40% of beauty salons can’t yet cover costs since reopening

Business has not bounced back as quickly as hoped, according to the results of the new National Hair & Beauty Federation (NHBF) State of Trade Survey, conducted across 2,018 UK beauty and hair salons.

Three in four said business was down compared to the same period last year. Two thirds expected business to remain slow based on their bookings for the next three months, with 35% genuinely worried about how little appointments they have coming up and 41% unsure if their business would survive until Christmas.

Based on their current workload and the operational restrictions within the Government guidelines, 40% of businesses in the beauty sector were not earning enough to cover outgoings such as rent, overheads, staff costs and stock. To compare, one in four businesses across the entire hair and beauty sector reported they could not cover their costs.

While not many had yet made redundancies, almost a third said they expected to cut staff in the next three months and 44% could not guarantee job security. Staff have seen their hours reduced (55% across hair and beauty but an alarming 74% in the beauty sector alone).

NHBF chief executive Hilary Hall said: “We continue to campaign hard, calling on the Government to provide extra support as they have for hospitality. We expect them to consider additional measures such as hardship grants, VAT reductions, further extensions to business rate reliefs, restraint on proposed wage increases and other measures.”