When Is The Right Time to Expand Your Salon into Multiple Locations

The whole process of running a salon can be broken down into four stages. First, you start the salon with all the great ideas you have. In the second you try your best to attract more customers and earn good profit. In the third, you would have reached some kind of constancy, in terms of customers, profit and reputation. It’s when the fourth stage comes, where you think about expanding your salon into multiple locations.

Unless you had so much resources — both monetary and human —, you would have started a single-location salon itself. As it happens, it’s the fourth stage that everyone’s confused about. The last time we checked, most salon owners don’t understand the right time to expand their salon into multiple location. And, if you ask us, we can’t give a ready-made answer yet.

As both of us know, salon business is really dependent on many factors, on your side and the customers’. It is thus unlikely that an impulsive decision to expand your salon business would help you succeed. Instead, a number of factors must be considered before taking steps to broaden your scope. In this article, we would be talking about indeed the right time to expand your salon.

Let’s Talk about Current Business

We hope you are not planning to leave the current salon/spa when the second one opens. So, we must talk about the current one first.

The first question you should ask yourself is this: how is my salon performing right now?

We don’t expect you to have a clear-cut answer, but you will certainly have an idea to start with. Your salon may be getting a good amount of visitors every day, you may have some dedicated professionals working at each sections and you may even have crossed the estimated profits last month. In short, as someone who’d dreamt of starting a salon one day, you would be satisfied with the performance.

Factors that Matter the Most

But, as experts say, starting another salon is more than what meets the eye. There are a number of factors that you should consider before just jumping in.

Take note of the following.

-          Ensure a Seamless Business Workflow

Every business succeeds when there is some level of automation involved. As the salon owner, this is quite an important aspect. To get the basics right, the salon should work perfectly fine even when you are not at the location. In most cases, what we have seen is that the business is hugely dependent on the manager. If the manager leaves, there will be minor to major issues in the overall workflow — also affecting the ultimate profit margins.

So, before you stick onto the decision, make sure that your current business goes like clockwork.

-          Do the Analytics (Don’t Underestimate Potential)

Error of judgement is not really helpful when it comes to expansion decisions. Before you make the decision to expand, you need to ensure that you are getting the best out of the current outlet. For instance, you must know how much customers you are retaining and whether your staff is offering impressive service. This is an area where a salon management software with customer records system can help. Through techniques of data analytics and prediction, you would know how much your current outlet is really worth.

If you think you are not utilizing the most resources you have at the current outlet, do that.

-          Let’s Consider the Odds

Let’s review the story once again. You started out a salon in a convenient space, it started attracting more customers and it became a success (as you say it). But, have you considered the peripheral factors that have contributed to that outcome? For instance, the lack of beauty salons in the area could have helped you. Or, a potential organization or education institution could have contributed several hundred customers to your client list. And, you never know if any of them is available at the next place.

We would not recommend expanding unless you succeeded solely because of the excellence of your service.

You Should Expand Your Salon, If

To view things from the positive perspectives, you should look at some signs first. If you can see the following signs in your establishment, it’s the right time to expand to a new location.

-          Your Slots are All Booked

The next time you open your salon appointment software, take a deeper look. Check for the number of free columns you find every day. If you cannot find many free hours for any of your stylists, it’s the right time. It means that people are rushing to your salon and could not find available slots. To confirm this, you can do a simple thing:

Connect Google Analytics with your online booking system and analyze the behavior. If a lot of people visit the page but leave without booking, your assumption might be true. In that case, the strictness of slots is a great reason to expand the salon.

-          You don’t have Enough Space at the Salon

This is rather a physical constraint that may force you to expand the salon into an extra location. There are times when you cannot put enough number of chairs and other equipment for smooth functioning. At such a point, if your regulars are getting tired of waiting, you should think of expanding. This is probably the only sign that means multiple things.

It means that you are making the most out of the current space. It also means that your place attracts a lot more people than you expected earlier.

-          You have Less Churn and More Acquisition

If you are running a membership program for your salon, it’s the best way to track down the progress as well as the potential future. Once again, you should have got at least a free salon software in the first place. You can thus track how many memberships were added in the past weeks, in order to analyze the popularity of the place.

If there is less churn and consistent number of members each month, you can expect the same in your next location as well.

Summing Up

We hope you got an answer for when you should expand your salon into multiple location. To sum up every bit we said, it’s about management. Unless you can allocate someone to manage the next location, you have to bring the current salon space to clockwork. Of course, you can get the help of some brand-new technology such as the salon management software like Miosalon and membership tracker. And, once you think your absence would not impact the current salon’s growth, you can expand with confidence.