Putting profit in your pocket

Building a salon where everything just works is the dream - the team is stable, stylists are fully booked and more money comes in than out. But a busy salon doesn’t always mean healthy profit, especially when in so many salons 40% of colour ends up as waste.

Salon owner and Matrix Artistic Ambassador Michelle Summers Davies has found the sweet spot. To celebrate successful business women for International Women’s Day this month, we asked her about the best path to prosperity

You travel a lot so how do you manage your team during your absence?

I opened Michelle Davies Hair 30 years ago and spent a long time perfecting salon procedures. Education and team-building is a priority, but so, too, is finding good partners like Vish to protect profitability. Before Vish it was a challenge to make every colour appointment profitable. Vish monitors colour use so I don’t have to. It protects every service to ensure its profitable and stops the inequity of colour where shorthaired clients subsidise those with longer, thicker hair. Any additional product such as toners or extra bowls of colour is captured on the system and charged at checkout. It has also slashed waste so I’m not paying for any excess colour mixed and then binned.

Do you set goals to help guide the team profitability?

I love any data that helps me run my business better. Recently Vish released stats showing exactly what colour costs and how much the average salon should be charging. It was illuminating. As a team we are working towards those figures and I use a mixture of teambuilding and education to keep them on target. We are on 98% reweigh!

How important is delegation?

My business wouldn’t thrive if I didn’t delegate to the team and give them agency over their own success. I’m very much a manage-through-praise sort of person. I make time to listen to them and encourage innovation, and they know I will always be willing to invest in their continuing professional development. When I brought Vish into the salon, I ran a full education session, explaining the benefits. The team loved it from day one because they no longer needed to remember to write down formulas (it’s just there on the system), feel guilty about colour waste or struggle to remember every product used during the appointment. Vish does it all for them.

By following Michelle’s example, salon owners can unlock their own path to prosperity, reduce waste, and provide their team with the tools they need to succeed.

For a closer look at Vish go to getvish.com