Ward’s world
Strength IN SHARING
With salon owners facing mounting financial and operational pressures, Hellen Ward outlines why honest conversations, shared strategies and peer support have never been more vital for the industry
This is not a shameless plug, but regular readers might have noticed that I have recently started a podcast (The Blow Out) specifically for salon owners. I never set out to do this – but a couple of years ago my friend Haylee Benton approached me to say she thought we should create a forum where salon owners can eavesdrop on our legendary business chats. Nothing is off topic; we debate the highs and the lows, the gains and the losses, the loses and the wins and share all the grisly details. Gritty and uncompromising, we set out to keep it real (no flannel or soft soap), highlighting that whatever the scale, salons are all facing the same challenges.
I met Haylee several years ago when she sent one of her senior leadership team on one of the live education courses I used to run. New to the industry, she’d just started her own brand in the sector and needed some guidance and mentoring. Our friendship blossomed and our relationship changed into one where we met every couple of months or so to share a glass of wine or two and catch up on all things business and personal.
I’ve learnt a lot from Haylee. Coming at it from the client’s perspective, her marketing strategies are always based with a consumer focus. She’s a talented marketeer (as well as a serial entrepreneur and brilliant CEO) and I adopt many of her campaigns, mercilessly plagiarising her!
Joking apart, I think it’s never been more important to share ideas, potential solutions and perspectives with our peers.
Facing challenges
The recent British Hair Consortium Service Industry Status Report encapsulates the feelings of people working in the sector post the Autumn Budget of 2025. We created this data to shine a light on our industry. Rarely a news moment passes without hospitality citing their woes (the Government's U-turn on pubs and live music venues’ business rates is a case in point) but our arguably more severely challenged sector doesn’t achieve the same column inches.
Please do take a look at the results (see page 13), even if it’s a depressing read. The risk of closures, the mental health impact on salon owners, the consequences to apprenticeships – all put the long-term future of our industry in serious jeopardy. Far from being in growth, the service side of the personal care sector is at grave risk. Take out the lipstick, deodorant and teeth whitening sales and see for yourselves what’s really going on economically.
This is what we present to government in our attempt to safeguard the industry we collectively represent and love. (BHC is: Salon Employers Association, Habia, Salon Owners United, The Fellowship for British Hairdressing, Men’s Hair Federation, Freelance Hair Association and The Hair & Barber Council).
Learning curve
Years ago, salon owners behaved a bit like a secret society. Ideas were never really shared when it came to business strategy. Fellow salon owners would politely nod and tell you that business was amazing at industry events – often pontificating on their expansion plans – only for you to find out a few months later that they’d quietly gone under. In this modern media world, thank heavens that is no longer the case.
There are solutions – but we need action. We will never stop shouting about what needs to happen to future-proof the salon industry for the next generation.
Many employers, for instance, are adopting the rent-a-room or chair model not through choice but necessity and may unwittingly be in danger of disguised employment.
Enforcement is happening – even though it might not be making the headlines (it wouldn’t, would it? Hardly the type of thing to go on your socials) – and the resulting penalties and fines for tax avoidance (VAT as well as NICS) aren’t pretty.
Hence the need for sharing an information in a safe and non-judgmental space. I no longer deliver my live education because it doesn’t feel seem to be the way people want to undertake their training and business courses anymore – they want to access it when they have time and trying to hit as many participants as possible in one location no longer works.
I wrote my Ultimate Salon Management series of textbooks in 2012 and am in the process of updating their content to relaunch each one as a workable webinar with checklists, real-world case studies, jargon-busters, interactive workbooks and practical templates; all downloadable with the original e-books to accompany each of the three courses.
“Sharing strategy – even if it only serves to help one struggling salon owner – is paying it forward”
It’s a lot of work but the demand for knowledge is ever-increasing. I don’t have all the answers but it’s lonely being the boss and knowing what the industry benchmarks has never been more crucial. Sharing strategy – even if it only serves to help one struggling salon owner who embraces an idea – is paying it forward.
There are lots of industry specific podcasts out there and I love listening to them. Hearing the challenges other people are facing and realising you are not alone is comforting at difficult times. And times sure will be difficult with the hikes in costs we are facing. Margins have never been so slim. Sharing the numbers is a vital element to facing it together. Stronger together? We have to be.
Hellen Ward is managing director of Richard Ward Hair & Metrospa in London, vice president of The Hair & Beauty Charity and co-founder of Salon Employers Association (SEA).