The beauty sector urges the Government of Catalonia to allow the reopening of professional beauty centers
The beauty and personal care sector is a dynamic, employment-generating, innovation-intensive sector and is fully aware of the importance of working together against the pandemic which is affecting people and businesses.
Since the beginning of the pandemic, the sector has shown its commitment on continuous actions to support health professionals and medicalized hotels through economic donations of hydroalcoholic gels, moisturizing products, PPE protection systems and other various forms of collaboration. The sector has also worked hard to establish safe work spaces for its professionals and hygienic environments and with a health guarantee for all its customers.
After the end of the state of alarm, the beauty professional centers proceeded to carry out a big economic investment to adapt to some strict operational protocols of hygienic-sanitary determined by the management association (Stanpa) and guarantee therefore the safety of customers and employees. The adaptation of the centers has allowed them to position themselves as one of the safest spaces for their clients without having detected any specific outbreak associated with a beauty center.
The 15 days closure initiated on October 15th by the Generalitat of Catalunya does not comply with any objective study or analysis that shows that they can generate a greater risk than other types of business that have remained open. This decision, in addition to the obvious economic impact, stigmatizes professional beauty centers and does not offer a true picture of the health-safety environment they represent.
In addition, the closure threatens the feasibility of thousands of centers in Catalonia that are small businesses driven mostly by self-employed women entrepreneurs. On the other hand, the centers contribute to the well-being and health of a population that, after seven months of pandemic, has suffered a huge physical and emotional impact as evidenced by various published studies. In the current situation of risk of saturation of health care centers it can be counter-productive to close spaces that contribute to the emotional well-being of people, their hygiene and health.
From the Beauty Cluster, representing the value chain of the beauty and personal care sector, we ask the Government of the Generalitat de Catalunya to reconsider the measure and allow the reopening of professional beauty centers meeting the same conditions as the rest of the commercial establishments.
It is also requested that in future approval of measures against the pandemic, to be taken into account the above and to count on the entities in the sector that have proven information that allows the best decisions to be made in front of a pandemic in which we all have to work together to overcome it.
