BEAUTY WITH a soul

With the growing consciousness amongst salon owners about the environment, sustainable processes are fast becoming an integral part of a salon’s management. However, we still have a long way to go as there are several misconceptions about eco-friendly beauty services that need to be cleared. Being profitable and caring for the planet are not mutually exclusive goals. As consumers increasingly prioritize sustainability, the opportunities for sustainable salons to thrive are abundant. Kanishka Ramchandani connects with key opinion leaders from the industry to understand from them how they have managed to strike a balance between going green and staying profitable.

The Indian salon industry is on the cusp of change. The lockdown of 2020 propelled industry leaders to explore new innovative formats and business models with more awareness. Although the salon industry forms a part of the big beauty business and its impact on the environment is negligible compared to other industries, any and every effort taken towards sustainability counts. This realisation has brought about a transformative approach to the beauty industry, intertwining profitability with eco-friendliness. By embracing innovation, efficiency, and community engagement, Indian salons are paving the way for a future where profitability and environmental consciousness are deeply interconnected, setting a new standard for success.

In our cover feature, we delve into the burgeoning trend of sustainable salon businesses by exploring their commitment to eco-conscious practices, their way of moving the graph of profitability and their vision of a sustainable future.

HOTEL SALONS

“Hotels aim to achieve 100 per cent guest satisfaction”

Savio John Pereira Founder and Managing Director, Savio John Pereira Salons

Three tips to keep in mind while opening a hotel salon

1. Decide the revenue model you wish to follow – Rental | Revenue Sharing.

2. Ensure that the contract/ agreement between the hotel and salon is legal and simple.

3. Ensure that the hotel focuses on promoting and advertising the salon within the hotel, its guest lists, etc.

Tell us about your journey as a salon owner.

I have been in the industry since 1997 training. I opened ‘Savio John Pereira – The Salon’ in Mumbai in 2009 and have since transformed the salon experience. Following the success of my second salon at the luxury hotel, Sofitel Mumbai BKC, and the next one at The Willingdon Sports Club, Mumbai, I am opening my new salon in Thane. Two more hotel salons are in the pipeline.

What measures are you taking to make your salons eco-friendly?

1. Keeping use of water in check

2. Conserving electricity

3. Cutting down on disposable products

4. Reusing wherever possible

What are the requirements for a salon to tie up with hotels?

1. Demand for salon services like haircuts, hair colour, specialised hair treatments, facials, etc.

2. Expertise in providing professional salon services

3. Professionally trained and highly skilled team

How has the hotel salon business evolved over the years?

The growing awareness regarding personal care services and easy access to such services has favoured the growth of hotel salon business. Hotels aim to achieve 100 per cent guest satisfaction. The addition of salon services adds to the seamless experience for the customers.

What is the budget required to start a salon in a hotel?

Approximate budget required is Rs 40 lakhs to Rs 1 crore to cover the costs of interiors, products – salon use and retail, salon essential equipment, rent, staff salaries, menu designing, website designing and marketing.

Your mantra for running a sustainable business

1. Excellent customer service from start to end

2. Superb customer experience

3. The salon ambience to create that first impression and the initial positive vibes that our customers feel when they enter.

4. Training and education for the team

STANDALONE SALON - TIER II

“Innovate, update and differentiate!”

Indra ahluwalia Chief Managing Director, Grace Beauty Clinic, Ludhiana, Punjab

What is one major difference between operating a standalone salon in metro cities versus small cities?

A standalone salon in a metro has the advantage of population growth as compared to a salon in a smaller city.

What measures are you taking to make your salon eco-friendly?

There are not many areas where the salons can take the responsibility of being eco-friendly. Product manufacturers should take an initiative to provide recyclable and biodegradable packaging. At our end, we try to reduce the water and electricity consumption as both are a waste of resources and money.

How has the salon business changed in the small cities? The salon business has changed drastically with chain salons from the metros entering smaller cities. It provides healthy competition and also pushes the standalone salons to work systematically. There are a few drawbacks such as the unethical practice of poaching.

What is your mantra for running a sustainable business?

