Opening your own hair or beauty salon can be one of the most exciting times for any budding entrepreneur. Beauty therapists and hairdressers alike will be able to take control of their own store, manage their own staff, finances and the general day to day running of it.

However, the opening of a salon does require a lot of planning before hand and there’s many factors that contribute to make sure it’s a successful business venture. To ensure that you don’t end up out of pocket or give up on your dream, we’ve put together some of the key factors that we think you need to know about before taking this next step.

A business plan

One of the most important things that you need to consider before launching your salon is to set up a business plan for it. This should be a detailed account that outlines what your salon is, products and treatments it will offer to clients, costs, outgoing bills and ways that you will achieve your goals.

For those of you taking out a bank loan to set up a business, it’s likely your bank manager will want to see this plan to make sure you are in control of managing money, have a clear strategy of what you want from your company and that your business will be successful enough to pay retain enough profit to pay this loan back.

Without a clear plan of action, the salon could unfortunately result in failure.

Funding for the salon

No matter if you are buying or renting a salon, the whole process will be an expensive one. It’s important that you are confident that you have money behind you to fund this new venture.

Remember, you will need a deposit to place down if you are buying the property and for those who are renting, it’s wise to have savings behind you that you can use to help pay this bill while you are starting out the business.

Alongside this, chances are you will need to revamp the salon to make it yours. This could require flooring, decorating, furnishings, new treatment beds and purchasing equipment such as hair dryers and waxing tools. And although you might have many products that you can bring with you, you will be in a much bigger space with your own staff so resources will need to be increased.

If you are considering employing staff to work with you in the salon, you need to consider their pay as they will need to be paid weekly or monthly. If you take on an experienced therapist, they will want a higher wage as compared to a young graduate who has less experience. As a salon owner, it’s entirely up to you what you want your salon to be and how much you can afford to pay out for staff.

Follow the rules

For those of you wishing to open their own beauty salons, it’s important to ensure that any staff members who will be carrying out treatments and fully qualified to treat your clients. Salon owners do not need any qualifications but studied in salon management would be a massive help to them. On top of this, they should have a clear understanding of how the salon industry works.

However, for those opening a hair salon within the UK, staff don’t necessarily need any qualifications to be a barber of hairdressers. If you want, you can register your salon up to the Hair Council which was set up by the Hairdressers Act 1964 .

For those beauty and hair salons that will be offering hair colouring or tinting, you will need to follow- the control of substances hazardous to health regulations which requires you to patch test all clients before their treatment to make sure their skin doesn’t react.

Think of the audience you want to attract

Before setting up your business, you should have a clear idea of what sort of business you want to set up- and the audience you want to attract. It’s also wise to consider what makes your business stand out among your competitors.

Location

Choosing the location of your salon is one of the key factors within your business plan. To ensure your business is as successful as possible, you need to make sure your location is key to your customer base and in a known area that will catch the eye of passers by.

Along with location, it’s important that you choose a shop that is spacious. If the salon takes off, do you have room to expand or to extend? In the long term, it will save you the hassle of relocating and moving to another property.

Price match

Although you might be the new salon and trying to earn a profit, you still need to abide by similar costs of other salons within the area. Scout around on websites and on social media sites at neighbouring salons to see how much they charge for their treatments. Research is vital for this – if your prices are too high, many clients will choose to go somewhere cheaper for the same treatment and somewhere that’s been there a much longer time!

However, that’s not to say when you’re launching your store you can’t offer discounts or promotions to celebrate it!

Make sure you check back next week to discover our next blog post which will be looking at picking the perfect location for your salon.

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