Thinking about opening a second salon - come help me brainstorm

[alpina]

I have a salon that offers a full range of hairdressing, beauty and nail services. I've been offered either 1 or 2 rooms to rent in the gym i go to on the other side of town from my current salon.

I'm trying to think of all the pros & cons and possibilities at the moment as this was something I had wanted to do in the future but wasn't thinking about right now.

The gym has about 1200 members right now and is large, modern and has fantastic opening hours, plenty of parking, excellent facilities and on-site childcare ( the childcare would be a great advantage).

I wouldn't offer all the services we currently offer at the salon. I wouldn't offer any hair services. We wouldn't be able to offer acrylic nails due to the smell so I wouldn't want to offer gel only. There is no running water in the room but nearby access to hot & cold water, I could work around that.

I was thinking of possible making this new location into a wellness/spa type salon. Massage had always been one of the most popular services by the last therapist they had. I was thinking of offering massage, slimming wraps, basic facials, maybe shellac, mani/pedi, waxing and tanning.

I'm just brainstorming at the moment so sorry if my post isn't all that clear. I'm just hoping someone else has some ideas to throw around, give me some other things to think about. Also, what other treatments do you think would be popular. I'm a beauty therapist but don't specialise in massage and I'm not all that familiar with other holistic type of treatments.

 

[persianista]

Why did the last therapist leave?

 

[Eski]

I have a salon in a gym and my first thought was that 1200 members isn't the number you need to focus on - it's really the active members. How many go regularly?
What's the male to female ratio of the current member base?
Are they happy with you bringing in outside clients into the gym?
Will they let you send out emails to the members? Mailshots etc.
Do you have to offer discounts to members?
Our popular treatments really vary (nails, brows etc) and massage is very popular. Tans are improving now the sun is out! The wraps are popular and we manage without running water too! We are working on some post workout massages for the men at the moment.

Good luck! x

 

[Jodie4156]

Sounds like a good idea to do the more beauty treatments than hair as maybe they will like a nice massage after a workout to relieve muscle tension ect and enjoy relaxing treatments, also shellac and tanning sounds great I would go for it xx

 

[lbrown332]

A hot stone massage is always a nice one to go for after a work out too, all you really need to do is fill the heater up in the morning and empty it and clean the stones in the evening and maybe have some cold water in a bowl to dip the hot stones in.
I would deffo go for a stone training course, it was probably one of the best things I've done. I'm a temp now and I'm being called up all the time to go to 5 star spas as I'm specialised in stones! You can also charge more for stone treatments and stones are very versatile and you can use them in almost all treatments, hot and cold stones are absolutely lovely in facials!!

Hth!
Leanne
X

 

[Lynne Baker]

Go and camp out in the gym for a week and check the footfall.

 

[alpina]

Thanks guys, you've all given me some ideas and things to consider/ask the gym about. I go to the gym every second day myself and it gets pretty packed early in the mornings/after work and while they have classes on. It's a fairly top of the line gym with pretty expensive membership and caters to a wide range of people. Non members or members of other gyms also visit for the group classes as they run a lot of them.

The back story as I got it from the owner was that the original therapist, a sole trader was there for 3 1/2 years then ruined her hands from doing massage and had to give up. Then another local salon did the same as I'm thinking of and opened up a second location there. They advertised quite heavily (I saw alot of this) but weren't there for more than 12 months. They are owned by a mother/daughter and it was the daughter idea, the mother did not want to do it. They were putting young inexperienced girls in the gym salon who were not going out of their way to drum up business and talk to clients. They were also swapping the girls around all the time so there was never a familiar face in the salon.

This really has come at the wrong time for me, I'm working on a few expansions at the current salon at the moment. I don't want to bite of more than I can chew but I do see an opportunity with this.

 

[Lynne Baker]

Are you able to be open when it's their busiest time?
I don't offer acrylics, but I'm kept prety busy with Shellac, and there's no smell with that.