My name is Matthew Iulo.
I am the CEO and cofounder of Scalp Micro USA.
And I am a scalp micropigmentation artist.
I got into this about 11 years ago.
And scalp micropigmentation is a form of cosmetic tattooing
to restore the look of a short buzzed hairstyle
and add density into thinning hair.
So, what you see happening here is we're using,
I believe this is an Andis T-Outliner.
And we're just buzzing this hair to a very short length
so that it's going to appropriately match the SMP,
the pigmentation that we're going to do
throughout the top of this client's head.
What's happening here is one of the more fun
and artistic parts of what we do,
which is designing the frontal hairlines.
And so what we're doing here is we're using
just a simple white eyeliner-type pencil
to mock up different hairline styles.
We'll usually have a good chat with the client
about what they're hoping to achieve.
Do they want something very bold
and youthful and clean-cut?
Or do they want something maybe a little bit more mature?
And we can offer a variety of different styles and shapes.
Obviously, some of the things we look for,
we want to keep the hairline at an appropriate height.
If you want to do a quick test at home,
usually making four fingers
and placing the bottom finger
right above the nose bone in between your eyebrows
and then making a marking kind of above that fourth finger.
That's a quick little benchmark we use.
Also, having the client raise their eyebrows.
Here, you're seeing a profile view of a client.
And that's important metrics that we use as well.
If we were to draw a 90-degree line
up from the interior of the sideburn,
so, the part of the sideburn that's closest to the face,
that's a typically good benchmark
of where we want to place that top temple point,
which is where the top hairline meets the profile.
And then we want our profile line to have an angle.
I always say around an 80- to 85-degree angle.
What makes a good hairline is really just the placement
and the style and also the implementation.
Making sure that it's not too sharp,
that we're not just tracing the line verbatim
so that it's this harsh, kind of abrupt cutoff.
We want to make sure that it looks like
what would happen in nature.
The ink that we use for our procedures
at Scalp Micro USA is Folicule.
And it is a type of carbon black pigment
that we have mixed and diluted to a certain ratio,
depending on the client's natural hair color and tone.
So the cool part is we have essentially
26 different shades
or strength of shades that we can use.
And that's good because, again, we're getting
all walks of life in here, all different races,
all different ethnicities, all different ages.
So we're able to really adapt that pigment
to meet the requirements of each client.
A big part of the tools we use is obviously our hand piece.
That's our tool. That's our pen.
In there, we'll insert a microneedle.
Most practitioners use what we call as a three round liner.
The depth level that we go into the skin
is actually pretty shallow.
We're going about a millimeter and a half
to 2 millimeters into the skin.
So, we do this with a certain spacing.
We don't want to cluster these follicles
too close together on a particular session
because we want it to heal properly.
We want the dots to shrink down,
which they will after each session.
And we want to leave space for subsequent sessions
so that we can get in between
to add more density and fullness
without causing clustering or migration
or any of those things that you may see
with sometimes older tattoos.
We want to ensure that this heals appropriately
and heals pixelated so that you get that look
of tiny little buzz-cut hairs.
The key to SMP is making sure that the pigmentation
and the real hair work together exactly as they should
so that there's no seams
and that there's really,
almost impossible to tell the difference
of what the client's real hair is versus the pigmentation.
And that's what makes this really real.
And this will occur a few times.
This will occur two, three sessions,
each session adding a bit more density into the scalp,
so that you get that full look.
The cool part is you see an immediate result.
With this, even after one session,
the client's going to see a pretty big difference
to their face and to the color on their scalp.
And that's what makes this really fun for us,
whether it's tears of joy,
whether it's "holy" curse words being thrown.
It's just, it's a big, big moment.
And that makes it super worth it for us,
because not only are we producing something in this world
and giving a service, but we're giving a service
that actually works and brings joy to someone.
So, yeah, we get super pumped about that.