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Salon and Spa Industry

Salon and Spa Industry

Decoding the Demand for Salon & Spa Services

A spa or saloon connotes a place for body grooming, styling, and relaxation. The purpose is to make people look and feel better. The basic services offered include haircuts, beard trimming, hair colouring and highlighting, face massage, shampoo, etc. Beauty parlours are inclined towards meeting the grooming and styling needs of women. However, such traditional demarcations have faded. New-age salons have evolved to meet the needs of all.

But what exactly is a spa? People intuitively know that salons and spas are different concepts. Now maybe the time we break the ice for some clarity. Spa refers to relaxing and body-healing external activities and experiences. Does that mean listening to music is a spa? Yes, music has a healing effect on the body and mind. But the spa goes beyond such simplicity. It includes services like Thai massage, aromatherapy, deep tissue massage, body scrub, manicure and pedicure, saunas, hydrotherapy, etc.

Since the last decade, the demand for spa services has consistently risen in high-tier cities. People are becoming increasingly aware of the benefits of spas. It is also a new phenomenon in many places making it worth a try. Urbanization and the growth of the middle class further contribute to its growing popularity. For working-class people and the hectic urban lifestyle, spas provide a much-needed platform for relaxation and healing.

The demand for typical salon services is here to stay. What has changed is that new-age salons have embraced modernization. Many big cosmetic and personal care brands have come to the fore to partner with local salons and beauty parlours in the areas of marketing, training, product support, etc.

Salon and spa businesses need to correctly assess the existing and emerging needs of the market and customers. They will need to embrace modernization and manage their business more competitively. As an evolving industry with surging consumer demand, it is a time of opportunity for the service providers in this sector to make leaps. There will be challenges but there are solutions.

Challenges and Solutions in the Salon & Spa Industry

Going Digital and Omnichannel

As contemporary spa & salon consultants, we put adopting the online channel as a top-notch prerogative for all salon and spa owners. Taking a business online in relevant ways helps in improving proximity with digital audiences and customers, spreading awareness about services and offers, offering AR-VR experience, easy booking of services, service management, etc. Going omnichannel means different things for different businesses. For a spa resort, it could mean having a website, a facility for online booking and cancellations, or a virtual tour of the resort. For a salon or beauty parlour, a simple appearance on local search engine results pages displaying customer reviews, addresses, phone numbers, and working hours, helps in enhancing the local identity of the business and customer acquisition. To make this easier, quicker and more effective, the option of hiring the services of professional spa & salon consultants is always there.

Importance of Having Strong UVPs (Unique Value Propositions)

The basic services provided by salons represent some of the basic grooming needs of people. But there are also salon brands and businesses that go beyond the basics and touch the realm of luxury. The same cannot be said about spas. Services offered by spas are more of a luxury. The services require special setup and skills. Creating a UVP in salons and spas depends on this demarcation between luxury and not being luxury. The scope of UVP is limited for regular salons and beauty parlours without adding premium features or pulling in some features of luxury. As a luxury product, the opportunities are ample for spa businesses to cater to a niche market. We keep these futuristic values in consideration in formulating business model development solutions under our spa and salon consultancy services.

Retention of Talent

The demand for specialists is always high in the salon and spa industry. Consequently, businesses are people-dependent. Experts from the field of salon and spa consulting reckon that the retention of experienced, efficient, and talented employees has always been a challenge in this sector. The right HR policies, accurate job profiles, robust reporting mechanisms, and people-friendly welfare policies play a vital role in employee retention and keeping attrition under check. Planned and defined HR Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and PMS are important for measuring the performance of employees and rewarding them as per rule.

Need For Training and Skill Development

Being in the field of salon and spa consulting for a long time now, YRC maintains that to attract new customers and retain existing ones, spa and salon owners must keep making improvisations in their business and services offered from time to time. Poor service experience turns away customers. It further creates poor word-of-mouth marketing. To maintain and improve service expectations of customers and service delivery, training and skill development of employees are critical. Otherwise, employees will not be able to deliver services at par with the industry standards. However, training and development are not necessarily independent business activities. The need can also stem from strategic business moves. These can include the introduction of additional services, efforts to improve customer experience, incorporation of more stringent safety and hygiene standards, etc. We address these concerns via detailed assessments and formulation of curated training strategies in our salon and spa consulting services.

