Holiday parties are going on everywhere right now and that means people wanting to look their best for them. That all starts at the top, namely people’s manes. You can help partygoers and holiday revellers look their best by opening up a hair salon franchise.
According to ISIBWorld, the hair and nail salon industry in Canada is worth $4 billion and grew by 2.3% annually from 2013-18. It employs 71,300 people over 36,000 businesses and has benefited from a rise in disposable income and consumer confidence in the country recently.
Attracted by rising profit margins and low barriers to entry, more and more companies continue to pop up all over the place. Demand for services like hair cutting, hair styling, hair tinting along with manicures and pedicures is expected to keep rising over the next five years to 2023.
Find Your Niche
While a standard hair styling franchise can be quite successful, sometimes it helps to have a specific niche. You could open a children’s hairstyling franchise or opt for a modern take on the barber shop and specialize in only men’s hair styling. If you open in a neighbourhood that is mostly made up of older people, you could specialize in hairstyles that older people tend to like and if your neighbourhood is younger, perhaps you skew toward more contemporary styles. Sometimes having a niche is a good idea and can be the difference between succeeding and not succeeding.
Add Services
Salons often have multiple services and if you want to expand beyond hair, it’s generally not that difficult to do, providing your franchise offers that particular business model. Aside from offering all the usual hair styling services, including cutting, styling, colouring, perming, extensions and more, you can also set up some manicure and pedicure stations and you might also be able to expand into other services like waxing and massaging. Again, it all depends on what your franchise allows, but hair salons are easily expandable into other beauty service areas.
Be Recession Proof
Somewhat counterintuitively, the beauty industry has proven to be rather recession proof. You can find countless articles about the industry’s knack for staying profitable during even the worst economic downturns and the reasons cited usually boil down to people wanting to look good despite how the economy is doing. Even if everything else in their lives are feeling the pinch, people still seem willing to spend some disposable income on making sure they look — and feel — good.
Attract the Men
Traditionally, the beauty industry has been seen as catering more to women than men, but that is changing. Now, more than ever, men are pampering themselves in salons by getting waxed or having their nails done. Those aforementioned modern barber shops? They are also offering up more than just haircuts, with many going back to offering the traditional straight razor shave for men complete with a hot towel. As more men get serious about things like skin care, they offer salon franchisees another customer base to attract.
Trust the Brand
As we’ve mentioned before, one of the best things about joining a franchise is being able to use the already established brand name to attract customers. People like sticking with brands they trust, so you can utilize a brand’s reputation for your gain. Your franchisor will have national or regional advertising campaigns and will give you material to use in your own marketing. If you have any ideas for marketing campaigns, most franchisors will be more than happy to listen.
If you want to help people look good and feel good about themselves so they can rock their holiday parties, a hair salon franchise is a fabulous way to do just that. Take control of your own future by signing up for a free FranNet franchise search and consultation today and letting us help you on your way to business ownership and wealth building.