$50 a Day? Yes We Can!
By Gordon Miller
As featured in the Beauty Industry Report’s (BIR) January 2009 edition
Imagine a $600 million infusion of cash into salons in 2009! How about $1.8 billion in new retail sales? Impossible you say? Read on!
The National Cosmetology Association (NCA) strongly believes that the difference between successful salons and those who continue to struggle is the high profits associated with retail sales. However, this important message—that retail can create both wealth and opportunity for increased education, staff retention, client loyalty and personal gain—is not getting through to the independent salons that are the foundation of our industry.
With the support of manufacturers and distributors, we can challenge more than 50,000 salons—25% of the US market—to increase their retail sales by just $50 a day. The math is astounding…just $50 per day in new retail sales translates to $12,500 per year in new sales for one salon. That’s an industry gain of over $600 million in new retail sales. If we up the ante by adding $50 per day per stylist per salon, that means $1.8 billion in new sales industry-wide! Those are daunting but achievable numbers, when we take a new grassroots approach to a very old problem.
With help from you and other industry partners, NCA will create:
- An industry-wide marketing campaign promoting the ultimate value of retail to salon owners and professionals—economic empowerment through increased profitability. It will include monthly inserts into leading publications plus a significant online presence focused on inspiring salons to use growth in retail as a key to beating the recession and building long-term success.
- A grassroots “Salon Retailers Network” promoting role models or retail heroes to share real world examples to inspire success. Importantly, our goal is to support incremental growth in a way that serves the needs of salons and professionals at various levels of experience and commitment.
- A robust online repository of easy-to-use proven tools, benchmarks and best-practice systems to help build retail success.
- A grassroots support system of education, inspiration and motivation using existing industry events to help create and sustain momentum through a series of live workshops, panels and case studies directly connected to print and online resources, we’ll to bring to life the power of retail profits to change salons for the better.
Our industry is very much at the crossroads. We can do nothing and watch companies and salons fail. We can do things as they’ve always been done and stand by as record numbers of traditional salons and their employees transition to booth renters and into kitchens. Or we can act—together—to create a new understanding of how to do business in a changing economy.
NCA invites you to be part of a massive, concerted national effort to inspire change in how salons view their relationship with the bottles that too often gather dust on the shelf. We will launch our program this spring at IBS New York and in American Salon. Join the NCA and its national campaign to inspire change in salons.
Gordon Miller is Executive Director of the National Cosmetology Association. Reach him at 312-673-5868 or gmiller@ncacares.org.
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March 11th, 2009 at 9:08 am
I have never understood why retail companies like Revlon, Clairol, garnier, etc. always have big Ads in all the fashion mags and companys like Redken, Matrix, Bed Head, Joico, etc hardley ever do. people read these mags and buy these products BECAUSE they see them in the mags. We seem to only advertize in trade publications that don’t get to the general population. Very few ads are in Womens Day, Vogue, O, even Martha. I believe that to sell more they need to be seen by my clients in the magazines THEY read too not just articles written for the beauty industry.
March 17th, 2009 at 4:20 pm
This is a great point. Aveda and Paul Mitchell are in consumer magazines. I’ve seen Redken occassionally. We certainly consider this when choosing lines to carry.
March 20th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
Great Article!
April 1st, 2009 at 10:44 pm
We can not continue doing business in the same old way. We have to rethink and restructure the salons. Most salons spend so little time and effort selling retail. It is an easy and effortless way to increase the monies coming into our pockets.
April 21st, 2009 at 7:16 am
Retailing can be the way to build a loyal clientele for the independentsalon. Key,in my belief, is to fill a need. A need from the clientsprospective. Tools are often a need that clients are looking for. Retail the brush you use on them as a test .