My mantra is ‘transparency with the clients’. In a world of misleading advertisements, we try our best to explain to the client the benefits of our services. Remember that sending a client back when they do not require a service is one of the best practices to retain a client!

What is your mantra for running a sustainable and profitable business?

My mantra for running a profitable business for four decades now is ‘transparency with the clients’. In a world of misleading advertisements, we try our best to explain to the client the benefits of our services. Remember that sending a client back when they do not require a service is one of the best practices to retain a client!

Three tips for running a successful salon in small cities

Innovate, update and differentiate! These three words should be the building blocks to run a salon.

Message for aspiring beauty entrepreneurs

NEVER let the price war affect your quality of work. It is okay to take a substantially higher price rather than switching to low quality products to reduce the cost of services.

SECOND GENERATION SALON

“The client comes first”

Priscilla Corner Director, June Tomkyns Salon, Kolkata

Was your entry into the salon industry out of passion or following in your mother June Tomkyns’ footsteps?

You can’t enter any industry unless there’s a bit of passion involved. We’ve seen so many cases wherein children don’t follow in their parents’ footsteps. So, it was definitely passion and being surrounded with her energy and her love for it.

Once you have a discipline for any craft, especially where skill is concerned, passion follows. You progressively keep getting better at what you do.

Was there one defining moment for you?

There can never be that one defining moment. It has to be a series of moments. It’s not suddenly an emotional moment where you say, ‘Ah, this is for me!’ You keep working on your craft, you keep getting better at it, and then suddenly you realise, ‘This is fabulous!’

What important business lesson have you learned from your mother?

The client comes first. She’s very respectful and grateful for every client that walks in. This state of gratitude that she’s always in about being a part of this business, it’s like an honour for her.

The second lesson is to treat your staff like an extension of your family.

What key changes have you made in the business since taking over?

Like my mother, I have been very much focussed on education for our staff members and our brand management team. I have carried forward all the things that my mother did in her time, adding an extension to her values in terms of customer awareness and staff training. Maintaining transparency is another thing that we follow.

It is important to groom the next generation. This is a skill-based industry and you have to be the master of your skills. Then there’s the business aspect of it - there are so many ways of running the business. The skill part has to be solid but the next generation is also going to be savvy with the business aspects.

Some of the changes that I would like to put forth include digitalisation, data management, social media management, brand management, etc.

What are the important changes in the business that have taken place across the generations?

I think a lot more people want to join the industry now because knowledge is more freely available. So, knowledge passing down from one generation to the next no longer exists. Knowledge is to be gained everywhere. So, if you are passionate about the salon business, you have access to the top masters in the world.

Little bit of grit, determination, hard work, discipline, and it’s yours for the taking.

What changes have you made in the academy?

It’s a skill-based industry, so you have to go back to the basics. You have to start with the basics and go through the different stages of learning. Sometimes there are exceptional students who are gifted and who know as much as you do. But the rule of the thumb is that everyone has to start with the basics.

We have incorporated quicker methods, including access to online education, and added better tools and styling products into our curriculum now.

COMPANY-OWNED SALONS IN A METRO

“Be realistic in your thinking and goals”

KANTA MOTWANI Creative Artist and Founder, Kromakay Salons

Tell us about your journey as a salon owner.

I started with Nalini and Yasmin. They are my mentors. My sister and I were academically inclined. We used to save up money and go to Nalini and Yasmin for haircuts. My sister enquired with them about holiday courses in hairdressing and they said they were looking for interns. We decided to go for it but after the holidays I had to go back to finish my Bachelors in Psychology degree. But I went back and interned with them. My father didn’t approve of this. He said you were meant to prepare for IAS and now you wanted to be a ‘hajam.’ But the culture at Nalini and Yasmin was very different. I was completely sold!

I was driven by passion. I managed one of their branches at Sun‘n’Sand Hotel in Mumbai and got to shoot for a film. It was like spreading my wings and seeing the outside world.

Kromakay was a natural progression. I took Nalini and Yasmin’s blessings and started my first salon, called Kaya. But I ran into trademark problems and changed the salon name to Kromakay. It’s a name I coined myself with the two words - chroma (meaning colour) and kaaya (meaning beautiful form).

