Price it right

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Chris Parker – SAHJ

A Hair Journal reader recently wrote into the magazine about salons in his area and the extremely low prices they are offering and how is this sustainable to a salon and where are corners being cut? He also mentioned he knows of a few salons who’ve recently closed their doors.

It’s a very good question, if the salon down the road or in the same shopping centre charges more or less than you do for the same product or service what should you do? How can you compete?

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Mobile Transacting

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About a year ago I wrote an article called “To App or not to App?” As the title suggests it was a look at whether salons should have their own mobile app. In asking this question we discovered that apps can and should be used by salons but this did not necessarily mean that you needed to run out and pay someone to build you your own app. Rather we recognised that there are many different types of apps that solve different types of problems for your business, from utilities to third party to industry specific, white label and custom developed. Thus the conclusion was nothing revolutionary in that when making your decision about using mobile apps you had to answer a very simple question about what problem you wish to solve and how would an app solve the problem for you.

A year down the line I would like to revisit this question and expand upon the topic as we see a rise in the area of third party apps that specifically focus on mobile transactions, ie payment via mobile phone.

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Are you engaged?

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In this month’s article I would like to ask the question “Are you engaged with your clients?” I think that many salon owners will feel a lot of pressure to be sending out regular emails to clients telling them of news, specials and other information that they hope will lead the clients to return and spend more money with them.

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Ye of little faith

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I have a three boys now. Our four year old is in the stage of learning to tie his shoes. Imagine if my attitude towards him was “oh, my son is just never going to be capable of doing this”. Or when it comes to dinner time I simply let my two year old continue to mash his food into his face rather than teach him to use a spoon or a fork or if I decided that its just too hard to potty train him and I leave him in nappies forever.

Not only would this perpetuate the problem of having children that are not capable of doing things that they really ought to be able to do themselves but it would also send a message to them  (and others around them) that they are somehow inferior to other children and not capable of being taught or held accountable. What a sad scenario this would be.

Then why do owners, managers and administrators continue to treat salon staff in this way?

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