Michael Shaun: " The Equilibrium Collection is our conscious effort to change what we, at Alterna, considered to be our ideas of a balanced haircut. We are now breaking the mold of the work you saw last year. We are still using refraction, but looking at it from a new perspective. We are looking for ways to go with the trends in hair while building on our foundation and the Equilibrium Collection speaks to that."

Michael Shaun: "Yes, yes, because we stand behind the client, we tend to focus on that part of the cut. Equilibrium helps us to get back in their faces, again. We focus where we need to be with the client: right up front."

Michael Shaun: "It actually is a challenge to keep things consistently easy, without jumbling technique. There are only so many ways to do a cut and I am not claiming to have invented a whole method of cutting. I take things that are from one school of thought and another and recombine them to support the Collection. I first see a shape I want to do and build technique to create it and then I take all the difficulty out of it to make it teachable to a wide audience. If I make the technique an effort to hold the hair exactly so with a tight sectioning, I can't reach the person in the back of the room with a look that makes sense.

Michael Shaun: "Those that have training, such as traditional Sassoon training, already know how to put a mirror under a bob to see its lines. Not every design benefits from that scrutiny. Picasso could paint a traditional mural but chose cubism and revolutionized the art world. I like that sort of freedom. I like to mix it up. Of course, one needs proper training first."

Michael Shaun: "Amen, yes."

Michael Shaun: "An early person who inspired me was Vidal Sassoon. I wanted to be like him and do everything he was doing. He was one person who, along with his excellent work, was committed to providing the best customer service possible. This is his true contribution to our industry. I would say Vidal Sassoon is every good hairdresser's inspiration, and I am not the first to say that."

Michael Shaun: "That attitude of working for a paycheck didn't work out all that well. (Laughs)"

Michael Shaun: "I am fortunate to work for Alterna. As a hairdresser, they keep me involved when they develop a product for a line, so my needs as a director are met during product development. Alterna and Michael Shawn are so intertwined we are creating products together. This allows a line or a product to flow so smoothly into a technique or a look."

Michael Shaun: "I have a few things in my bag right now that no one will see for two more years. We are already working on products that anticipate and feel future trends. Next year, we are going to launch new products that not only meet the trends but go way above them. What did you think of our mousse? Cool, huh?"

Michael Shaun: "Alterna has really outdone themselves on this one."

Michael Shaun: "I am at the point in my life where philanthropy is becoming important. I am working with the City of Hope and even my shamelessly self-promotional birthday party will give all proceeds to the City of Hope. I want to give back and do more than just take care of myself. Even our new President says that we should not wait for government to do everything for us, but to get to the grass roots level and care for each other."

Michael Shaun: "Sometimes it takes a slap in the face to get us to walk away from our selfishness. We can all operate better with our responsibilities in a now-global society and take care of our responsibilities. If we have a little less, maybe everyone else can have a little more."

Michael Shaun: "Many global companies are finding ways to give added value to customers instead of cutting prices. If your haircut is still the same service, do you want to cut the price or find a value to add to the cut? Perhaps it is a conditioning treatment, better environment or booking more time for that individual so they feel they are important to you."

Michael Shaun: "Give them more and they will come."

Michael Shaun: "I was right, thankfully."

Michael Shaun: "My whole collection is Andy Warhol meets Coco Chanel. Andy, as crazy and artistic as he was, was a very dapper man. He recreated glamour in new ways. Coco said "darling, you can be glamorous just as you are, wearing sportswear". She made luxury in knitwear. There is still a market for luxury and glamour, and we are responding to it."

Michael Shaun: "You must put the polish to the hair. The young stylist is getting this skill at the Redken and Sassoon Academies, and we are offering finished work in our Academy, too. You are not sending out wet perms anymore and some of us old birds need to finish our work before it goes out the door. The hair must be moving, touchable and completed."

Michael Shaun: "That part of the Equilibrium Collection goes back to my Sassoon days. Anytime you put something soft in a look, you want put something strong for contrast. In the short blonde, I reverse raked the crown to build up volumes there. If I had done that technique throughout the cut, the crown volume would have been lost."

Michael Shaun: "I am fortunate to have friends who let me try cuts on them and are perfectly honest with their opinions. Sometimes they will be brutally honest and I, full of myself, will argue that the cut is great. Later, I will come to agree with them. The Alterna Creative Team members are very honest in their appraisals of my work. I will go to them with a completed technique or look and they will add their input and inspiration."

Michael Shaun: "I feel we have been doing it right, so we are going to stick to the plan. Make a quality product, regardless of the cost, because we feel people will buy quality if it outperforms the other choices. Also, show wearable reproducible looks that follow the trends."

"Look outside of the hair industry for trends: Hollywood, runways, Fashion Week and such. To this: add new technology in hair. One new product coming out is our Color Hold, which we used in the show. Color Hold performs an enzymatic process in the hair to hold color and add shine. It holds color and strengthens gray coverage by a factor of ten. Look for us, in the next few months, to release some other new things."

"One more thing I would like to add: we are still a smaller company and can react to market trends and stylists desires quickly. We can turn on a dime. Our marketing people and chemists listen to us and provide solutions we can trust"

Michael Shaun: "Anytime Ed Wyse wants to bring us back to Meydenbauer, I am down."