The utmost interesting fact of operating a beauty and wellness industry is that everything is relative to time. Trends and styles to products and services, everything keeps evolving, requiring your spa business management strategy to be both adaptive and flexible. Perhaps, this is the reason why a spa manager’s role is best described by the quote, “Jack of all trades, Master of none but oftentimes better than a master of one. With a single aim of profitability, on an average day, a spa manager could be resolving multiple issues ranging from handling the logistics of bookings to working on the strategy for next marketing campaign. So, how do they do it? In this article we list out the seven things that should you should bear in mind to ensure growth and profitability.

Build the Brand

You are not important, your brand is. So, give up that pride and work to build the brand. It is the brand that will make you stand out in the competition. Clients will associate with the brand, not the individual. It won’t happen overnight, and certainly not in a short span of time. So, get to the drawing board and figure out everything. From menu options and delivery of service to choice of colours and staff attitude, everything contributes. Thus, as the leader the onus lies on you to build it, nurture it and make it grow.

It’s about Your People, not you

Re-read. Your spa is nothing without your team of providers. Often the trickiest aspect of managing a spa business is finding and keeping skilled providers. So, spend time in hiring. Evaluate the candidates on parameters other than the skills, such as how well can they fit into teams, do they share a vision similar to yours? Once you have your team, focus on their wellbeing. While some attrition will always happen, but you can keep your numbers low by implementing an effective employee management program. From ensuring fair and correct compensation and training to keeping your team motivated and being an ally in helping them accomplish their career goals. While some of the processes are best done manually, for others you can easily leverage technology such as spa management software. Zenoti spa management software comes with a robust employee management module, which not only helps you automatically create and share work schedules, and training programs but also helps you in monitoring employee performance and compute accurate compensation.

Process Optimization

Possibly, the most complex part of spa business operations is process optimization. However, it must be achieved as it can have direct impact on your profitability, and eventually survival. While using a spa management software to automate and drive the administrative side of the business is given, did you know that you can leverage the same technology to achieve process optimization? To cite a few examples, how long does an average facial take? Can the turn-around time be bought under 60 minutes? Similarly, if a massage sessions crosses the 90 minute mark, see if you can bring it down to 75 minutes? This doesn’t mean that you chomp of process times without a thought. Do a careful evaluation of how it impacts client perceptions, or whether this will open up a new slot in the appointments calendar? In other words, take a hard look at each and every process and the time it takes to decide on where to use the axe. Some spa management software such as the one from Zenoti has a full-fledged reporting and analytics module, which not only creates these reports in just a few clicks but also help you easily create models to study the impact.

Check Equipment Utilization Factor

Did you know that having the right equipment can enhance your profit by 20%? While it is impossible to gauge the right combination of equipment, it is certainly possibly to conduct real time studies to ascertain whether you’re getting return on investment. For instance, installed a new Vichy shower? Check its utilization factor. Have hot stones? Perhaps they’re better placed along with massage tables and your team trained to sell upgrades from basic massages to hot stone massages. Your business sees more sales of massage services? Would it better to allocate more space to massage rooms? Frequent monitoring of space and equipment utilization, will help you improve your profitability.

Compete Against the Best

Your competition is against the best. The beauty and wellness industry is already worth USD 19 billion, and is growing. It is big enough to generate lot of metrics, such as average ticket sales, daily sales, service based volumes and income etc. Thus, your spa business management strategy should include studying those numbers and comparing yours with them. If you’re somewhere close to the industry benchmarks, pat yourself on the back. If not, then you know your goals.

Have an effective revenue strategy

In an industry, which sees intense competition you are only as good as your profitability. So, as the captain of the ship learn to be comfortable with the numbers, for they alone will speak the truth. The eventual measure of success for any business is still a balance sheet in black and cash flow in positive. Some of the easy ways to accomplish this by creating budget for every nature of expense, recording expenses, dynamically scheduling high value services during peak hours and low value during off peak times etc, creating promotional offers which while offering great deals to clients also gives you some profit, running lean inventory.

Be Agile

Last but not the least, be as agile as a hare. In other words, as a leader you have to keep evolving, knowing the changes in the industry trends and the ways of working. The beauty and wellness industry is one where the saying, “Old is gold” is irrelevant. Spa business is an ever evolving one, so must your spa business management strategy. So, Good Luck, Captain!