I own a hair salon. Typically, November is my busiest season. It has been SO quiet. A lot of my colleagues are also saying the same thing and have had to close up shop because of it - or get a second job.
People keep saying it will get better and the economy will bounce back but I don’t know. I am so close from just throwing in the towel, closing up shop and getting a corporate gig.
I don’t know how many of y’all are first time business owners here but I know I learned a ton after having to close up my retail stores in 09 after the housing crisis.
After that I worked corporate for a decade and saw how the big guys do it.
The first thing they do is they never let off the gas. We were expected to grow at 20% a year. Each employee has to make 10x their salary to keep their job and actually prove their worth. We were constantly innovating, tracking sales year over year, month over month, week over week, day over day. We tracked our email campaigns in 30 minute post send metrics.
So what did I learn from this? You have to constantly hustle. You have to invest in proper marketing. You have to know when times will be slow and find ways to innovate to help spread out your money across the year.
I know this might not help you now, but lead gen is key and you can’t ever be too embarrassed to work your leads. The only good customer is a paying one.
For the salon owner who started this thread. What bonus can you offer that has a high perceived value or is a nice to have when things are slow? Something that doesn’t cost you much but can be thrown in during times like this?
Can you hit up your retail partners and put together gift packs of samples? A “$19.99 value” while supplies last? Buy some champagne and have a ladies night event. You cannot wait for people to come to you.
People are getting their haircut elsewhere - steal them.
I love this response. Upvoted.
Unless they are running a Supercuts or some kind of lower-tier salon, the hard part about offering incentives is your customers get hooked on them and devalues the business when things pick back up.
I disagree. Most people just want a good haircut and a pleasant experience. If they find that through a bonus (like a free bag of samples) they will not demand the free bag of samples in the future because it’s not why they are there in the first place.
I get my hair cut by a curly hair specialist- she only allows bookings within 60 days and frequently has only one or no appointments left within that window for EXISTING clients. Potential new clients go on a wait-list. Right now she’s got an opening January 9 and that’s it. I suspect her business isn’t as affected as OPs because she provides a specialty service rather than a commodity and the top end of the market is not as affected by the economic headwinds as the middle or bottom.
Salons have been inflating their prices to an insane amount. Like $100+ for a haircut from someone two years out of school. Cut & color is $450 minimum plus they expect a 20% tip. If salons want more customers, they need to lower their prices. It’s simple supply and demand.
Your advise is spot-on. Many many years ago I read that the key trait of successful companies is that they are “ruthless.” At the time I thought that was silly…why be ruthless? Shouldn’t you be nice? Ruthless sounds mean and unfair.
It took me a while to realize that in this context, ruthless means always hustling, always pushing, never letting up, leveraging advantages, not letting yourself get screwed over, etc.
If you’re nice and casual and laid back, business might work out for a while — until it doesn’t. Until your main leads dry up and people don’t want to pay your prices anymore and you haven’t been differentiating yourself or keeping up with the latest and greatest and you haven’t been pushing your team to be the best that they can be. And then you scramble and either survive or fold.