Never To Cease At Customer Acquisition

Because salon and spa services are brick-and-mortar-based businesses, it confines their market to the local limits. Any increase in the local population is also compensated by an increase in the number of competitors. New businesses come with better offerings that may pull away customers. Businesses must never take their existing customer base for granted and cease the efforts for customer acquisition. Veteran salon and spa consultants do not hesitate to reiterate that customers bring more customers.

Routine Profitability Checks

Winning the numbers game each month does not mean a business is making excellent profits. It is critical to keep a check on the profitability of every branch at periodical intervals. Many brands and businesses delay the process of identifying the slow-moving branches until it nullifies the overall bottom line with the performance of the profit-making branches. If the business is to thrive, not merely survive, routine profitability checks must be done as per branch, products, and services. YRC’s team of spa & salon consultants recommends incorporating this requirement in operations planning and implementing it using SOPs.

SOP-based Operations Framework

At the end of the day, the implementation speaks. When the business processes and operations are planned and mapped using SOPs, it provides the required roadmap for executing the operational activities. The procedures and the standards of performance and output to be followed and maintained become crystal-clear. There remains no room for ambiguity about authority and responsibilities. As an experienced spa and salon consultancy services provider, YRC has consistently witnessed that SOPs help salon and spa businesses become process-oriented and with an SOP-based operations framework, businesses are better poised for high performance in service delivery and operational efficiency.

Why YRC

Salon Business Consulting Services | Spa Business Consulting Services

Your Retail Coach (YRC) is a more than a retail and eCommerce consulting enterprise offering high-end services to salon and spa businesses. We engage and maintain a professional team of salon and spa consultants in our business. Working with an expert business consulting firm makes a huge difference in setting up the foundation of a strong and sustainable business. Whether the requirement is to develop a luxury spa business plan or a premium salon business plan, our team of business plan development consultants carries the necessary expertise in both.

Market research is a part of our spa and salon business consulting services. The service planning and execution are done by a team of expert hair salon business consultants. The objective is to provide meaningful insights on the market and actionable information and recommendations for planning and strategy formulation.

In salon and spa business consulting services, we help clients see through the feasibility of their business ideas. We develop feasibility reports for businesses to assess the sustainability and competitiveness of their business models.

In omnichannel consulting, we work closely with clients to better understand their business objectives behind going omnichannel. We help them define their omnichannel strategies and provide the necessary follow-up assistance in the planning and implementation phases.

On the operations side of our spa and spa and salon consultancy services, we design and develop SOPs that help clients streamline and regulate their business processes and operations. It helps them achieve standardization across branches. Our long-term goals in SOP development are to lend process orientation, operational consistency, and scalability.

To know more about our salon and spa business consulting services or if you have any queries for our team of salon and spa consultants drop us a message and we shall get back to you.

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    DIGITAL MARKETING

    Digital Marketing includes SEO & SMM. SEO i.e. Search Engine Optimization includes activities like back-linking, meta tags, blog-writing etc. to ensure your website ranks on the 1st page on Google Search.

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    Building digital marketing strategies in coordination with the agency, selecting them to signing them off would be the role of YRC.

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    IT INTEGRATION

    Selection of the right software for smooth functioning of back-end operations right from production to webstore display would be suggested and integrated by YRC Team.

    YRC’s Team defines SOPs of Product Movement, maps it with the locations & people. They then create a blueprint of all the features required in the software & help in shortlisting & selection.

    IT Integration involves connecting your offline inventories with real-time online webstore so when a sale occurs, inventories get deducted real time across offline as well as online platforms.

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    Some popular software include unicommerce, viniculum for your front-end website management & Genisys for your entire back-end Purchase, Production, Accounting, Invoicing etc. management.

    WAREHOUSE & LOGISTICS PLANNING

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    • Would the 3rd party vendors be reliable? What happens when they lose or misplace your product during delivery?
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    • How much space do I require for warehouse?
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    At YRC, our warehousing and logistics experts can help you devise a strategy for all of the above mentioned queries and much more.

