Opinion: Why Salon Prices Are On The Rise

Hey my beauties, I had a conversation with a client about the finacial shift many have felt in the industry. In my opinion, there are many reasons why so many stylist are raising their prices and catering to more specialty work. Since 2017, or at least that’s when I noticed a shift, there has been more education catered to the business of running a salon. Before I get to how we got here lets take it back a little. Prior to 2004, most salons were either booth rental or commission based. Booth rental is where stylist pay a weekly fee for a chair in a salon. Commission based salon is where the salon provides everything for the stylist in exchange for a percentage of sales. Around 2004 a franchise by the name of Sola Salons came on the scene from Denver, Colorado. This new business model revolutionized the industry because it gave stylist the ability to own their business like a commission salon with the same cost/overhead of a booth rental. Owning a private suite allowed us as stylist to create the business we wanted, using products we wanted, decorate the way we wanted and build our business the way we wanted without limitations.

At the time of this business trend taking off, a lot of the education was still catering to team based salons. As the demand for business education grew for sutie owners, the more suite owners started to understand that we weren’t running our business like a business. To be completely honest, most creatives are allergic to the tasks of running numbers, organization and everything necessary to actually run a business. Beginning around 2016/2017, there was a growing number of salon business mentors/coaches that understood how to speak the language of business so creatives could understand how to apply it. It took a long time but many stylist began to understand how they were underserving their business and by extension under serving their clients. Then the pandemic happened and we had to close our doors, many stylist quickly started to see why it was important to understand the busiess side of our industry. It was reported that over 100,000 stylist left the industry during this time. While there isn’t direct evidence, I’d bet that many out of that large number had to close their doors because they were not properly set up to handle the business pivot needed to ride out the pandemic wave.

For those of us that actually survived the lockdown, we had no choice but to pay attention to what’s been going on with the business side of things. For many stylist, myself included, we understood that we needed to make a shift in order to not only adjust to the new materials needed to run a safe business but also take on the influx of new clients. With over 100,000 stylist leaving the industry, their clients needed new stylist for their hair care needs. As a result, we needed mentoring/coaching on how to properly run our businesses so we can really provide the best experience we could. Learning from a business mentor/coach lead many stylist to realize they were well behind the ball on pricing. Many have had to slowly raise their prices to give their clients time to adjust. A lot of stylist have expressed being anywhere between $10-$80 short of where their pricing should be. So for many, instead of it being a sticker shock, they have opted for a gradual grow in order to catch up. For those of us that have been keeping up with pricing have a different goal. There are other stylist that want to grow more in their craft and business so have sought out mentoring on how to do that in a way that makes sense for their business and not shooting blindly in the dark. There are a lot of businesses in general that have increased pricing due to supply chain shortages, infliation and interest rate hikes. Beauty industry based businesses are no different, it’s just that many of us never knew to make the adjustment before. So if you’re a client and see your stylist raising their prices know that they’re either catching up to where the industry is or they’re growing their business to provide better service. As for my professional cuties, for the love of all things great, seek out a mentor/coach to help with giving you perspective on what’s best for YOUR business. Don’t forget to subscribe, comment and share. Until next time…SMOOCHES!