Why you should review your beauty business’ opening hours
By Marie-Louise Coster | 30 March 2024 | Business, Expert Advice, Feature
Session nail stylist, salon owner & educator, Marie-Louise Coster, shares the importance of regularly reviewing your business’ opening times…
When you started your business, how much thought did you put into your opening hours? And have you reviewed them since?
Many of you will have spent time considering the most sought-after times of the day and week and based your opening hours on this. Others may have thought about when they want to work, and some of you may have used other businesses’ opening hours for reference.
When I first started in the beauty industry in the early ’90s, salons opened like shops did. 30 years on, we live in a very different world. Clients have more demands on their time and require more flexibility, plus there are so many more salons and therapists now, giving clients plenty of choice. If you don’t open the hours they need, another business will.
Ask yourself: are you busy every hour of the day? Are clients asking for days and times you are closed? When and where is the demand?
When you own a business, you should constantly review it, including your hours. You shouldn’t keep doing the same thing over and over if you aren’t fully booked or getting the results you want.
If you offer treatments from 9am, but no one books the 9am slots because they are on the school run or their way to work, why bother opening that early? You are paying for electricity and wages if you employ staff, and earning nothing. Maybe you close at 5pm or 6pm, but if a client is working, this may not be late enough. Wouldn’t it be better to open at 10am and remain open until 7pm? You could stagger shifts so employees aren’t working long days every day. If you work alone, you may decide that you only want to offer a couple of late nights, but on those days you may start later.
Ask clients what hours they would like you to be open, in-person and via your social media outlets. You may have followers that are interested in your work but have never booked with you, because of your opening times.
Let’s break it down…
Take the example that your business is open Tuesday to Friday 9am-6pm and Saturday 9am-2pm, meaning you are open 41 hours per week. Are all of those days busy? Would Monday be busier than Tuesday, for example? Did you choose to close on a Monday because that is what salons did traditionally, and have you considered opening on a Monday because many others don’t and there is a potentially untapped audience?
It is costly being open with no one in, so would you be wise to condense your hours and maybe work four longer days? I adopted this approach after the pandemic. The days I work are my busiest days of the week and I earn more than I did before, because I am not heating and lighting my premises just for me.
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