Beauty Salon Business Plan Template & Guide [Updated 2023]
Thinking about opening a salon or expanding your brand? A salon business plan template is a great place to start!
Writing a business plan can be a time consuming and daunting task. Our company reviews business plans from across the US and Canada, so we have created this guide to help you streamline your business planning!
Stuck on what to name your salon? Check out the do’s and don’ts in choosing a salon name on this page.
What are the Main Types of Beauty Salons?
The main types of beauty salon businesses are: Employee based and non-employee based. Read our blog for a thorough explanation of how employee based salons differ from non-employee based salons.
Why do You Need a Business Plan Template?
A business plan template is needed to conduct market research, document your business plan and demonstrate your knowledge of salon business. This is the best pathway to raise funding. Even if you plan to just use your personal funds to open a salon, a successful salon business plan will help you get your head around what needs to happen to make your business successful.
Thinking through aspects of doing business such as marketing efforts, what a cash flow statement means, research on the local market and salon equipment costs provides an excellent salon business plan guide.
Templates for such a plan are found on the best business plan software, LivePlan. LivePlan is an easy to use template that walks your through EVERYTHING you need for a salon business plan.
Writing a hair salon business plan from scratch is very difficult and you may accidentally leave out important information. Included in the LivePlan salon business plan template are aspects you may not think are important but are needed to raise funding and open a new salon
What is included in a salon business plan outline?
A salon business plan outline iscreating a living document that includes things like: Business model, your definition of exceptional customer service, market research, financial projections, salon services menu, competitor salons, cash flow statement, executive summary, management team and day to day operations.
LivePlan is the most commonly used business plan template for salons, spas, barbershops and beauty industry businesses of any size. As your company grows, it’s not just about hair styling or nail art! A solid, mapped out beauty salon business plan yields amazing results throughout your business’s lifespan.
Download Your Free Salon Business Plan Template
There are many free salon business plan template examples out there. From our experience, none of them include real beauty industry success stories. Often, using another salon business plan for your own leaves out the most important factors in securing angel investors and getting a bank loan.
We used LivePlan for our own business- Salonspa Connection, so we have firsthand experience with this perfect business plan template!
Brainstorm your salon goals and vision
It starts with a dream… Did you fantasize about being a salon owner in beauty school or have you always wanted to be a business owner, regardless of the industry? The core of your “why” is one of the most important parts of a business plan.
Translating your “Why”
Why do you want to become a salon owner? Do you want to provide the type of environment you wish you had when searching for a salon job?
Is there a gap in your local community for more gender inclusive hair treatments? Maybe no one is offering spa services in your neighborhood and you have the best marketing strategy.
Understanding and documenting your motivation to own a beauty salon is the best place to start. Jot these nuggets down as it is the first step to writing a great salon business plan outline.
How profitable is owning a salon?
Owning a salon can be very profitable is you understand the type of business model, salon services you need to offer and how to pick the best salon location.
Profitability is largely dependent on catering to existing clients, recruiting excellent hair stylists and hitting your target market with a great salon business. Fleshing through your ideas and beauty salon business strategies is best accomplished with a LivePlan business plan template.
Is owning a salon a good investment?
Owning a salon can be a great investment if you understand the dynamics of a hair salon business or nail salon. When you familiarize yourself with the industry, the likelihood of succeeding is much higher.
Both beauty salon professionals and non-salon industry pros buy and invest in salons. Owning a beauty salon is a people management business. Providing beauty services, skin care services or nail services is just a small part of running a beauty salon business.
Hair salons can be cash cows when your balance sheet is positive and you successfully cultivate brand awareness. If you are considering investing in a hair salon, document your hair salon business plan with the best business planning software, LivePlan
Create an executive summary
An executive summary is an overview of your plan. This should be a detailed beauty salon business plan demonstrating your expertise in your industry as well as providing the roadmap to profitability.
How to write your salon’s executive summary: A simple template
An executive summary details the problem you are solving, your unique solution, identifying a target market, potential competition, financial forecast & projections and funding needed. Writing all of these details in an outline will provide an excellent guide for an executive summary.
If this sounds like a lot, it is! Planning out hair salons is much easier with a business plan template used in the LivePlan software.
What is a Good Mission Statement of a Salon?
A good mission statement is where you demonstrate your values and your “why” as to the “mission” of the salon. This is a fantastic space to create brand awareness.
Remember your “why” we discussed earlier? Pull that info back out to create a great mission statement. This is not the space for a company description.
Salon Mission statement examples
We gathered several tips and samples of existing beauty salon mission statements, here. Use these examples to create a great hair salon mission of your own!
Write your salon’s business description
A hair salon is a dynamic business! It can be a struggle to harness all of the amazing things that makes you, YOU into a few paragraphs. We gathered up a few suggestions for a hair salon business description.
Beauty Services Management plan
If you plan on hiring beauty salon employees or opening a booth rental salon, you will need to think through management. Are you planning on being the sole management team or would you prefer to have some help?
Planning the service sales management aspect of business is a great thing to think through! Often, nail technicians or a hair stylist who achieve, and want to not be behind the chair full time are excellent candidates. Think through the strengths of your team with the ultimate business plan- LivePlan.
