMetric Mobile Hair and Beauty Studio) and had it custom-built into a beauty shop on wheels that offers blowouts and cuts in front of your office, like a taco truck.

“Time and convenience are one of the most important factors for women, so there was a definite need to go mobile in order to reach those customers who couldn’t make it to my Midtown salon,” said Ms. Surianello, who dreams of hitting the road. “I hope to be able to roll out the mobile hair studio across the U.S. someday.”        

For those who have a tighter budget, how about Manicube? Elizabeth Whitman and Katerina Mountanos, formerly of BeautyBar.com, founded the mobile-manicure company in July. “We saw firsthand that getting a manicure as a working woman was a chore,” Ms. Whitman said. “We had to duck out at lunch, rush home before the corner nail salon closed or spend an hour of our hard-earned free time on a Saturday to get one.”

“Additionally,” she said, “pre- and post-business school, we both worked in the financial industry and saw that corporate offices had been offering male-focused services for years, such as shoe shine and hair barbers, and we thought: why not services for women that can make their lives easier?”

The company offers 80 nail polish colors, with some of their recent most populars being Essie in Ballet Slipper, OPI in Cajun Shrimp, and Chanel in Particulière.

So what do you think? Are you comfortable getting a beauty treatment at your office?