
I have been a hairstylist for 21 years and up until five years ago, I would just mix what I thought for color and mix for consistency for lightener. This often led to product waste, wasted time going back to mix more or a combination of both during each of my appointments every day for 16 years. It’s painful to even consider how much money I lost out on, but I honestly did not know that there was a better way.
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Michelle Wheatley (@beautybusinessguide) shares how her salon has changed the way it plans for product to be more cost efficient.
I have been a hairstylist for 21 years and up until five years ago, I would just mix what I thought for color and mix for consistency for lightener. This often led to product waste, wasted time going back to mix more or a combination of both during each of my appointments every day for 16 years. It’s painful to even consider how much money I lost out on, but I honestly did not know that there was a better way.
We can keep the cost to operate our business down and effectively price our services by understanding how to plan for product usage in our services. I am going to share how I have changed the way my salon plans for product.
The Need For A Plan
I do recall one stylist who came to work for me telling me about a company that did head mapping for services and allowed for a certain amount of product per area. While the idea was great and worked for traditional services like root retouches, it didn’t really work for so many of the new things we’re doing behind the chair.
Using that concept, I decided that we needed to better understand our services first because then we would know how much product would be needed for most of our clients.
While there are apps that can track how much you’re using as you mix, that doesn’t help us plan AHEAD, and that’s what we need to price ourselves properly and have transparent pricing for our clients.
It also helps us book our services more effectively, which also allows for the utilization of online booking which can be an amazing opportunity for nearly every business, even if you don’t use it traditionally.
Calculating Time and Product
What I discovered was that the product we need is directly related to the time we have for applying and the type of application we are doing. If there are multiple steps like shadow and toning, those will have standard amounts based on the type of look and how complex of a service it is. Below is how I have calculated my product usage and service times.
- I need about 1 bowl with 30 to 45 grams of lightener for every 30 minutes of maintenance foiling I do. If I am doing a partial highlight, that’s how much I need.
- If I am doing a blonding maintenance service with 60 minutes of application time, I will need 2.
- For larger services like transformations, I’ll need 1.5 to 2 bowls for every 30 minutes.
- My application times go up to 120 minutes, so I have variations of each service that have both more application time (longer services) and more product.
- Root retouches and solids work similarly in that I need more product if I need more time to apply.
- When it comes to toner, I have standards for each category: traditional partials are 30-30 grams, traditional fulls are 35-35 grams, maintenance blonding or lived in are 35-35 grams, signature blonding or lived in are 40-40 grams and transformations are 50-50 grams.
Nearly every client falls within these amounts, which means that most of my clients will know ahead of time the cost of their service including the products that are required.
Setting A Budget
Your numbers do not need to look like mine at all — they just need to stay within a product budget. I recommend that you do not go over 12% for products as an average for your services. This means some services could have 14% and other have 6%, or they all could be less than 12%. How you figure this out is multiply the price by 12%.
Example: $275 x .12 = $33
In a $275 service, I would have up to $33 for my product budget. This would include things like gloves, foils and treatments as well.
The exceptions to the above formula is that color corrections and custom vivids will not follow these rules because there is no way to know for sure how much product you will use unless you limit the type of work you’re doing. For vivids, you can charge for a global lightening service (all of bleach) and a vivid glaze that includes 1 tube of color. The global lightening service with come with lightener and toner, and the vivid service would include its own amount of vivids.
Once you have figured out how much product goes with each service, you can determine your % of product use.
Simply divide the total cost of product by the price and you will get your %. Then, multiply that by your service revenue.
Example: $18.75 (product) / $215 (price) = 8.72%
If your service revenue per week is $2,500 then: $2,500 x 8.72% =$218 weekly product budget
Calculating and Tracking
My booking system has the option to enter the cost of product in the service description and will track it in my reports so that I don’t have to do it manually. It’s the easiest way I have found to do it and takes the least amount of my time and attention, which is really important to me.
You can pay for a monthly subscription for an app that calculates product cost. or I have a course that teaches you how to customize and use your own calculator file that can be used on any device.
About the Author:
Michelle Wheatley is a hairstylist, salon owner and founder of Beauty Business Guide. Find our more at https://beautybusinessguides.com/product/productcalculator, and BLP readers get $10 off with code BLPBBG.