Salon First

Salon First is a TRADE ONLY Supplier. Supplying products to the professional beauty, nail and hair industry.

In 1989, as a direct response to the needs of local area salon owners, Salon First was founded by Beth Merkus and George Pawlowski under the name of Individual Beauty Care.  Later changing to Backscratchers Nail & Beauty Supplier and now as it known, Salon First.

At the time nail and beauty products were mostly available from full service distributors whose main focus and experience was with hair products.  For many professionals this presented a huge gap in the technical information readily provided to that needed, limited local availability to a wide variety of brands, and ultimately first hand access to technological advances.   As much as distributors tried to do a better job at all of this there was also a huge language barrier developing that stood in the way for a large percentage of new beauty therapists and nail technicians entering the industry.

Beth, being a qualified Beauty Therapist, Nail Technician and salon owner herself saw this huge gap in and decided to do something about it.  This foresight coupled with her nature to want to help others made her a perfect candidate to be a successful nail and beauty supply distributor.

We opening our second store in Melbourne soon after and on the feedback from customers have expanded to 6 showrooms and a dedicated warehouse and head office facility on the east coast of Australia.

In 2011, after much planning, anticipation and sleepless nights, we are proud to announce the launch of our online shopping experience!  We pioneered the wholesale salon experience and are striving to do the same online.

It’s here we’ll take our company to the next level and continue putting our customers first!

Salon First..…we put the Salon First!