By Tina Bell
The day is finally here, and we can now sit indoors and have a coffee with friends, go for a meal or a drink indoors. No longer freezing our toes and fingers off while trying to shovel a meal in before it gets cold!
With the new easing of the rules comes new feelings. I still feel a little uneasy being in crowded places and I am still strict with my mask and social distancing rules. I’m just not convinced.
How are you all feeling?
In my salon we have mixed feelings. Some of the younger ones are buzzing with excitement while the older staff are like me and still unsure about it all, and we still think he will take it all away again as soon as the Indian Strain gets any worse.
I have noticed a definite increase in activity with the salon clients. The phone has rung a lot more over the past weekend and we have had a lot of new clients. This is bittersweet as we know these clients have come from another salon that has closed. This could have been any one of us, so although it’s amazing to see new faces, we are also ever so grateful that we are still here and fighting to move forward from the impact Covid has had on all small salons and businesses.
We haven’t changed much in the salon, we are still following full PPE, facemasks, aprons, disposable towels etc and still fully cleaning everything between each client and making sure any heavy traffic areas are cleaned often throughout the day. I don’t think we will be easing on this for a long time to come. Although I have offered the staff a choice of mask or visor to make them a little more comfortable throughout the working day.
I definitely think the clients appreciate all of the effort we put in to keeping them safe, as well as looking after ourselves.
The team also do the lateral flow tests, available from the NHS or chemists close by two times a week. I log all their results, as well as logging them with the NHS. This just ensures us as a team that we are safe to work with the clients as well as each other.
We need to make sure we are making as much as we can and as we are in a new tax year, the national minimum wage has increased. So, it’s time to increase your treatment prices. It doesn’t have to be much, but an extra 50p - £1.00 will cover the extra wages each week and not cut into your profit. Most clients will totally understand and to be fair, most expect it. It makes a massive difference when you’re paying the wages each week, especially if you have a lot of staff like myself.
To welcome the clients back after the lockdown we have been placing offers on weekly to make the most of the clientele that have been happy to return to the salon. We have been offering them add on services at a discounted rate so they can try new things they normally would not consider. This has worked well and I would say at least 70% rebooked back in for the offer treatment again. Since things have been lifted even more, we have done some new offers and called them “returning to normality”.
We have done an email drop to the whole client base through our booking system, Book in Beautiful, telling them about the new offers and just reassuring them that we are still maintaining high safety standards throughout the salon.
I think over the next few weeks as people take the first step out and getting their lives back to some normal routine we will see more and more returning to our salons. Weddings will start up again, and holidays will return, which for us is great news as this is where a majority of our new summer clients come from.
In the meantime, while we wait for the little influx in returning and new clients, make sure you utilise the clients you do have, do little add-ons and upgrades, and increase the spend per client. Spend a little time with the staff and get selling those products. A £5.99 cuticle feed per client can mean an extra £40-50 a day which could be an extra £200 a week.
Stay strong and keep going, we’ve lasted this long ladies, we can do this – we are the ones that survived so let’s celebrate that knowing we are eventually going to come out the other side even stronger business women!
If I can be of any help to do with Pure Nails products, costings, or business advice I am happy to help. Please email me on Nailtechsupport@purenails.co
