Tamara Reid

You've been in that salon before. You know the owner, you know roughly how busy they are, you know what they ordered last time. But do you actually know how their business is performing? The Inside Industry Q1 Report pulls operational data from across the professional hair and beauty industry — the kind of benchmarks most salon owners don't have context for, because they're only ever looking at their own. That's your edge. Here's how to use it.

Scientists at the University of Cambridge have developed a graphene-based artificial skin that gives robots something remarkably close to a human sense of touch. The immediate applications are in robotics and prosthetics — but the downstream implications for a profession built on tactile skill are worth thinking about now.

There's a lot in motion in the Australian beauty qualification space right now — and if you've been meaning to get across it but haven't had the time, this is your catch-up. From SaCSA's training package review to the ABS classification shake-up that's quietly creating risk for clinic owners, here's where things actually stand at the end of Q1 2026.