What are the differences between Pre and Pro Made Fans
We get a lot of questions from you lash queens asking ‘What are the differences between our Pre and Pro Made fans?’
Well, the truth is…nothing, they are the same! It's just the name that has been used by brands.
We want to give you some context as to why this confusion has happened within the industry.
Approximately 5 years ago, a few well-known lash artists in the US started the trend of making their handmade fans ahead of the appointment. Essentially, they would pre make their own fans to save time during the lash appointment. They would do this by making the fan by hand and then dipping it in the adhesive to cure the base of the lashes together. This method was coined "crystallizing".
To differentiate their own handmade fans from a mass manufactured "pre made fan", the term "Pro Made" was introduced. As in, a pre made fan made by a pro. Hence "pro made".
Back when this first started, the mass-manufactured pre-made fans were of poor quality and still new to the industry. So a "pro made" was certainly a better option than a "pre made" at that time.
Fast forward 1 year (4 years ago) and the manufacturers in the far east managed to improve the manufacturing process to be able to produce "pre made fans" that were identical to fans made by hand. These are what we call our "new generation".
Since then and up until today, the majority of lash brands stock the latest generation of pre made fans and pre made fans are now widely accepted whereas, before that, they were a big taboo. About 1-2 years ago came the cyclical trend of "loose" lashes. This time in the form of loose pre mades.
They are manufactured in exactly the same way as current industry standard pre mades, but they are simply loose in a pot rather than on the strip. For the manufacturers and also for brands to be able to stand out and differentiate their offering due to the small section of people that still hate on pre mades, some started calling their loose pre made fans, "pro made fans".
They did this because as mentioned above, they are indistinguishable from the original method making your own "pro mades".
Because of this cross-over in names, many believed that the brands selling "pro mades" were selling handmade fans.
This is false.
All fans sold by any/all brands are mass manufactured in the same way (which ironically is a process that is done by humans and hands). They are made by humans, using tools/machines.
This term then transformed the industry so that now almost everyone believes in and wants "pro mades".This desire for "pro mades" (pre mades with a fancy name) lead to further confusion in the industry…
Brands then started to believe that any fan that is manufactured using the latest manufacturing methods (the fans with the pointed bases) were also as good as a "pro made" so many have started naming all of their pre made fans, regardless of whether it's loose or on a strip, as "pro made fans".
So this all means that we now have an entire industry that isn't clear on what is what. Many of which actually believe the wrong information which then leads to misinformation being shared too.
It's all one big mess but in short, if we are talking about the current methods of lash manufacturing (ignoring the old style), pre and pro made fans are exactly the same and it's simply the name.
The term "pro made fan" when it comes to the lash artist handmaking their own fans the day before an appointment is also still correct and exists in our industry.
We hope this clears up any confusion around the differences (or lack of) between our Pre and Pro Made fans.
If you have any questions regarding our Pre/Pro Made Fan collection, feel free to contact our team via Instagram (@LashBase_US), we are always happy to help!
