If you’re thinking of starting your own salon or spa, you’ll need to make an investment in your time and most likely money. Our advice - take the time to create a business plan. The process of creating a business plan ensures you'll fully understand and plan for all aspects of building a successful spa or salon.
What Is A Business Plan?
A business plan is a living blueprint of your business. It helps you understand the breadth of business you’re about to step into, and can also be used to persuade people to invest in your spa or salon. In order to be effective, you'll need to communicate key information that shows you fully understand your spa or salon business. Your business plan should list goals, products, services, strategies to deal with setbacks and most importantly show how your spa or salon will succeed.
Parts Of A Business Plan
Generally, a business plan for a spa or salon should include the following sections.
Executive Summary
The executive summary is a condensed version of your business and consists of a company summary, mission, business objectives, value proposition, target market and profile of business owners. This needs to be a persuasive synopsis of your business. While the executive summary is the first section in your business plan, consider creating it last, after you've finished all the other sections in your business plan.
Service and Product Summary
List the services you will offer along with prices, markups and the profit margins you anticipate. If you plan to sell retail products (which can add significantly to your sales mix!) list the retail products along with similar financial data.
Market Analysis
Base this section on research of your industry and target market, and help the reader understand the statistical reasons why your market is attractive both in the long and short term. Important parts of this section include market size and growth rate, market trends, competition, pricing choices and key success factors.
SWOT Analysis
In this section you need to provide an overview of the Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities and Threats that your business may face. For example, a strength can be your location, a weakness may be that the general public perceives spa treatments to be a luxury. Opportunities can be external, such as good word of mouth, or something that you control like implementing a strong loyalty program. For the section on threats, describe how you plan to resolve things such as negative customer feedback.
Marketing Strategy
List specific strategies your company will use to attract customers. For example, if you offer both spa and salon services, you can describe how you cross sell spa and salon services. Other marketing strategies might include memberships or packages. Also include examples of promotions, details on loyalty programs or partnerships that you intend to launch.
Operating Strategy
Include a detailed organization chart, staff schedules and strategies to motivate staff and measure staff performance. Also include a plan for day to day management of your business, inventory and a physical layout that maximizes operational efficiency.
Also read: salon management software
Financial Summary
Your business’s financial summary includes tables, graphs and descriptions that help investors understand when and how their investment will be profitable. Data will show start-up cost, projected income, cash flow and a break even summary.
Reasons For Investing
In this section, clearly communicate why others should invest in your business. Include important points such as owner’s experience and credibility, business location and competitive pricing.By taking time to create a clear and thorough business plan, you'll set your spa or salon up for success and can impress potential investors, employees and suppliers.