When you’re into any kind of art form, you’re very emotional about things. So, when I went on to open seven salons in a span of a decade and a half, I feel that every time I open a new place, I learn something new.

The first lesson was to register your brand name. It was a big heartbreak for me when I had to change my salon’s name from Kaaya as it was a combination of my and my mother’s name.

I have shut all my hotel salons after the pandemic mainly due to the after-effects of the pandemic. With the new branch that I want to open, I want to nurture my team and my brand and make it a sustainable one.

What is your mantra for running a sustainable business?

1. Manage your products. Don’t stock up a huge inventory.

2. Be realistic in your thinking and goals.

3. Don’t get overwhelmed by retail. The product should sell by itself.

4. Manage your time better.

5. Use eco-friendly products wherever possible.

Tips to make the salon eco-friendly

1. Keep a check on wastage, especially water.

2. Look for eco-friendly alternatives to foils and plastic sheets.

3.Manage your price points to accommodate these additions as eco-friendly products are expensive.

One message for aspiring salon owners

1. Your salon business will need at least two years to break even.

2. Don’t spend too much time or money on social media.

3. Don’t simply teach; show them how it’s done. Be ethical yourself and others will follow suit.

4.Create your own team rather than poaching from other places.

COMPANY-OWNED SALONS IN A METRO

“Five decades of collective beauty and salon experience and it’s history in the making!”

SANJAY DUTTA Owner and Founder, Looks Salon India

SAMIR SRIVASTAV Chief Executive Officer, LOOKS Unisex Salon

Tell us about the journey of looKS Salon?

Sanjay Dutta started this business 34 years ago with a small barber shop in Karol Bagh. Today’s count stands at 200 salons across 51 cities and a vision of opening 500 salons in Indian and international markets by 2027. The vision is to give affordable luxury beauty services to the Indian beauty services’ consumer.

How do you ensure the service quality across all the branches?

We have a large in-house team of highly experienced trainers for hair, beauty and nails and huge support from our brand partners L’Oréal and Dermalogica round the year for all the salon teams. We also intend to develop and spend considerable resources in enhancing service quality training of our front office team in soft skills and customer delight. We have two LOOKS Academies for hair and beauty in collaboration with L’Oréal ARTH for hair and an in-house one for beauty. We have intentions to scale this further. Bringing in international hairstylists from Europe is also a journey we have embarked upon and we have already placed three of them as regional hub educators for our salon teams. We are also hiring seven more, taking the tally to 10 by the end of 2023 is our vision. There are also advanced stage discussions with one of the largest international hair education brands for a LOOKS Salon partnership.

With a staff strength of 6000, what activities and programmes do you undertake for their welfare and motivation?

Since it’s India’s largest geographic footprint of luxury salons across 51 cities, we continuously invest in working with our partners to do local city-level initiatives with an overall direction from the corporate office.

Women take leadership at LOOKS Salon and we take great pride in working with them and co-creating welfare and motivation calendars with them.

What parameters do you follow while hiring the staff?

Expertise and loyalty! Our recruitment focusses on talent above everything else as we are confident with our large training resources and investments that we can polish the young talent.

Loyalty, which is a cause of concern today in the industry, is something employers and employees have to be really conscious of as the industry is really small and reputation and word of mouth and reference checks play a big role.

What are the four pillars of running a sustainable salon chain business?

First of all, develop a deep understanding of what sustainability is. Then create consciousness within the workforce and ally with brands that have adopted an eco-friendly approach and are moving with big leaps in sustainability, and finally adapting it to suit Indian conditions.

Three tips for aspiring salon owners

Beauty business is recession proof but it’s a treadmill, which starts at 9 am and ends at 9 pm. Only if you have real honest passion in working with human capital and not taking this as a routine job and employment should come into this space. Think for beauty, read beauty, travel for beauty and love your business.

FRANCHISEE SALONS

“Taking tangible measures to become sustainable is an important business goal”

PUSHKARAJ SHENAI CEO and Wholetime Director, Lakmé Lever

What are the basic criteria for taking the lakmé Salon franchise?