    We design the layout of the Warehouse considering the inward, goods processing, software entry, barcoding, outward, goods return, scrap storage, goods stacking & much more.

    Logistics route plan is devised considering the manufacturer to your warehouse and from there to last mile delivery locations.

    UI & UX DESIGNING

    This Step involves 03 distinct parts:

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    From several platforms available in the market right from Shopify to magento, woocommerce, prestoshop, wordpress etc. you must choose the one that fits best for your business

    Part 2: UX Designing:

    “UX” denotes User Experience, which if put in simple language is building the functional requirements of the website.

    UX Designing includes designing the features required in the website, customer journey map, website features, the browsing features, navigation features, ecommerce order management process flow, checkout cart features, catalogue management, ecommerce payment system, cross selling features & much more.

    “As per statistics, 68% of the customers abandon the carts before payment”

    An interesting UX ensures the customer sticks on to the website for a longer time.

    Part 3: UI Designing:

    UI stands for User Interface, which means designing the look and feel of the website. UI includes using the right colours, elements and the entire aesthetics of the website.

    A good User Interface ensures the user completes the task that he has come for. It navigates the user through the journey of the brand in the simplest but most effective way.

    The UX designer maps out the bare bones of the user journey; the UI designer then fills it in with visual and interactive elements.

    If User experience is the bare bone, user interface wraps it up with an attractive cape.

    At YRC, our team if experts can help you develop the entire User Journey to ensure it is engaging!

    SAMPLING & PRODUCTION

    This step follows the “Designing” Phase, whether you have an in-house design team, freelance designers or an outsourced design company. It is one of the most exciting phases, as here you see your designs turning into products & your ideas turning into reality.

    In most start-up cases, production is outsourced i.e. brands tie-up with the established manufacturers/ job-workers to get their products manufactured.

    Sampling involves multiple 04 Stages, Fit-Sample, Prototype Sample, Pre-Production Sample & the Production Sample.

    Prototype Sample is the first sample provided to the buyer. It can be in any fabric/ colour. This sample is just to understand whether the product design looks equally great in reality.

    Fit Sample, as the name suggests is prepared to check the fit of the garment i.e. the various sizes, length, width etc.

    Pre-production is made by the actual production line. Here the stitching quality and other aspects related to manufacturing are checked. This is the last stage where rejection can be accepted.

    Production Sample is made before the production which is the replica of what is going to be finally produced.

    Once you are through with all this, you are good to go ahead & get your goods manufactured.

    PRODUCT DESIGNING / SOURCING

    Product Designing or Sourcing is the heart of the Ecommerce Fashion Brand.

    Product Designing / Sourcing can be done in several ways, as follows:

    • In-house Design Team
    • Freelance Designers
    • Outsourced Design Team
    • Ready Product Sourcing (From Manufacturer or Wholesaler)

    At YRC, we evaluate your business strategy & business model to arrive at the decision, which of the above ways would be best-fit for your business. In certain cases, product sourcing may be a combination of the above.

    These are the people who are going to build your brand! Whether they are the designers or merchandiser, your brand look is going to be in their hands.

    If you are designing each garment from the scratch, the sourcing would play crucial role in developing design identity of your brand.

    Sourcing includes fabric, trims, lining & all the raw material required to build the garment.

    BRANDING

    Branding is the “Look of the Brand”, right from logo to tagline, the colours used, the brand story, the brand communications on social media, the packaging & all the other aspects which speak directly or indirectly to the customers. Branding constitutes the look & feel of the brand & hence must be thoughtfully planned to match with the product that we are selling.

    Branding must appeal to our target audience. Example : A golden colour logo depicting finesse, art, richness, premium, however beautiful it may be individually cannot go with a brand selling affordable kids wear products. So, your logo must be in-line with your brand positioning, whether you are an expensive brand or a luxury brand or a value for money brand, it must be depicted from your “Branding”.

    It is an integral part to attract the target audience.

