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Ted Gibson & Jason Backe of STARRING Launch #OpenSalonsNow Campaign

Jason Backe & Ted Gibson honored at 2019 Daytime Beauty Awards with Outstanding Achievement in Color & Styling

In solidarity with salon owners across California, Celebrity Hairstylists and Small Business Owners, Ted Gibson and Jason Backe will re-open STARRING by Ted Gibson, their Los Angeles based smart salon located on La Brea, on Monday, August 17th – five months to the day that salons in California were originally shut down by the governor. Ted and Jason are leading by example in solidarity with many of the 53,000 State Board of Barbering & Cosmetology licensed establishments who have implemented COVID-compliant safety protocols and reopening.

STARRING by Ted Gibson is the world’s first smart salon powered by Amazon and Alexa whose salon concept is based on the women’s desire to have an intimate, individualized, luxury experience. The salon is and always has been socially distanced by design with salon chairs 8.5 feet apart and within their own private and partitioned “cloud.” The environment is boutique and exclusive – by appointment only, with no front desk and no assistants. It is also completely cashless and without retail products. The salon has followed all CDC guidelines that the CDC officially endorsed on July 17, yet was forced to close its doors for months.

Today Ted and Jason along with the PBFC say, “Enough is enough!”

Through this public act of re-opening STARRING by Ted Gibson, Small Business Owners Ted and Jason celebrate the professionalism, safety and educational training of all of their fellow 621,000 licensed beauty industry professionals – unifying the voice and frustrations of the community to raise awareness of this industry’s plight on both a local and national level. This courageous stand highlights the injustice put upon these licensed professionals by Governor Newsom’s decision to prolong the shutdown of 53,000 hair, nail, and skin salons across the state – failing its citizens and putting professionals and consumers at greater risk by incentivizing underground services outside the safe and controlled environment of their licensed establishments.

“As an industry that is often overlooked, we will not be overlooked anymore. We are licensed in sanitation, anatomy and physiology. We are opening STARRING by Ted Gibson because we will not let ours and others small businesses die,” says Ted Gibson, Celebrity Hairstylist and Co-Owner of STARRING by Ted Gibson.

“On March 26, Governor Newsom responded to legal and political pressure by opening up hair and barbershops followed later by nail and skin services. However, on July 13 the Governor reversed his position yet again. At the same time he offered what became largely an empty gesture of allowing some limited services to be done outside our shuttered salons, spas and shops (see the PBFC’s Statement re: Outside Services),” says Fred Jones, PBFC Counsel.

“Unfortunately, the result of these on-again, off-again, partial shutdowns have been a huge rise in bankruptcies and even larger percentages of underground services, which risk the financial security of our licensed professionals and health of our beloved clientele. The safest and most responsible salons are getting hit the worst by these prolonged shutdowns, since they are unwilling to do clandestine services in homes and cannot perform their high-level services outside under a tent. They prioritize safety and have remained in compliance with lockdown orders that have unfairly targeted our safe industry, which do not take into consideration our extensive training in cross-contamination, disinfection and sanitation protocols.”

Celebrity Haircolorist and Co-Owner of STARRING by Ted Gibson, Jason Backe states, “Our state government has classified salons and hair dressers as dirty and dumb. We are licensed professionals who are trained in sanitation protocol and at STARRING by Ted Gibson we are taking a stand to make sure that our voices are heard to save our small business and hairdressing community.” STARRING by Ted Gibson will be represented by Civil Rights Attorney and Trial Lawyer, Mark Geragos.

“As a civil rights attorney who’s dedicated 37 years to protecting “the little guy and gal” from unconstitutional and unfair treatment by much more powerful and abusive government agencies, my heart goes out to the beauty industry most of all. They are an industry built upon formal education and training and state licensure that assures consumer protection; yet the same state that has given them their license to service their clients have now prevented them from working for 5 months, while large multinational corporate retailers and other so-called ‘essential businesses’ have not been locked down one single day,” says Geragos.

STARRING by Ted Gibson will open its doors on Monday, August 17th.

Located at 211 ½ South La Brea Avenue in Los Angeles the salon will be taking by appointment services only.

#OpenSalonsNow @Starring

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