Salon Business
Learn tips, tricks and business recommendations from our top salon professionals.
01.21.2020
Is Your Inventory Holiday Ready?
The recommended budget for supplies should be 5% of your service sales, according to Salon Today.
If you are like many salon owners at this time of year, you may fear that your backbar will be depleted going into the holidays or that you have too many retail items to sell through right now to make room for gift sets. Don’t panic! The fall season is a great time to evaluate inventory, prepare for a successful holiday season and plan a fresh start to the new year. In inventory management, the two key figures to calculate are 1) how much product your salon goes through and 2) your service sales total. Without these numbers, you cannot determine what you need and what your budget should be.
Protip
The recommended budget for supplies should be 5% of your service sales, according to Salon Today.
Controlling color costs
Now, before you stand behind your stylists with a magnifying glass to scope out how much color they are mixing, consider these tips to keeping a healthy level of control:
- Measure. Encourage all of your stylists to measure color when mixing. Not only does this eliminate waste, but it also provides insurance on your clients’ final “ta-da” moments. No surprises here! You can find digital scales on our website to make this process a breeze.
- Charge per color. Recommend a base amount of color and the corresponding price for each type of service. Then increase the cost for any additional color used. This reduces color waste and helps you charge appropriately for your services.
- Track everything. Implement a POS system that lets you input the usage per service as you go so that you maintain accurate tracking and hold the team accountable. It is a great way to identify which retail items are your bestsellers and so that you know what to order more of!
- Check equipment. Run a routine inspection of equipment and understand the life cycle of each piece of equipment. Planning ahead for replacements is far more efficient than facing costly, unexpected repairs.
- Have an inventory strategy. Use the FIFO principle—first in, first out—to sell through inventory in the order it was purchased.
We hope this helped you and are wishing your salon successful inventory planning during this holiday season!
Sincerely,
Professionalstore.com