
The Foot Fantastic
From Skin Deep The Body Spa in Huntington Beach, Calif. comes a rejuvinating pedicure tailor-made for those cold winter months.

From Skin Deep The Body Spa in Huntington Beach, Calif. comes a rejuvinating pedicure tailor-made for those cold winter months.

Warm and aromatic, the Hot Buttered Rum Pedicure is an ideal warming winter service offered at Jill Wright Spa for Nails in Bowling Green, Ky.
Veteran nail tech Shari Finger—owner of Finger’s Nail Studio in W. Dundee, III—fields reader questions in the areas of salon management and workplace politics.

From a newbie tech who’d discount to get in new clients to a veteran tech who offers an alternative to discounting your core services, we offer you multiple perspectives on this issue.

When NAILS polled its readers about their top salon challenges, competition from discount salons ranked second on the list, just behind attracting and retaining new clients. But for every tech feeling the sting of low-priced competitors popping up on nearly every street corner, there are many who have made peace with the problem; some have even used the competition to spur them to adopt higher levels of customer service and more stringent sanitation standards.

Sell one more bottle of polish each day. If you sell one $10 bottle of polish you should make $5 net profit on it, adding up to an extra $1,800 a year.

By analyzing her workload and employing smarter scheduling, nail tech Heather Goodwin managed to work fewer hours and still increase her income by $25,000 a year. Learn her strategies to maximize your schedule and create the career you want.

As a salon owner or manager you may struggle with one question daily: Where does all the money go? You generate plenty of income in services and retail sales, yet there is little left to show for it at the end of the month. To regain control of your profitability, learn about the six profit points that make or break a salon.
Many of you are concerned that when an increase is implemented, clients will leave, and in some instances, this may be true. But you must not forget future goals, and you must keep pace with increases in supply costs, education expenses, and other overhead cost expenses.

Coach advises nail tech that to serve her primary customers, she'll have to change her hours to accommodate them.
They charge almost double the average price for a set of nails and their appointment books are so full they turn away clients. What is it that allows these techs to command such a high fee, and how can their advice impact your bottom line?
Nail tech Holly Schippers came up with a pricing plan that helps clients take better care of their nails and allows her to charge the right price for the right service time.
Create a nail menu that caters to your clients’ individual wants and needs. If you offer low-priced options and add-ons you can form an à la carte menu that may appeal to busy, choosy consumers.
Is your salon ready to raise prices? Getting clients to accept a price increase gracefully depends largely on how it is presented to them.

How a salon chooses to pay its staff can make all the difference in employee retention, quality of service, profitability, and your ability to compete. After payroll, salon owners are often left only with their own tip money and revenue from services they've performed. Should you abandon the traditional commission structure for a pay system that rewards behaviors that are key to the salon's overall success?
Salons could easily charge, and get, $50-$60 for a full set. Those increasing service prices helped the overall industry growth upward this year (after a year that saw the overall business fall, this year we saw an increase in salon business from $6.43 billion to $6.45 billion).

By understanding and committing to the principles of good management, your business can succeed and even flourish. Are you doing all you can do when it comes to smart scheduling, customer relations, employee management, and analyzing the numbers behind your business decisions?