COLLABORATION & community

Bringing external wellness specialists into your salon or spa can be a win-win situation. Multi-site salon owner Karen Thompson explains how she makes it work for her business

Over the last 40 years, Beauty Secrets has grown from a salon based in one room at home (started by my mum, Beryl) to a £million-plus organisation in the southeast of England with five salons and day spas.

While our staff-retention rates are good, with a growing number of team members having been a part of our family for over 10 or 20 years, recruitment of the beauty therapists we need to provide business continuity has become harder.

Team members like the development training we offer and the structured opportunities to progress within the company, but we also need a constant supply of new recruits to make this plan work. So, we had to look at other ways of filling our columns to continue to offer the treatments clients wanted and the newness our clients love to see.

Why bring in specialists?

Rather than constantly investing in additional equipment and treatments with expensive opening orders, which then mean further investment required in training for our own team, we decided to start to include treatments offered by external specialists. In a way, this becomes a ready-made workforce, enabling you to offer something new to your clients without the risks associated with introducing a new brand.

Demand for wellbeing treatments has been huge since the end of the pandemic, with clients craving the “touch” they were denied for almost two years. So, we decided to partner with other specialists offering wellbeing treatments like advanced massage, reiki, hypnotherapy and mental health coaching, as well as a nurse practitioner offering aesthetic treatments.

These partnerships provide a community of specialists who can promote cross-referrals between their clients and the salon, upsell opportunities to increase the number of treatments a client experiences with us, improve client retention by increasing client satisfaction, loyalty and repeat business, and undertake joint promotions for marketing purposes, collaborating in events and offers which can attract a wider client base.

The financial benefits

This type of collaboration also has financial benefits for beauty salons. Offering a wider range of services from specialists will increase the number of revenue streams into your business. There is a significant benefit in cost efficiency; by collaborating, you can share fixed costs and make use of vacant space you may have.

A wider selection of treatments will give you a competitive edge over other local salons too. As a one-stop shop we already have a large number of treatments but the addition of specialists means we can extend this list even further.

Your team may also benefit from professional development, as working alongside different specialists will provide learning opportunities and the ability to share ideas, techniques and trends.

However, it’s vital to find the right specialists to collaborate with. In my recent experience I have found that meeting face-to-face is by far the best option, rather than relying on email or text. To increase our visibility in the areas my salons are based, I have joined business network groups, including Chambers of Commerce and other local independent business networks. This has brought me into contact with like-minded business owners and those who are also keen to increase their visibility. I find that our backstory about how the business started is particularly engaging for some and this has enabled me to find those people who share the same values as me, which I believe is incredibly important if you are to work together successfully.

Drawing up a contract

After an initial engagement at an event, I always invite any specialists interested in collaborating to the relevant salon to meet the salon manager and ensure there is mutual understanding of what we would be able to offer each other. This is also a useful second opinion to ensure the collaboration works.

We have a contract that sets out the rights and responsibilities of both parties and covers things like remuneration and how it is to be paid, standards of cleanliness of the room before and after treatment, booking procedure and any marketing agreed, contact details in case of any emergencies, details about access during and outside of working hours and the documents required as evidence of qualification and insurance. This is not an exhaustive list, but it is essential to get it signed before the collaboration begins.

Calculating costs

You also need to determine the cost of having someone work in your business. To do this, you’ll need to know your total monthly operating costs, which include rent, utilities, insurance, maintenance and any additional staff costs; for example, if you would need to have a receptionist in the salon to cover any hours the specialist works outside of your normal working hours.

Once you have a ballpark number for this monthly cost, you can divide it into a daily figure for a room, by dividing it by the number of rooms you have in total and then dividing it by the number of days in the month.

Other factors to consider include the availability of other accommodation locally for these practitioners. If there are a number of locations, it is good to familiarise yourself with their charges. It is not necessary to compete with others on price but being aware of what is out there gives you power in your negotiations.

For some of our specialists, we simply charge a room rental rate based on the calculation above; for others, it is calculated as an hourly rate. For the higher value treatments offered by our aesthetic nurse, we receive a set figure for each client treated. There is no right or wrong way to calculate it; you should do what works best for both of you.

We receive a higher rate if we include marketing on our own social media to help spread the awareness that we have specialists offering enhanced services, while for some it is purely a place to bring their own clients. All specialists are responsible for taking their own payments and they manage their own diaries and keep their own client details, so they are operating as a completely separate business to ours.

Making connections

Collaboration works for us and I would like to see us embracing further relationships with specialists to create our own community within Beauty Secrets. I would like to work on increasing the number of collaborations we have with different businesses outside of the beauty industry too as I am a firm believer that we can achieve greater things when we work together, rather than alone. Being in business for yourself can be a bit of a lonely existence and I find creating collaborative relationships with other business owners a very uplifting and positive experience as it reminds you that you are not alone!

Karen Thompson is managing director of Beauty Secrets, with five salons across the South East. She also brings business owners together at events to network. Contact her at karen.thompson@beautysecretsspa.co.uk