A beauty salon, including nail salons, hair salons, and tanning salons, can be a dynamic and exciting investment. This is especially an interesting area of business, given that it is one of the few avenues of business where women’s earning potential is equal or greater than that of men. When operated correctly, a beauty salon can give a massive return on investment, and be an intriguing and vibrant place not only to work, but for people to talk about and enjoy for years to come.
Offer Many Services
A beauty salon should not be a single-trick pony. While there are many salons that offer specializations in single services, these are most often established salons with a large stable of steady regular clients who are loyal to the stylist and the brand. When starting a new salon, offering a variety of services is one of the most important things you can do to attract new clientele. While this can seem counter-intuitive, but consider the advantages of this approach during the Information Age. With the Internet, clients can immediately search their local area for any service they may require, and the more times your business comes up at the top, the more name recognition your brand builds with customers. Nail Care, Hair Care, and Skin Care are all branches of salon services you may wish to offer to consumers.
Take Advice — from Customers
Many of the clientele who attends salons know just as much about the running of a successful salon as the owners of a prospective salon do. Most of them have been patrons of other successful (and not-so-successful) salons for years, decades in some cases. If they recommend a particular brand of tanning bed, of business phone system, of hair dryer, it can be well worth your while to listen to this advice. However, you do not want to take too much advice. The salon must be your business; if you take the advice of others, even your brigade, over your own opinions, you run the risk of giving your dream away to the idea of being what everyone else wants your salon to be.
Do Your Research
Not only should you do a large amount of research on your chosen fields of services offered, but you should certainly examine everything offered by your closest competitors as well. One of the best ways you can do this is as a customer. Spend time looking up similar salons in your area, and take advantage of every service offered. Not only should you be paying attention to what services are offered and how they are performed, but you should also be paying attention to the prices offered for every service. Remember: if you can easily find all of your competing salons, your customers can as well. If you price your services too high, your customers will likely look elsewhere. However, if you price your services too low, you may associate your brand in your customers’ minds with low quality and cheapness of service.