BLOG spot RISING TO THE CHALLENGE By Deb Farnworth-Wood
I’ve been in business for over thirty years, with 13 of these heavily involved in the beauty, medi-aesthetics field. A hallmark of my approach to business has been to have goals that really stretched me and to view problems as challenges, just waiting for a solution. COVID-19 is a very unique challenge. It’s not just an economic downturn; it has, depending on where you are located, wrapped tight restraints around many aspects of doing busines – especially in the beauty and aesthetics environment.
the original Australian Skin Clinics, a business I franchised and, in just five years, grew to 60 clinics. When I sold that business in 2019, I retained the original clinic and gave it a new name. It was important to keep the expertise of my therapists, so I kept them employed and busy writing blogs and content for social media platforms and the website.
When COVID-19 reached our shores, I was a long way down the track of buying a new business – in fact, I had the pre-handover stocktake scheduled for the 27th of March with a view to taking over that week. A State of Emergency and subsequent lockdown threw my plans into chaos.
I was no stranger to economic shocks. I had bought Ultimate Skin and Body Clinic three months before the GFC hit, but by pivoting to new services and with good cash reserves, I traded 45% up on the previous year.
The company I was buying, Issada, is a cosmetics company specialising in high quality makeup and accessories using natural, ethically sourced ingredients. The owner was my long-term friend, Fiona Neale. So, even though I was legally able to walk away, it never occurred to me to do so. I was verbally and emotionally committed. Importantly, I was confident that if we suffered a severe downturn, I had the cash reserves to wait it out. I had already temporarily closed one of my current businesses – the Ultimate Skin and Body Clinic on the Gold Coast. This clinic was 52
Beauty Biz Year 13 Issue 3
My other business, Valor Organics, which makes and distributes organic beard and shaving products, needed to continue manufacturing to generate cash flow.
It became evident there was going to be an unknown period of time in “hibernation”. But, however, hibernation didn’t need to mean “inertia”. I needed to minimise the impact on all three businesses; to rapidly introduce efficiencies (contrary to my normal practice of observing over a period of time before enacting change); to be creative around services we could offer; and to use any downtime to plan for a quick start out of the blocks, once circumstances allowed. My friendship with previous owner of Issada, Fiona Neale, meant that, even though I didn’t yet own Issada, together we could work to future-proof the business. We accelerated our plans for a new Issada website and, for the
first time, included the ability for customers to order online. To protect our stockists – who we truly value – we devised a plan to allow purchasers to select their usual stockist when they ordered, so we could financially reward that salon/spa/clinic. We also spent time revisiting the branding and marketing materials and we will be launching these in the near future, together with a post-COVID promotional package for our stockists. Lockdown time was also spent finalising new products to launch in September. At my Ultimate Skin and Body Clinic I introduced PDO threading. The research, pricing exploration and theory learning occurred during lockdown, and as soon as we were able, training occurred. I re-skinned the website, adding an online booking system using the Timely platform and an online shop. The Valor Organics factory remained open but with a skeleton staff – which was a challenge because we were overwhelmed with orders for soap and body wash! We focused excess capacity on developing new Valor skincare products. There are many lessons for businesses to learn from this pandemic. I am a realist. I hope for the best but plan for the worst, hence my great belief in having good cash reserves. I believe we are in for a tough couple of years, so my plan is to run lean, ensure that every single staff member fully contributes to the bottom line and to innovate: developing those unique products and services that will give us an edge over our competitors.
