We've noticed that more creative types of people running salons did much better during couple of last years.
It's extremely difficult to be creative in tough times, but these guys managed to use new marketing methods like advertising or collecting loyal customers (Page fans) on Facebook. Salons who started accepting bookings online did even better. We've seen quite nice growing salons - they were adding new employees and number of bookings.
And if you're creative enough you can do these things without any significant costs. Your time and effort isn't free but it really pays off.
As a shameless self promotion I'll suggest to take a look at Salonium, which could be used for free if you want to accept bookings online.
