Blueprint of a First Year

Open for Business: Panache Nail Studio

by NAILS Magazine | August 4, 2009 | Bookmark +
So I officially opened for business on July 6, and I must say that it's going well. I have some of the greatest gals coming in for services and can't imagine a job that would be more fun than this! So far I am keeping it pretty low-key, not doing any advertising except word of mouth and a bit on Craigslist — which works pretty well.

I spent a lot of time working on my policies prior to opening. I think one of my biggest concerns in this business is getting to the place of having a reliable schedule, leading to a reliable income. With that in mind, I decided to offer a slight discount to clients who book standing appointments. In my first four weeks of business, 62% of my clients have taken me up on that and 62% of those have standing appointments for two services!

This was an idea I asked many people about and for the most part people felt like I shouldn't discount my services, but at this point I'm open to seeing what works. For anyone interested in trying this, I generally just explain the benefits of standing appointments to clients while I am performing their service. I let them know that I reserve their time for them for the following year, and they receive the following benefits:

--Discount (varies slightly by service booked)

--Free (reasonable) repairs

--Priority scheduling for additional services

--Occasional specials for standing clients only (TBD)

When all is said and done, they're happy they got a great service and saved money, and I'm pleased with both the income and seeing my calendar start to fill up.

—Candice, Panache Nail Studio, Marysville, Wash.

For reprint and licensing requests for this article, Click here.

a Bobit media brand

Create your free Bobit Connect account to bookmark content.

The secure and easy all-access connection to your content.
Bookmarked content can then be accessed anytime on all of your logged in devices!

Create Account