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As a business owner, it’s important to know how businesses like yours operate across the country. If you just opened a salon, we recently looked into some of our data to do just that for our owners.
One of the things we found was that there is a large discrepancy in the cost of women’s haircuts and men’s haircuts across the country. In 2016, the average price of a woman’s haircut in the U.S. was $45. The average cost of a man’s haircut was $34.
The gender discrepancy is even wider in some states. In Hawaii women are paying $4 more than the national average, while men are paying less than half the national average.
Here’s a look at the data we found around pricing, appointments, and volume of business:
So how can you use this data to help your own business become more efficient and effective? First, we would encourage you to see how your own pricing and appointments stack up to the national averages. Then think about a few key things:
Price to your advantage
If you’re trying to attract a larger segment of customers, consider lowering your pricing below the average cost in your area. Or take a page from Seattle-based BANG’s playbook: it’s implemented non-gendered pricing, so haircut pricing is based solely upon hair length. That is not only fair but also likely to get you some good word-of-mouth advertising from customers.
Distribute the workload
Appointments are booked most often for Friday and least often for Sunday. Consider adding more shifts on Friday to accommodate demand, or giving more employees time off on Sunday. You could also offer perks like brunch nibbles on Sunday or “Wine Wednesday” to encourage clients to come in on off days. Here are additional appointment scheduling tips that can help your business.
Switch up timing
Salons are generally busiest at 10 a.m. on the weekend and 3 p.m. during the week. A promotion for an off-peak time encourages customers to come in when things aren’t as booked up. Alternatively, off-peak times can give you a chance to train or bond with employees or give everyone a quick break.
