A guest contribution by Peter Lehmann
Craftsmanship is worth its weight in gold, as the saying goes. But only if you use this foundation correctly will the harvest be bountiful. What does this mean for the hairdressing industry?
A good hairdresser must understand their craft, but that alone is often not enough for economic success. If the work is also to be financially rewarding, it is essential to engage with the numbers and management. Hair cutting brings money into the salon, but only the right price combined with professionalized management secures earnings.
Many salon owners make decisions based on gut feeling – hoping that enough is left over at the end. Of course, this is neither a basis for business success nor does it provide a good foundation for the salon's future planning.
Sooner or later, there is no way around good planning based on business accounting statements (BWA) and cash register data. Both sets of numbers always reflect the past. In the BWA, you can clearly see what money was spent on, where unnecessary or hidden costs lie, or where there is still potential. This allows you to find the control points that can be adjusted to pave the way for your own goals (What do I want to earn? What do my employees want to earn? Where should the journey go?).
It is in the nature of entrepreneurship to achieve positive results at the bottom line, positive results including a good entrepreneur's salary. This will rarely succeed based purely on gut feeling.
To support you, I have developed the Price-Wage Factor App. The app's main focus is on planning for the future and less on the past, as it is presented in the cash register system and in the BWA. The Price-Wage Factor App helps you calculate the economic future of your business. By entering your costs and planned private withdrawals, you create your annual sales planning. This value is the basis for price calculation and wage factor calculation.
By determining minute prices, the app provides a price calculation that serves as a starting point for setting your prices. Further background information and the detailed calculation method as well as additional aids can be found in my book "New Prices – Price Calculation in the Hairdressing Trade", information at the end of the article.
With the wage factor calculation, sales are distributed among employees and the necessary daily, monthly and annual sales per employee are calculated.
The book "New Prices – Price Calculation in the Hairdressing Trade" with detailed calculation methods and additional aids can be ordered here: https://unternehmenstraining.com/neue_preise.html
Information about the Price-Wage Factor App, free instructional videos and the ordering function can be found here:
https://unternehmenstraining.com/preise-lohnfaktor-app.html
For small and large salons (also for Austria), for GmbHs and also for sole proprietors.