You’ve decided to open your own hair salon, selected the right location, hired qualified hair stylists and purchased the necessary equipment. Sounds like you have everything you need, right? Wrong. You’ll need to have a good handle on the following key elements if your hair salon is to succeed.
1. Quality Staff
Running a successful salon also requires attracting and retaining quality staff. People become attached to their hair stylists. They want to know that they can call their salon and get an appointment with their favorite stylist. Clients become nervous when they are told that their trusted stylist no longer works at the salon. They will often follow their stylist to another salon. This would mean that you would lose that client forever.
2. Competitive Pricing
You will also want to consider pricing carefully when running a successful salon. You will need to know the pricing at other salons in your area. You will then have to make pricing decisions for your salon. If you decide to charge more that most salons in the area, can you justify that decision? Do you offer clients something different and better?
3. Superior Products
Running a successful salon is not just about hair cutting and styling. Many people go to their favorite salon in order to purchase higher end hair care products. If you do not maintain your stock appropriately, clients will not be happy. If they feel you do not regularly stock their favorite shampoo, they will soon start buying their shampoo someplace else. This has a significantly negative impact on your revenue, making the running of a successful salon virtually impossible.
4. Alternative Treatments and Services
Anybody who spends time and money on their hair is likely to pay attention to other parts of their body. You’re in a great position to benefit from this. If you have the space why not offer a few beauty treatments as well? A little nail bar would be popular as would eye brow shaping, hair removal or a make-up stand. There’s a whole host of other beauty related services you can offer on the side.
5. Happy Clients
Of course, happy clients are the first key component to running a successful salon. Without happy, returning clients, your salon would quickly close. You will want to make sure that every client who leaves your salon has a smile on their face. If they do not, take a few minutes to talk to the client and make sure that your employees were courteous and friendly. After all, no one wants to pay someone to be rude to them. Negative word of mouth spreads quicker than positive word of mouth, but you can prevent this before it happens by making sure each client is happy before they leave your salon.
Running a successful salon is not a mysterious venture. All you need to do is ensure the happiness of your clients, retain a quality staff, price competitively, and stock appropriately. All of the other details will simply fall into place.
