Beauty Salon Business Plan
Every beautician dreams of running their own beauty salon someday. Unfortunately because there are so many steps involved and unknowns involved, few go on to fulfill their ambition. Being a great beautician is one thing, but running a business is quite another. The creativity will certainly give you a good boost when it comes to business, but at the same time creativity won’t help with the more mundane aspects of business. Of course it won’t be easy and thousands of things will jump into your path and attempt to scupper you. It’s important to carry on and stick to your goals. Your beauty salon business plan is the first step along the path that will lead to you owning your own business. Be aware that many people have tread it before in the hopes of making a mark on the world through their very own business. Many fail.
That failure can often be traced back to a lack of planning. Unfortunately, those who are amazing within one area, especially a creative area, find themselves less adept at the serious business responsibilities. Many neglect the critical planning stage. This planning and preparation work that’s done in the beginning is an important first step. It shows you a model of your future business, one that can be tested against the market. The data for the market comes from market research and represents the typical figures you can expect, from which you can project expected sales trends and work out whether or not your business is viable.
A salon business plan has to be very readable and has to use solid research. It should also contain a very clear summary of what it is exactly your business does. Obviously a salon is much easier to describe than some businesses, but this is crucial if you’re doing something less common. Investors need to understand your business at a glance so that the rest of the document will make sense.
As you progress into your business plan, you’ll include lots of figures, and charts projecting your expected profit and growth. Those reading your document will need to be able to see where the money will be coming from, and how quickly they will see a return on their investment.
Your plan will also show where the customers will come from, based on your earlier market research. It will also detail your startup expenses, your day-to-day running costs, materials and other costs.
It’s also interesting to note; the business plan is for you more than anyone else! Many people neglect the business plan if they are self funding, since usually the bank manager is most interested in document. If you don’t have to please a bank manager or other investor, temptation is to let the plan slip. This is a bad idea.
When you can see the plan, it opens up a window into a potential future and lets you see problems months before they do become a problem. Look closely and see where the figures reveal such problems. If they cannot be overcome then it’s better to try again in a different location, or with a different business model. You might find for example when you draw up your beauty salon plan that the area you were planning to enter won’t support it. Going back to the drawing board and creating a hair salon business plan might reveal that a hair care business is much more viable in that area. Nor should you limit yourself to hair and beauty salons. Thinking about supply and demand will lead you naturally to discovering good possible businesses.
Location is key, so planning will involve trying to find the perfect location. This leads to the next most important factor which is the clientele. A business is nothing, indeed it’s bust, without its customers. Competition levels for those customers should be mapped out. The less competitors you have the less rivals you have competing for the same clients.
Funding is the next biggest issue. How do you intend to fund it? How long until you are profitable? And what are the key milestones your company has to reach before it’s unlikely to fail. You will need to turn a profit every month, or your company won’t last – like all the companies that have come and gone before.
Good solid market research will underpin the whole document. Such research must be conducted in the area you plan to start-up and if it represents a big enough sample of that population will give a clear indicator of the market. The whole point of the research is to enable exact figures to be extrapolated so that the business can be mapped out ahead of time. There are numerous market research firm that will do such research and give you a complete and accurate report. Such a report will then be fed into the business plan.
As mentioned, legal, rent, book-keeping, day-to-day, staffing and wages, as well as equipment purchases, are all costs that need to be accounted for in the beginning and throughout the plan.
Drawing up the plan is the hardest part. Armed with a sample plan, create something just like it and then tweak it so that it perfectly represents you. You’ll want it to impress those who look at it.
If your business plan reveals that your business won’t be profitable then it’s done its job – it’s served to warn you of such problems long before you’ve lost real money on them. You might have to go back to the drawing board and draw up another plan, with different figures and a different business model, and that’s a large part of the process. Eventually you will find your perfect business, so don’t give up.
Also see our 52 page report which will help you think about starting up and help you market your business effectively once it’s going: Style your Way to Success available on the main page. Or sign up to our free email mini-course below.