When it comes to owning a Lakmé Salon franchise, we believe that people with integrity and ethics in line with those of the brand can be a partner. Partners who are passionate about the business and devoted to managing it while going the extra mile for customer satisfaction are the perfect match.

Since the success of the salon business depends largely on teamwork, partners who possess the ability to build and manage a team are an asset. Lastly, a minimum investment of Rs 60 lakhs along with minimum 900 sq ft owned/leased space is necessary.

Lakmé Salon has given enterprising individuals, women and professionals, like chartered accountants, MBAdegree holders, corporate employees, engineers, experienced salon experts, etc., an opportunity to become a franchise partner. We provide a 360-degree franchise support plan that covers operations, legal, marketing and team management for our business partners to ensure success in the lucrative professional beauty industry. measures to become sustainable is an important business goal for us too, as we all know that unless we protect this planet we live on, we won’t be able to be the best versions of ourselves. In the last few years, we have taken a number of steps to become more sustainable and every day, we continue to go one step higher to achieve this.

At our salons, we have introduced 100 per cent paperless billing, reduced water consumption by 50 per cent and switched to 100 per cent LED lightings. Our air conditioners are kept at an optimal temperature of 24 degrees; we dispose of our waste responsibly; and we mostly partner only with cruelty-free, vegan and sustainable brands, such as Dermalogica. In the salons, we keep high-oxygen indoor plants, use biodegradable disposables (even single-use spatulas are made of wood in the current scenario) and have planted over 50k trees over the past two years, offsetting our carbon footprint.

Through our Happy New You campaign, we brought about several sustainable changes in our salon operations. As part of the campaign, we also tied up with Project Nanhi Kali to promote education for the girl child. We sponsored primary education for young girls and invited our customers to contribute to the cause as well.

As an industry and country, we still have a long way to go, but we’re extremely optimistic. More Indians are becoming aware of their impact on the environment and are keen to contribute positively by choosing the right brands and making small but significant changes in their lifestyles.

What motivated lakmé to start the franchise model?

Making world-class beauty available to every Indian consumer is a huge part of our brand’s promise to ‘Beautify the Future’. As part of this endeavour, Lakmé Salon’s goal is to create beauty entrepreneurs. Beginning with its first salon in 1980, Lakmé Salon has grown to more than 470 stores spread across over 60 markets, led by a team of over 2200 experts attending to 1,000,000 customers. Our commitment to best professional service for hair and beauty treatments is what has defined our brand for more than 35 successful years.

Through our franchising model, we have been able to reach Tier II and III cities. Excluding Metros in Tier I, we currently have over 130 salons whereas we have expanded to around 125 salons in Tier II.

What benefits do you offer to the franchise partners?

• Partnering with Lakmé Salon presents future owners with a sustainable business model and unmatched growth potential as the industry goes from strength to strength.

• Our comprehensive 6P Entre PRO-neur model offers guidance in all areas, starting from set up to daily operations all the way to a partner’s success.

• Partners have access to top class talent trained at any of the 140 Lakmé Academies across India.

• Our comprehensive Runway Secrets portfolio is curated across the best brands globally and is updated with trend setting looks and services from the backstage of Lakmé Fashion Week.

• Our partners use the integrated technology platform, which elevates the experience and business across all touch points.

• Lakmé Salon’s loyalty programme, In Privileges, has a base of 3.25-lakh members, providing ready clientele.

What makes franchise salon a sustainable business model?

A powerful brand, best in class education, a compelling portfolio of effective and trendy services, proven operating procedures and leveraging technology to drive effectiveness and efficiency make the Lakme Salon franchise a sustainable business model.

What measures are you taking to make your salon eco-friendly?

At Lakmé Salon, our key value is to ‘Beautify The Future’. This holds true for our colleagues, our clients, our partners and for our planet. Taking tangible PBhJ

Tips for future franchisee partners

There are a few key factors to run a successful salon business. A franchisee partner should possess the following qualities to achieve success:

• Execution discipline

• Customer obsession

• Team player and should know how to manage a team of experts

• Engaging and growing the team