Opening Brow Down Studio was practically fated for founder René de la Garza. He’d spent most of his formative years obsessed with all things beauty and turned this passion into a corporate beauty career in Beverly Hills. In 2016, he took the leap and opened his brow studio using Square and quickly became known for his classic brow shaping and lamination services. In fact, de la Garza notes that Brow Down Studio was one of the first brow lamination studios in Los Angeles.
With lamination being a relatively new service at the time, he was able to easily distinguish himself from competitors with skill and grit. “It was me, my wax warmer, and the hunger to create a name for myself…As I gained momentum, I would take anywhere from 18 to 20 clients a day,” he said.
De la Garza eventually brought on multiple staff members to help manage his growing clientele, and today the business operates two locations and a professional beauty line. As the owner of a growing business, de la Garza is always focused on taking care of staff, managing customer relationships, and tapping new growth opportunities. Here’s how he uses Square to tackle each area.
With eight staff members, tasks like payroll and compliance can often be a headache. “My mentor first told me, ‘if you’re ever gonna have a business in California, make sure that you have an HR degree,’” he said, due to the constantly changing compliance laws. “You actually don’t need [the degree] if you have Square Payroll because the tool helps you stay compliant,” he added.
On top of staying compliant, he’s also able to offer competitive benefits to staff. “When I started my business, I never imagined I’d be able to offer a 401(k). But payroll makes it easy to provide a 401(k), medical, dental, and vision benefits — for my team and myself,” he said.
80%
decrease in admin time using Square
In addition to a seamless staffing experience, de la Garza is also able to offer a streamlined customer experience directly through Square Appointments. “Before using Square Appointments, we were with another company. You had to download an app, sign in, authenticate yourself, or reset your password— everything was just a pain,” de la Garza explained.
Because he believes that the client experience starts from the moment a client visits the website, he wanted to offer a frictionless experience from beginning to end. Square Appointments makes it easy for the team to showcase their availability, send appointment reminders, and even enforce booking policies. “I love that you can enter your policies and the tool takes care of it, because those things can often make business owners uncomfortable,” he explained.
In a rapidly changing industry, de la Garza is constantly trying to stay on top of trends and new techniques, which requires upgrading tools or products to stay competitive. He explored a Square Loan to implement a few upgrades and expand the beauty line, enabling seamless and pain-free growth.
“You can get the money pretty instantly,” he explained. “You don’t even really feel the repayments, and you can easily track your payment progress.”
With staffing, customer relationships, and banking in a unified solution, de la Garza is able to build a smarter business. For instance, he’s able to anticipate customer needs and traffic patterns and prep his staff accordingly. Through Square data, he was able to pinpoint that May and December are the busiest months for the business. As a result, staff plan longer vacations around those time periods in order to maximize availability for customers.
The team is also able to identify high and low performers within their beauty line and make strategic decisions about what to keep in stock.
“One of the things that I always say about Square is that Square teaches you how to be a better business owner, and it helps you to better understand your business.”
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