Enhance the Service - Retail

As I visit salons, I have to ask myself what it is that salons do not get about the benefits of retailing profession al products to their clients. Hair and nail salons alike are slow to embrace this incredibly easy way to add to the salon's bottom line.

Go into your local superstore, drugstore, or grocery and check out the nail care area. You will be surprised at the amount of space these stores devote to the category of nails. Yet the average nail salon may only offer polish and top coat to their clients for their home care. If salons sold the products that they used on their clients, the clients would not ask for it in the drugstores and the drugstores would not seek ways to acquire the products.

Here are the basics of what a nail salon retail area should contain:

•nail polish

•top coat

•base coat

•natural nail strengthener

•hand lotion

•cuticle treatment (oil, cream, or both)

•nail glue

•cuticle pushers

•nail files (natural nail files, 3-way buffers, white block

buffers, and files for artificial nails)

•nail repair kit

•polish remover (4- and 8-oz. size)

•dip-off polish remover

•polish corrector pen

•nail scrub brush

•nail biter remedy

•nail disorder remedies

The above list represents the minimum of items you should offer the clients in your salon. 1 recommend of­fering two to three brands in each category if possible. You should only carry the polish brands that you use on the clients. (If you carry a brand that you do not use, you will not sell as much and it will cause problems when a client wants to pull a color to wear off the display)

Your salon should make a brochure that contains all of your retail items with descriptions of their uses and prices. This enables a client to take the brochure home and later decide to purchase something from you. I also recommend assembling pre-packs such as artificial nail care kits, natural nail care kits, and men's nail care kits.

Now here is the trick of understanding retail. You can't fill up your shelves, sell the product, and never re stock it. You need to have an inventory sheet. You list the product for sale and the quantity ("par") you need to have on the shelf. Every day or week (depending how busy the salon is), note how many are on the shelf and how many you need to buy to bring the amount back to the "par" level.

Decide on the initial investment amount you're comfortable with -......$500 is a good start. If you double the wholesale price of everything you buy and then sell it, after you have sold everything in your initial purchase, you will have $ 1,000. Take the original $500 investment and put it back in the bank. Take the $500 profit to re stock your products. Now all retail sales are total profit to you. It is really that simple.

With a $500 dollar investment in product and if every­thing only sells once a month, that is a total of $6,000 after a year. After you replace the $500 investment, you have a profit of $5,500. 1 his is a simplistic look at the numbers, but it tells the story. There is money in retail and it makes sense to help your customers find the right products for their needs while you benefit also.