Starting your own business is hugely exciting, and it’s easy to get carried away. However, a successful beauty salon can really bring in a large amount of money and give you time to spend with your family, so if it is something you want to do, it is definitely worth looking into. As long as you plan well and prepare everything before you launch, you stand every chance of doing well.
Write A Business Plan
No matter what kind of business you’re planning on opening, you will need a well thought out and concise business plan. For a beauty salon, where there is so much equipment to buy in, you’ll really need to drill down into every aspect of where you’ll be buying these things from, and how much you’ll be selling your services for.
There has to be a good profit, or your bank, private lending company, or investor won’t want to fund your startup. They may think it’s a good idea, but if they’re not going to make any money, they won’t want to spend any either. If you are turned down for funding, you need to look at your figures; if your investors don’t think they’ll see a return on their money, you won’t see much in the way of a salary either.
What Will You Do?
The term ‘beauty salon’ is a wide-ranging one, and can mean different things to different people. There are so many different beauty treatments around these days, it would be pretty much impossible to offer all of them. You need to look at where your skills lie, and how much each treatment would cost the salon, before committing. See what’s popular in other salons, or look on social media for ideas of what people want.
Buy Second Hand
Buying second hand can be a way to get more equipment for your money, and therefore be able to offer more on the same budget. If you need lasers, for example, look at the used lasers for sale at Sentient Lasers.
If you want to offer tanning, check out used tanning beds in your local area. Just make sure that whatever you buy looks like new, and works well. You don’t want to put people off if the machines look ragged and elderly, and you don’t want to have to pay for repairs on top of all the other costs of starting a business.
Staff
You may not want to hire staff right away, and that makes sense, but if you want to expand you won’t be able to keep it up for long. If you’re happy remaining a small business, and you want the flexibility of not having any employees, then that’s fine, but if you want to expand, and if you want to be able to take time off when you need it and still have money coming in, you’ll need to hire people.
Make sure you interview everyone face to face, and not just look at resumes; when it comes to working in a salon, it’s experience and personality combined that count.
