The Beautiful Co. Hair & Lashes, a Greenville, South Carolina-based salon specializing in hair extensions, styling, brows, and lashes, has mastered a community-oriented business model and, with it, an extremely loyal customer base.
“I love being on a team of women,” says Jessica Heckman, owner of The Beautiful Co. salon. “There are 16 of us women that are working and loving one another and building relationships with other women in the community.”
Seven years after starting the salon, The Beautiful Co. has grown from two stylists to a team of eight hair stylists, three front desk team members, and four lash technicians. But most notably, they’ve carefully expanded their services and offerings to cater to their customers, helping them maintain an approximate 95% customer retention rate.
Here’s how they did it.
Seamlessly incorporating a luxury experience into salon services
As consumers look to save money amid economic uncertainty, they’re now eyeing value in the form of luxury experiences at their favorite beauty businesses. The Beautiful Co. leaned into this trend early on, hiring a passionate team dedicated to exceptional customer service, creating a sense of hospitality, and making sure none of the small details are missed from the moment a client walks in.
“We offer a drink menu right away with lattes, teas, a specialty snack bar, and all of that,” said Heckman. “And so right away the client is offered a drink, made a latte, and is checked in. And then from making sure that there’s hot towels already prepped for the scalp massages that are given to the clients, to the place always being clean and organized and tidy, to the music selection that we have playing, it’s a peaceful, welcoming environment.”
Given the price point of The Beautiful Co.’s services, the team has been particularly mindful of elevating the luxury experience further for clients and making them feel valued and pampered. Front desk concierges serve snacks and drinks to clients, and weighted blankets are offered in the lash suites — all touch points thoughtfully placed throughout a client’s appointment meant to enrich the entire experience.
“We’ve seen such an incredible growth with our business and the clientele from just people loving not only their hair or their lashes, but loving how they’re being treated in the space, and then the relationships built with the team members along the way,” said Heckman.
To add to the seamless luxury that Beautiful Co. strives for, the team relies on their technology to help run their operations in the background. From handling hundreds of client files — including keeping notes on client allergies and tracking their hair formulations — to automated text confirmations for each client appointment, the team leans on Square Appointments to provide a high bar of client service at all times.
Square is vital to everything that we do on a daily basis. And it makes not only our reception team’s life easier, but the clients love it, because it’s very user-friendly and they’re able to see exactly what’s going on with their personal schedules as well. ”
Jessica Heckman → owner of The Beautiful Co.
Opening up new revenue streams with specialty services and retail products
Square Future of Commerce data found that nearly half of global consumers are interested in new offerings at their local beauty businesses, and 63% of customers have purchased retail items from local beauty businesses in the past year. That number shoots up to 83% and 78% for Gen Z and millennial customers, respectively.
Amid rising customer interest in new offerings and purchasing retail items in-store, The Beautiful Co. tackled both. Assuming their current hair extension clients would also be interested in lash extensions, the team acquired a lash company in 2020 to expand their menu of offerings, adding an estimated $8,000 a week in lash services to their books. As they guessed, the addition of lash services was a hit with customers — the team hired a fourth lash technician to help meet demand, and Heckman estimates that they’re 80%–90% booked at all times.
On the retail side, The Beautiful Co. sells an array of hair products and lash products, specialty tanning products out of California, and essential oil-based products from Australia and Italy, all sold and tracked using Square for Retail.
“We have about 100 SKUs for our retail products,” said Braden Heckman, Jessica Heckman’s husband and operations manager at The Beautiful Co. “Knowing all that Square knows about how that inventory is churning and then how much we have on order, and then taking their suggestion and being able to tweak that to what we know is coming up or adding our knowledge to it and putting those orders together … it makes it really quick to put in.”
“I order across eight different websites — eight different brands and distribution outlets — every Tuesday. And it probably only takes me 20 minutes to get through all that now, which is great,” said Braden Heckman of the ease of inventory management with Square.
Diversifying revenue streams by offering retail products alongside their traditional salon services has not only helped boost profits for the company, but attracted new customers who come in just to browse the beauty products for sale.
“We have a lot of crossover, so we’ll have a lot of [salon] clients that are also lash clients, and we have a handful of clients that just come in. I see them pop up and they’re just coming in to buy retail products,” Jessica Heckman said.
We’ve used Square from the get go when we were first starting. It’s been incredible as our demands have grown and our clientele has grown and our team has grown. [Square] has helped change the course and organize things and structure things for the business. So it’s been a blessing. ”
Jessica Heckman → owner of The Beautiful Co.
Using Square technology to streamline and automate the salon experience
The Beautiful Co. team uses Square tools to help run their business behind the scenes — including scheduling appointments and online bookings, client management, and inventory tracking and retail sales — so they can focus on building and maintaining the exceptional service that keeps their customers coming back.
“It’s one of those things you don’t think about all the time, like you don’t think about the foundation of your house because you shouldn’t. I mean, it’s one of those things that once it’s built, you should never have to worry about it,” Braden Heckman said.
“And so I think that’s a metaphor for what Square is to us. Yes, we have to interact with it from day to day, but everything is built on top of that in a sense. And if that wasn’t there, we wouldn’t be able to operate on any level.”
The Beautiful Co. uses:
