Challenges in the Beauty Industry
Our Mission
Beyond the Chair Co. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization focused on the structural challenges facing beauty and grooming professionals, including inadequate education pathways and limited labor protections. Our mission is to advance beauty education reform and facilitate informed conversations about unionizing beauty workers—including cosmetologists, barbers, estheticians, nail technicians, and makeup artists—while conducting research on the beauty labor sector.
Workforce solutions in beauty
The Problem
Income Instability
Limited Education Mobility
Fragmented
Infrastructure
No Portable Benefits
Underprotected
Workforce
Our Solutions
Beauty & Grooming Unions
Cosmetology, barbering, hair design, esthetics, and manicurist apprenticeships enhance economic outcomes by reducing debt.
Build portable credentials that connect real work to long-term mobility. Link on-the-job learning to accredited programs that recognize actual skills.
Strengthen coordination, industry literacy, and institutional capacity across the industry.Build shared systems for data, oversight, and policy implementation.
Beauty &
Grooming Unions
Build portable credentials that connect real work to long-term mobility. Link on-the-job learning to accredited programs that recognize actual skills.
Establish enforceable standards and democratic workplace governance across beauty workplaces. Turn individual concerns into collective negotiations and binding agreements.
Structure creates sustainability.
Training Pathways
Choose education and workforce models aligned with your goals.
Understand ownership, employment, and cooperative structures.
Learn how policy and governance shape the profession.
Understanding industry structure changes how professionals navigate opportunity, risk, and representation.
Discover if beauty school or apprenticeships align with your goals.
Salon Models
Discover if beauty school or apprenticeships align with your goals.
Understand ownership, employment, and cooperative structures.
Explore how different organizations shape the beauty industry’s infrastructure.
Learn how policy and governance shape the profession.
Explore how different organizations shape the beauty industry’s infrastructure.
From Training to Collective Power
Apprenticeship Foundations
Cosmetology, barbering, hair design, esthetics, and manicurist apprenticeships build technical skill, workplace literacy, and exposure to labor standards within regulated employment environments. We help participants understand why these structures matter and connect them with relevant resources.
Leadership & Organizing Skills
Beyond the Chair develops organizing skills, leadership capacity, and community-building knowledge across the industry. This work supports informed coordination among workers, owners, and institutions to build a more sustainable beauty commuinities.
Community Support for Unions
Sustainable workforce systems depend on aligned institutions and coordinated approaches to training, credentialing, and career pathways. We help build the conditions that allow union-supported apprenticeships and apprenticeship-to-degree pathways to emerge and scale.
Skill development strengthens collective capacity.