It might not seem like the biggest problem to many people, but the illegal/unauthorized sales of professional hair products is a big issue in the beauty product industry. I work in this field, and I know all about how you can find professional brands for sale at places like Fred Meyer’s, Walgreens, and Amazon even though they are not supposed to be there. Many professional brands have contractual agreements with the companies they sell to in order to avoid diversion, yet these contracts are constantly broken in secret. Why is this a problem? First of all, the sellers of these products are making money that should be going to the true retailers and salons that sell the products to their clients. Also, these products being sold are typically expired, contaminated, or not the advertised product at all! Using expired or contaminated hair products can leave nasty residue on the scalp and in hair causing many other issues, including infections. Chapter 6 in our textbook briefly mentioned how beauty products are not regulated, and this applies for hair care as well. These secret sales are not usually done by the brand themselves, but hurts them implicitly. Unfortunately, this problem has been going on so long that only the consumers can be the fix for this.
https://www.abcactionnews.com/news/local-news/i-team-investigates/out-of-date-contaminated-and-counterfeit-salon-brands-could-end-up-on-store-shelves