The Real McCoy or Fake-y : Hair Products Up For Review

The dark side of the beauty industry : DIVERSION of hair products

How many times have wondered about those high end hair products that have sprung up in very weird sources like Target....CVS.....Longs Drug..... Rite Aid and so on? I do all the time and I know what the rules, laws and codes are.
The topic of DIVERSION has long been talked about to industry professionals, and have never understood why they don't talk to the public about it, I sure the hell would want to know - I bet you would too.
Diversion: the act or an instance of diverting from a source
Diversion is the unauthorized distribution, buying and selling of professional products to unauthorized outlets outside of the professional industry. Perhaps you've seen professional hair care products sold in your neighborhood grocery store, drugstore, pharmacy or on the Internet. Most likely, these products were acquired through a "collector" who, by operating in a "gray market", acquired these products from various sources and, once they collected enough product, sold them to a mass distributor who specializes in selling "gray market" product to unauthorized retail establishments.
It baffles me that the stores buy them, if more people reported them or didn't buy the products the problem would be eliminated. Not trying to blame the wrong people, just trying to make it clear how to get rid of it.
Professional companies like Joico, Redken, ISO, Wella, Matrix, etc., and so on DO NOT sell their products to drug, discount, stores - they just don't. Part of their agreement & policy with hair stylists is that they will only sell their product to Salons so that the customer has to get the product at 'the' Salon. Its a kind of a Gentlemens agreement they have had for many years and they do stick to it. The manufacturers will only guarantee their product if its bought at a Salon. If you buy those products at those stores you are taking a giant risk in my opinion.
The products in those stores are not supposed to be there, Period. They have gotten there by one of two ways - both wrong.

#1)There are companies in China, Taiwan, the Philippines, etc. that have gone to the trouble of duplicating the bottle and packaging of your favorite products. Stuffing it with some random concoction of ingredients, and selling it for the 'real' thing. Yep - they are completely bogus.
Today while I was waiting on a prescription , because I was contemplating writing this post, I meandered over to the aisle, found a bottle of Biosilk, opened it, sampled a little and was horrified. I used Biosilk for years (before I learned about ingredients & cosmetic chemistry), I know exactly how it should feel, and smell. This formula was full of some liquid laced with over 50% alcohol,it was no where even close to what it should be. So there it was....my sign for today on what to write! Not only was there none or very little of the cyclomethicone or dimethicone necessary to protect your hair (the most expensive ingredient) I checked the list of ingredients and they did not have a preservative listed. That can be a very dangerous avenue, products can become contaminated without the proper preservative as I have spoken about before. Its not the Preservative that is dangerous its the amount of it , that is crucial. But having none, is not what you want to see.
These companies fill the bottles with the wrong ingredients...in bottles that look exactly like the original - then sell them to you for as much as 15% higher than they should be. Please don't buy them in those stores, for your own good.
#2) The second method? Companies that have the real product, that are old -- way past their shelf life and should have been thrown away - decide to re-sell them to another outlet. So there are some that are in fact, real, but past their shelf life. Again, they charge too much for them and the safety is compromised with an out-of-date preservative.
There is virtually no way to tell which one of these problems is which. But the point is neither are any good, and both should be avoided.
I would guess over 60% are counterfeit, so please don't waste your money or ruin your hair with these bogus replicas!
DIVERSION : help to prevent it, only buy your high end hair products in appropriate Salons or the Beauty Supply.