Connection, Colour and the Future of Professional Hair.
By Jarred Stedman, General Manager, Mocha Group.
Byron Bay has always had a certain ability to slow people down just enough to make them look up and for three days in August, that quality became a perfect reality for the Ozdare Retreat 2026.
More than 100 salon owners, leading stylists and industry professionals gathered at Crystalbrook Byron for this very special event. It had been nine years since Ozdare had staged a retreat of this kind, and there was a clear sense from the outset that this was about more than showcasing brands. It was about bringing the professional hair community back into the same room.
The industry is moving quickly. Salon owners are navigating tighter margins, changing consumer behaviour, new technology and evolving service models, while conversations around colour, hair longevity, scalp health, artificial intelligence and business strategy are reshaping professional hair.
Against that backdrop, Ozdare’s decision to revive its retreat felt timely.
Ozdare Founder and Co-Owner Peter McDonald and Co-Owner, Director and CEO Carlo Gattuso were present throughout, helping set a tone that acknowledged the company’s history while looking firmly to the future.
The first Ozdare retreat was held in Byron Bay nine years earlier, and McDonald and Gattuso reflected on how much had changed. Many who once attended as younger team members were now running businesses, leading teams and shaping the industry themselves.
What had not changed was the appetite for connection.
Gattuso explained that Ozdare’s clients had continued asking for a space to connect with like-minded salon owners and industry peers. The result was a program blending education, brand innovation, strategy and social connection.
“When you bring good people together, give them space to share ideas and celebrate what they’re building, you create something bigger than an event, you create momentum for the whole industry.” Carlo Gattuso
McDonald jokingly described himself as the event’s “agent of chaos”, capturing the humour and personality running through the weekend. More importantly, Ozdare’s leadership team remained visible, accessible and immersed in the retreat alongside their clients.
That human element became one of its strongest themes.
The formal education program opened with Rita Marcon as MC and Nam Baldwin, Founder of HUPO Group and elite performance coach, presenting Performance Under Pressure. Baldwin explored practical strategies for performing at a high level without sacrificing health, relationships or wellbeing.
It was a fitting starting point for an industry demanding creativity, emotional intelligence, resilience and technical skill, often simultaneously. His message was simple: high performance is only sustainable when wellbeing is part of the equation.
From there, attention turned to one of business’s biggest conversations, artificial intelligence.
Hayley Mears, Founder of Six Underground Media and co-host of the Cutting Through the Noise podcast, presented AI for Salons: Less Admin, More Profit, exploring how AI can streamline administration, simplify content creation, automate repetitive tasks and support growth.
Rather than positioning AI as something salons should adopt simply because it is new, Mears focused on where it could genuinely save time. Her advice was to choose a platform, learn it properly and adapt it to the needs of the individual business.
“There’s no user manual for AI,” became one of the strongest ideas from the discussion.
The following AI Workshop: Turning Ideas into Action saw attendees build practical AI toolkits for their salons, including the concept of AI agents, digital assistants capable of taking on defined business functions.
As Mears told Jarred Stedman: “The magic really happens when AI stops being just a tool and starts acting like part of your team… less time buried in admin, and more time focused on creativity, clients and growth.”
Brands Beyond the Stage
KEVIN.MURPHY has always existed at the intersection of fashion, performance and professional hairdressing, and the Byron Bay retreat offered the opportunity to present the brand in a more immersive environment.
The KEVIN.MURPHY welcome night and show became one of the retreat’s major social moments, but the value extended beyond entertainment. Artists, salon owners, educators and brand teams continued conversations away from formal presentations, creating the kind of exchange difficult to manufacture in a traditional conference setting.
The story of ELEVEN Australia COLOUR had an entirely different character.
Global Creative Director Andrew O’Toole spoke about the evolution of ELEVEN Australia and how both the brand and its audience have matured over the past 15 years. At the heart of its next chapter is colour.
O’Toole explained how the Australian landscape became central to the development of ELEVEN Australia COLOUR. Rather than relying solely on traditional European references, the team looked to the environments that had already shaped so much of ELEVEN Australia’s identity.
One story captured the approach perfectly.
During development, O’Toole sent an image of Uluru after dusk as a reference for the red he wanted to create. The goal was not simply a technically correct shade, but a red with luminosity, depth and a distinctly Australian quality.
That thinking became the foundation of a broader colour story inspired by Australian places and landscapes, giving a homegrown brand competing globally something far more valuable than novelty, a genuine sense of place.
O’Toole also spoke about the artists working with ELEVEN Australia, with some of Australia’s leading colourists playing an important role in this next chapter. The ambition is not only to elevate the colour range, but the creative people using it.
The Future of Hair Health
Then came one of the retreat’s most science-driven conversations.
The launch of K18 Future IQ, presented by K18 Global Ambassador Tom Smith and K18 Head of Research & Innovation Dr Rita El-Khouri, introduced attendees to the emerging category of hair longevity.
The premise challenged a familiar way of thinking. Professional hair has traditionally responded to damage through repair, conditioning, strengthening and restoration. Future IQ shifts the question earlier: what if the future condition of the hair can be influenced by what happens now?
Dr El-Khouri explored oxidative stress and its relationship to premature signs of hair ageing, including greying, shedding and changes in texture. Environmental factors including UV exposure and pollution can contribute, alongside internal influences such as stress, sleep, lifestyle and hormonal change.
She also discussed how oxidative stress can influence biological processes involved in melanin production and transfer within the follicle, offering a different perspective on premature greying.
Tom Smith translated the science into the language of the salon floor.
Whatever a hairdresser’s speciality, cutting, colour, extensions or styling, the hair itself is the canvas that enables every service. If hair health deteriorates, every creative service becomes more difficult. Protecting its integrity and longevity therefore becomes central, not secondary.
“I’m incredibly optimistic about the future because innovation gives us more ways to solve problems… The more solutions we have, the more creative we can become, because creativity isn’t just about creating something beautiful; it’s about having more possibilities at our fingertips.” Tom Smith
Creating More Value for Salons
That thinking aligned closely with Carlo Gattuso’s broader strategy for Ozdare.
Gattuso spoke about providing salons with opportunities beyond traditional retail. With businesses under pressure, service-led brands and professional colour are becoming increasingly important parts of Ozdare’s portfolio.
ELEVEN Australia COLOUR and KEVIN.MURPHY’s professional colour offering sit at the centre of that strategy, alongside a wider ecosystem including Dyson Professional, Cezanne, BKT, ECOHEADS, POD and CALECIM, spanning technology, smoothing services, treatments, water-conscious solutions and scalp-focused innovation.
As Stedman summed it up: “Modern salons do not need a single solution. They need multiple ways to create value.”
They need services that generate revenue, tools that improve performance, products that strengthen retail, systems that create efficiencies and education that keeps teams moving forward.
In many ways, the retreat became a physical expression of that ecosystem.
Yet for all the innovation on display, some of its most memorable moments were also the simplest.
A conversation after a session. A table of salon owners comparing experiences. A drink after dinner. A question asked of a speaker that might never have happened in a webinar. A brand founder standing alongside a stylist rather than on the opposite side of a stage.
The KEVIN.MURPHY welcome night and ELEVEN Australia themed dinner brought plenty of energy, but those social moments also reinforced why Ozdare’s clients had asked for the retreat to return.
Nine years on from its last Byron Bay gathering, Ozdare Retreat 2026 demonstrated that while products, technology and business models continue to evolve, one of the professional hair industry’s greatest assets remains remarkably unchanged: the value of bringing good people together.
