Action Bag sees the beauty of alliances

Action Bag and Display Co. has created a beautiful niche for itself. The Wood Dale, IL-based cataloger, which sells bags, boxes, and the like to beauty salons, day spas, and healtchare packagers, has struck up several alliances with professional beauty industry associations.

One such partnership is its five-year alliance with the Union, NJ-based Day Spa Association (DSA). “We have gained close to 100 new customers through the partnership, and each year our sales to DSA grow,” says Action Bag spokesperson Jaimey Alumbaugh.

Under the partnership, the 800 members of DSA receive a 10% discount on anything in the Action Bag catalog and free plates for custom imprinted jobs. For Action Bag’s part, “we have complete access to their entire member list,” Alumbaugh says. “Our costs are the standard DSA company membership fees [$375 annually] plus any of their direct marketing efforts we choose to use.”

Action Bag was particularly impressed with DSA’s emphasis on the business of beauty. “We saw them as different from the rest of the beauty industry,” Alumbaugh says, “focused on providing salon owners with detailed information on retail product lines, keepisng employees educated on the business model, and cultivating resources that salon owners and managers use to grow business.” After all, she notes, “if their business grows, so does ours.”

The alliance with DSA isn’t 25-year-old Action Bag’s first partnership in the professional beauty industry. Its initial partnerships were with the Beauty and Barber Supply Institute and the Salon Association, which have since merged to form the Professional Beauty Association. And this past February, Action Bag began an affiliation with the American Association of Cosmetology Schools.