Madison Reed Now Sends The Salon To You

Madison Reed, the startup that provides online ordering for professional grade at-home hair color kits is now bringing the salon to your door, too. It’s launching “Color to You” today to let you order a stylist to come wherever you want them to and do the coloring for you.

It works like this – a professional colorist (or ‘Colorista’ as Madison Reed prefers you call them) shows up at your home, office or hotel and evaluates your hair, selects the right color for you and then paints your tresses for $99. The price includes the consultation, demonstration, color application and a blowout from a professional, licensed stylist.

It’s certainly a twist on other online beauty services such as StyleSeat or Beautified. With those you order a service on your mobile app and go to wherever they are. TheStylisted or GlamSquad are possibly more direct competition in this space – at least in New York City. Both services send a stylist directly to your home for things like makeup and blowouts, though it’s not clear either actually send someone out to color your hair.

Color to You brings hair coloring service right to your own living room, if you want. Madison Reed tells me it intends to stick to just hair color for now, but this could easily branch out into other things – get hair extensions while you work from home or order a nail artist to come and paint up you and your friends, for instance.

As a gal who has done the at-home hair color thing for years, I’m in good company. According to Madison Reed Co-founder Amy Errett, 90 million women color their hair. I’ve got this current routine where I color the roots darker and then let the sun kiss my locks to do this natural ombre thing…at least that’s what I’m going for. I’ve been bleach blonde to near black and everything in between. One time I tried to go blonde on my own and ended up an icky green. Whoops! To the salon I ran, hat over my head, to beg the stylist to help me correct my mistake that same day. While I would prefer the beauty parlor most of the time for any drastic changes, this is where I could see a stylist coming to my door as useful. Errett says it’s possible to get a same day appointment for something like this, “But you’ll have a better chance of getting your preferred time if you book ahead of time,” she admits.

She says she launched the Color to You service because the company noticed a lot of women were coloring their hair the wrong way. “When we created Madison Reed, we stood in 50 women’s bathrooms and watched them self-color their hair, noting the pain points in the application process and brainstorming how we can fix them. Today, we’re introducing Color To You to help women master hair coloring with an expert on-hand to guide them through the process,” says Errett.

The new service is only available in the Bay Area for now. Though there’s a hint of plans to expand to additional U.S. cities throughout 2014. Madison Reed ships its hair coloring kits to all 50 states.