Your salon business stands within the heart of a community. Whether your hair, beauty or barbering salon caters to a small rural village, or a busy, bustling city centre, your business is truly a destination where people come together.
Your salon also provides a safe space for clients to relax and unwind, and whatever treatments you provide, it is an outlet to escape the stresses of daily life. In an industry that caters to making people look and feel good, have you ever considered what your business can be doing to integrate more within the community? Whether it’s sponsoring events, offering discounts to people in the service industry, or working more closely with a charity, offering something back to the community is a great way to spread the word about your business and give something back.
In today’s article we speak to Samantha Grocutt, co-President of The Hairdressers’ Charity the official industry charity for the business of hair which dedicates its time to helping hairdressing professionals and ex-hairdressers in their hour of need. Here, Samantha discusses how you can give back to the community your salon is apart of.
In what ways do you think that salon businesses could be getting out into the community more?
As an industry, we’re very giving and supportive of others. It’s a very caring profession to be a part of. By getting involved in your community, whether that’s through charitable activities or community promotions, you are able to open up your brand and networking to a wider audience. You’ve a great commodity that other businesses and charities are keen to get access to – people love to receive a makeover and feel wonderful about themselves.
How do you think salons could give back more to the community?
I don’t think it’s a matter of giving back more – many hair salons are active in supporting charities and their communities but it’s perhaps how you do it. Think about why you’re doing it, who is going to manage the relationships and how you’re getting the message out to your team and customers too. Do you want to go for a national campaign, industry focus or maybe a local initiative? It may be that you want to combine and donate X% for a number of causes too.
What schemes are available for the hairdressing community to join?
As a charity, we help hairdressers in need. We’re really keen to get word of mouth about The Hairdressers’ Charity to as many hairdressers as possible. Fundraising is key but it’s also so that people know the charity is there to help them too. Perhaps you know of a colleague that’s fallen on hard times and isn’t quite sure where to turn to? We’re here to help.
We’re a small but important charity. We realise that salons can support lots of nationwide, consumer facing charities but this one is about you and your industry. In the past 10 years, we’ve donated £1.5million to hairdressers who needed help. We want to raise £200,000 this year so we can help even more people. Tomorrow you may need us, but today, we need you.
The charity hosts a number of activities that salons can get behind and help fundraise with – our Helping Hairdressers Day on Friday 29th June is an annual event where we encourage salons to wear purple, think of fundraising activities like raffles, cake sales, customer promotions – anything to get the message out there and help raise money.
Another key date is the new One Hour, One Day campaign on Friday 28th and Saturday 29th September. Here, we ask stylists to simply donate an hour of their time to the charity. You may want to come in an hour earlier or stay a bit later, but that hair appointment is donated to The Hairdressers Charity.
To find out more information on The Hairdressers’ Charity visit www.thehairdresserscharity.org
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