    ORGANOGRAMS & SOP’s

    Organogram is the “HR Blueprint” of the business which is created at the onset, to map out the team required across each function at various stages of the business. At the launch, only key people need to be got on board to ensure the project gets started & at this stage, all of them need to multi-task. Similarly, certain financial as well as operational goals are set for addition of the further team. Example, for the operations team, we hire 1 operations manager during the pre-launch phase & we add 1 more only when the business kicks-off & we reach a volume of selling more than 1000 pcs/ month or a turnover of more than 0.1 million USD.

    SOPs are Standard Operating Procedures, a bible to run the entire organization right from Sales, Purchase, HR, Order receiving to Order fulfilment, Inventory Management, Accounts, Warehouse, Logistics, Supply Chain, Production & all the other relevant functions for the business. Business must be organized from its first day of operations; only then the tasks can be delegated.

    At YRC, we design the organization structure, the processes, and approximate time taken to execute each process, job profile of every member within the organization, their KRAs, KPIs & the Reporting Structure.

    CRITICAL PATHWAY

    Critical Pathway Analysis (CPA), is a project management technique which cannot be overlooked while launching an ecommerce fashion brand. Brand launch process is cumbersome with multiple inter-dependent & time-bound tasks involved, which need to be tracked to ensure the project remains on track.

    CPA outlines key tasks across the project, their turnaround time (TAT) & the dependencies of tasks upon each other. It identifies the sequence of tasks, their interdependent steps from inception to completion, their criticalities, and their dates of onset, target dates of completion along with the key responsible person for the respective activities. Critical Pathway helps in understanding the unimportant & not urgent tasks which may jeopardize the execution of the project because of an unexpected snag! It also maps out the potential bottlenecks which might be posed because of the dependencies of tasks upon each other & cases where the next task cannot be commenced before the completion of the previous one.

    CPA detects the minimum & the maximum time involvement of a particular individual or team to execute the task, thereby arriving at the overall deadlines associated with the project.

    At Your Retail Coach, we design the Critical Pathway & review it periodically to ensure the project is on track & the progress is measurable.

    BUSINESS STRATEGY & BUSINESS PLAN

    Business Strategy includes the vision, mission, goals, business model, business plan & strategy for all the functions within the organization.

    Business Strategy is a well-defined plan that outlines who, what, where, why, how & when for the company; for example, who would be the target market, how to attract the target audience, when to launch new products, where to operate from, how to handle competitors, what would be the USP, what would be long term goal of the organization & several other answers to the 5Ws of Strategy.

    Business Strategy aligns the organization towards a common goal. Business SWOT helps company to identify & overcome their weaknesses & focus to sharpen the strengths. Business strategy forecasts future risks and helps business in building skillsets to overcome the potential threats.

    YRC’s Business Plan focuses on creating a “Blueprint” of the business, thereby deriving the feasibility of the concept & gauge whether the opportunity is lucrative to invest time, energy & effort. Business Plan creates cash flow understanding i.e. building inflow & outflow cash projections from Week zero to week 60 i.e. 05 year projection. Business Plan calculates the capital investment, operating costs, one-time costs, recurring costs & all the other numbers relevant to obtain the breakeven sales, return on investment, return on capital, internal rate of return & several other ratios. Business Plan is also one of the important requirements if you are targeting the “Investor Route”. Fund raising becomes extremely transparent & channelized. With business plan panned out clearly, the business will know until what point must it be stretched & where to stop, which reduces the probability of unplanned investments.

    MARKET RESEARCH

    Starting the concept of Ecommerce Fashion brand with Market Research ensures we get detailed understanding of the industry & this research report also acts as a social confirmation for your concept. Market Research helps in understanding the target locations, their population, potential online buyers for your product, competitors for each category, and top selling products of the competitors, competitors’ price range, offers & their responses & much more. Market Research helps in thorough understanding of your brand position as compared to our competitors. It helps in identifying gaps in the market, in your category along with the scope of the said product in the desired market. This will help in validation of your concept & prevents you from making the same mistakes as your fellow brands, eventually saving your time, energy & efforts. This phase is also a make or a break phase, as the market research study may at-times come up with some eye-popping numbers & statistics which might compel you to re-think on your product or category that you are planning to sell or alter your entire concept itself!! Market Research Reports analyse the competitors’ webstore for their traffic, conversion & sales. This is extremely valuable information to derive our inventory budgets & projections, which takes us to our next phase.