The Salon Insider’s Guide To Surviving A Tax Inspection

The envelope from the HM Revenue and Customs (UK) or the Revenue Commissioners (Ireland) dropping through the door’s letterbox and onto the mat is normally most people’s nightmare scenario. Worse, when you open it and understand that the taxman wants to carry out a tax inspection, you panic a wee bit more. Whether it’s personal, VAT, … Continued

Distilling Salons’ Business Performance Down To Two Numbers

As of June this year, I have now spent 15 years in the hair and beauty industry. It is hard to believe really – my entire professional life. A significant chunk of that time has been spent sitting in treatment rooms with salon owners talking about their business performance, or analysing rebooking rates of hair … Continued

5 Tips To Revolutionise Your Salon Business Plan

Everywhere you go, you see cheap deals. It seems like customers are always asking for discounts, and so it’s easy to feel beaten down by pricing. The problem we all have at some point is we forget that some of our customers are happy to pay our normal prices. In fact, there’s more of them … Continued

Should Beauty Salons Use Staggered Pricing?

In our last article, we discussed how to make pricing irrelevant. Today, we are going to follow that up with a new type of payment model: Staggered pricing. This is something that the hairdressing industry have been doing it for years. Why not the beauty industry? If you have 2 therapists in your salon and … Continued

60 Second Hot Topic: how do I keep staff motivated while keeping my overheads down?

You may have a great team of stylists or therapists, but you also have a business to run and money to make. It’s a balancing act – managing to keep staff motivated with a paid incentive while in the meantime, trying to keep your overheads down.  Here’s my thoughts and advice on how to do just … Continued

Starting up a Salon – 5 Real Lessons to Learn from a Newborn Entrepreneur

  Jennifer Fox started Cherry Red hair salon just over six months ago. Like many salon owners, aspiring or current, she faced great uncertainty and learned some hard lessons along the way. Here is her advice…   * Get the right products Choosing a brand you know well and trust is very important. Don’t just … Continued

How To Make Your Marketing Pay!

Has someone ever rung you at the salon and tried to sell you advertising space … of course they have!  And … I’m prepared to bet that at least once, you’ve said yes to their offer, placed an advert and then wondered whether it was worth it or not. You might have told yourself that … Continued

The Fastest Way To Grow Your Salon Profits

Do you need to make more profits in 2013? If you do, you’re not alone. I was talking recently to an accountant who does the books for his wife’s salon. During our chat, we discussed their urgent need to improve profits, so I asked him; “What’s the single most effective thing you could do to … Continued

Prepare To Be Shocked By These Figures!

Recently I saw some research that showed just how dramatically the salon market has changed in the last year or so. New client retention for salons has fallen from the average of 50% (over the last 10 years) to just 19% this year! Put another way, back then you only had to find 2 new … Continued