Management Team
Having a strong team who brings different skillsets to the table is an important part of a business plan. Evaluate where you are strong, and the gaps in your personal business skills can be picked up by either a manager or potentially an outside contractor.
Major Lengths Beauty Salon Products
Are you planning to sell white label beauty salon products? Including this in your business plan is key in understanding the cost vs. potential profitability. It doesn’t always pay off to have your own product lines- do your research before including this in your business plan.
Figure out your financial plan
How long will it take to become profitable? What needs to happen to become profitable? LivePlan walks you through services offered, pricing, costs and projections. This is the easiest software to use for those of us who struggle with the financial part of a beauty salon business.
Example of Problem a Salon Can Solve
The core of your beauty salon business plan template should be the problem, or problems you solve for your target clients. These are unmet needs or services that give you the competitive advantage over existing or competitor salons.
Keep the problem you are solving under 300 words and be concise!
An example would be: Southern Chicago is without a salon that welcomes the transgender and LGTBQ community, yet the population for this demographic grows by 15%, every year. Our experiences in living this lifestyle, and working with the gay and lesbian community, provides the safe salon space needed in the southern Chicago area.
The problem: no salons in your area to serve this population.
Your solution: providing a safe and quality space to serve the population in need of your services.
Get the best salon business plan template available, enjoy 40% off Liveplan today!
Solution the Salon Offers
Are you offering higher quality services at a lower price point? Or maybe you are the first salon to offer hair extensions in your neighborhood?
Offering specific solutions you provide for ideal customers is the key to obtaining financing!
Being Different through Customer Experience
The customer experience is what sets salons apart. Great hair can be achieved in a number of salons, how the customer feels in your salon is what needs to be captured in your beauty salon business plan.
Products and services
What can you do to create a solid financial plan for your salon?
A financial plan is one of the hardest parts of not only running a beauty salon business, but in predicting what this looks like in a business plan. LivePlan makes financial planning EASY, even for the most challenged money managers.
Example of Salon Expenses Description
Salon expense examples are: cost of products- both back bar and retail, rent or lease, taxes, payroll, marketing costs, insurance, salon software, accounting, equipment, laundry & cleaning expenses.
Monthly Salon Expenses List
Lining out monthly expenses vs annual expenses is a great way to predict income throughout the year. Holidays tend to have a higher outgo of expenditure, account for each month by thinking through what may be happening in specific months that would not happen in other months.
Make strategies for advertising and outreach marketing
Are you a people person or do you prefer to acquire clients from online resources? Assessing where salon owners’ strengths are will provide clearer strategies for future marketing efforts.
41 Most Effective Salon Marketing Ideas
Your marketing plan should include both initiatives to gain new clients and for recruiting, if you plan on hiring or renting out your spaces to salon professionals.
Your salon’s growth is dependent upon your ability to market your business to both potential clients and salon staff.
Here are 41 marketing touch points in a month, to include in your business plan:
Marketing for salon clients
8 social media posts per month on Instagram, Facebook Business Page and TikTok. The cadence for higher engagement and growth of social accounts should be to entertain, educate and promote.
2 in person events or visits to local businesses to create relationships. The right connections will pay off in spades!
18 referral cards or freebies given away, every month. Incentivizing current salon clients to send their friends is the best way to get new business! Happy clients send more clients, it’s that simple.
1 in salon event per month. This can be botox parties, pop up boutique, an art show or whatever is most appropriate for your business model.
2 blog posts per month. Blogging for marketing is one of the most affordable and effective ways to increase visitors to your website. Turn visitors into paying customers with 2x monthly blogs!
4 current client incentives per month. This can mean a once a week discount on services or retail during slower times. For instance, a barber shop offers 50% off haircuts on Wednesdays from 9-11. This is their slowest time and is now full because of their marketing initiatives.
Salon Recruiting is marketing
4 social media posts per month demonstrating who you are and why your salon is the best place to work. These are not billboards for come work with us posts! Showing who you are and how amazing your salon is, with the invitation to come work with you is the goal.
1 visit to a cosmetology school or attendance in a salon industry event. Every month you, or someone from your team should be networking for recruiting.
Example of a Hair Salon Marketing Plan
When writing your new salon business plan, marketing ideas and a general plan for implementation are a must! Banks, investors or anyone you are seeking financing from are going to want to feel confident you can effectively market your new business.
Seeking small business loans or working with angel investors means you are looking to raise funding. Your marketing plan needs to have solid strategies and ideas that can be accomplished without draining your bank account.
My Most Essential Blog Posts when Growing a Salon or Spa Business
If you plan on blogging, this is the #1 way to get the highest visibility on search engines. It is time consuming and there is a lot to learn about how to structure blogs for search engines, but this is an excellent idea for evergreen marketing!
Blogs need specific information to produce results. Writing about subjects such as “most popular hairstyles in Miami” or “best curly hair products in Minneapolis” hit the target.
Every blog you write should highlight a specific service or product you sell, and include the city your salon is in. Writing for new client (or employee) discovery is the best way to gain business on search engines.
Target Market Analysis
This portion of your salon business plan outline identifies your ideal customer. