The Stylist’s Toolbox.com

I found this article on Newsday.com last week. It’s about how bakeries are having to evolve to stay afloat during the recession, but I saw some interesting parallels with the salon industry.  

Over the past several years, retail bakers both on Long Island and across the country have realized that they have to couple their passion for their traditional craft with an adeptness for business to survive and thrive.

“Before, you were successful and you just put the money in your pocket,” said Thomas Reinwald, a recent college grad who hails from a Huntington family of bakers. ”Now that the margins are getting smaller, you have to look at all the different aspects of your business. A lot of business owners see themselves as bakers first, but really you have to see yourself as a business owner first.”

Last Impressions Count

Has this ever happened to you? You’ve got an appointment for a massage at a new place. You walk in, a little unsure of yourself because you’ve never been there before. You sit down and nervously smile while you wait for someone to tell you what to do.

When your massage therapist comes out, she smiles, comes over and shakes your hand, welcoming you to the spa. You and she hit it off right away and as she’s leading you back, she’s telling you about all of the wonderful scented oils you can choose from and how you can customize the music during your service. You smile and relax, knowing that you are in for the massage of your life with this great therapist that really understands you. You’ve really connected with her.

Have you thought about using email to stay in touch with  your clients, but  haven’t gotten started yet? Does putting it together seem too complicated? You are not alone. The vast majority of hair stylists are not emailing or texting to their clients, missing out on this great opportunity to market for free! But it’s not too late for you.  In fact, email could help you make a lot more money this year!

Here’s why –

How many businesses send you emails? A bunch, I bet.  A quick glance at my inbox would show you email from American Airlines, Off-Broadway Show Warehouse, Restaurants.com, ITunes, Pizza Hut and Gourmet Magazine as well as a number of newsletters from different groups I belong to. Why do they do this? It’s an inexpensive way to stay in touch with me with great offers and details of upcoming events. Even if I don’t read them all, I see their name every time I open my email. It’s useful information that is cheap for them to distribute and easy for me to read.

How can this work for you?

2008 is finally over. It was a tough year – fewer customers, spending less money, buying less retail and waiting longer between appointments. But now that it is finally gone, let’s look ahead to 2009. In the spirit of improvement and changes, I’ve got a few resolutions for the new year that can revolutionize your business:

Is your salon selling gift certificates? You should be. Gift certificates can be the biggest money making opportunity your salon has this holiday season. Easy to use and give, gift certificates can do wonders to grow your salon business.

Photo by Bracketeer

Too often I hear about salons with 8 empty chairs that have tried EVERYTHING they can think of to fill them. New salons open and are magically full of booth renters and stylists – Why does that happen? I hope this isn’t going to be too painful, but let’s look at why some salons attract booth renters and others don’t.

Are you running a back-to-school liter sale this year? If not, why?

Are you afraid that nobody wants to spend their money right now? Well, the chains and the big retail outlets are running sales on their liters and you should be, too.

You might think that big retailers and chain salons have an unfair advantage because they can buy stuff so much less expensively than you can, but let me show you how you can leverage your retail dollars to run sales just like they do. You can be retailing like the big dogs in no time.

Do things seem a little tight right now? Stylists tell me that their clients are waiting longer between appointments and choosing lower maintanence haircolor so the results last longer.

Do you have a plan to grow your salon business during this rough spot? How are you going to find some new clients without spending a small fortune on advertising? I’ve got a couple of low cost ideas to help you bring in some new clients without breaking the bank, as well as some thoughts on keeping them happy, whether you a salon owner or a booth renter.

I attended a Pureology educational event with a couple of weeks ago. Phillip Wilson was the guest artist and it was truly the most amazing class. He would demonstrate a new technique and then invite the stylists up to try it. It was refreshing to see an educator of his caliber teaching innovative real world techniques in such an accessible, hands-on way.  I saw some truly great hair that evening, but something else has stuck with me ever since the class. Phillip Wilson spoke about stylists who are churning out “assembly line hair”, an affliction that has stricken a number of hair stylists that I know.                                

Some clues that you are doing assembly line hair -  

*Men sit down in your chair and describe the cut they are looking for by telling you what number clipper guard to use. “I like a 4 on the top and a 2 on the sides.” 

*You have a number of female clients who are all wearing very similar hairstyles or colors. You have a particularly bad case of assembly line hair if you are also sporting the same cut or color as the majority of your clients. 

*You have attended an educational event and come back complaining that you didn’t see anything that you could use on your clients. 

*You don’t attend any educational events at all.  A few ideas to help you get off of the assembly line -                                                       *Take a trend class or borrow some haircutting DVDs. Really try to visualize how you can implement what you are learning, picturing someone to try it on. When your clients come in, sell them on what you have learned. 

*Change up your client’s cuts and colors. Add some new highlights or low lights. Get out of the habit of pulling out the client card and mixing up the same old formula.            *When you see someone that has amazing hair, stop them and invite them in to see you. Compliment them on their look and mention how honored you would be to do their hair next time. Just having some clients with a new look will help to energize you. *Do something new with your own hair. Change it up so it always feels new. An educator once told me that stylists should change their look every three months to keep their clients interested.

It’s easy to feel like your clients don’t want to try anything new when you spend your days doing ½ inch trims, but if you continue to learn and suggest new cuts, colors and styles, your clients will begin to see you differently – as someone who cares about their craft and as the creative soul you are, rather than the person who just trims their hair every 6 weeks. Let your work speak for itself.   

It happened again today. A client bragged to you that she just picked up a couple of bottles of the shampoo you were trying to sell her at Target. On sale. Wonderful. Diversion is a nasty word in the beauty industry, and the numbers are staggering. Of the $29 billion spent on professional beauty products last year, over $800 million were spent on diverted products. I hear salon owner’s concerns about diversion on a daily basis, so I thought I’d take a minute to discuss what the manufacturers are saying, how diversion really affects your business and give you a couple of strategies to combat it.

The manufacturer’s story – Professional product manufacturers would like us to believe that all diverted product comes from guys in vans who drive around all day collecting case lots of shampoo from unsuspecting salon owners at 10% above cost. While some diversion may occur this way, a much larger chunk comes from some distributors who are selling truckloads out the back door. In an effort to stop this practice, manufacturers have demanded accountability from distributors, including encrypted coding on bottles which can track all bottles back to the distributor that sold them. While they are making some progress, manufacturers have been slow to respond, and the many income channels that diversion has created will make this an almost impossible problem to solve. Manufacturers are now spending millions of dollars fighting diversion, but notable results will be slow to see – it takes 6-9 months for a diverted product to appear on a retail shelf after leaving the manufacturer.  

How Diversion Affects Your Business – For many years the industry fought the proliferation of “Phantom salons”, places like Ulta that have a dusty chair or two in the back so that they can sell professional beauty products like a real salon. Now the greater evil is seeing the lines that you’ve so generously sold your clients on and taught them to use being sold on an endcap at Target. Diversion is clearly a breach of trust between you and the manufacturer that you hitched your horse to – the one who promised that their products would “be sold in professional salons only”.  But an annoying as the problem is, I don’t actually think that diversion hurts your business any more than grocery store haircolor, Pantene or herbal remedies hurt your business. Diversion has created competition for your customer’s dollars, but that competition was always there. Other competitors include other stylists in your own salon, every other salon in town, people who buy a bottle of wine and decide that they are going to color each other’s hair and men who shave their heads. All have the potential to take money out of your pocket. It is your responsibility is to make sure that your clients are leaving your salon with the products that they need to keep their hair looking great. If so, they have no reason to buy shampoo at Safeway, or color their own hair or shave their heads.     

What can you do about it -

1. Many of my salon owners are voting with their dollars and choosing not to do business with manufacturers that don’t keep their lines clean. Simply put, there are companies that have a diversion problem and there are ones who don’t. Investing your money in partnerships with companies who may not be as well known, but whose products can’t be found in every salon in America is a retail strategy that makes sense. Exclusivity gives you an advantage simply because products that are harder to find ensure that clients must return to your salon to continue buying the products they love.
2. Give your clients a reason to stay loyal. Create a rewards program, basing it on total dollars spent or the number of products purchased on a punchcard that lets your clients accumulate points until they get something free. I have one client that offers her customers $1 off each product they purchase if they bring the empty back in. You wouldn’t think that $1 would be much of an incentive, but her retail business is thriving. Be creative and find something that ensures that your clients are buying their retail from you.    

Diversion isn’t going away, but it doesn’t have to hurt your business either. Take a stand and do business with companies that support you and your salon. Your business will thrive and you won’t have to worry about diversion again.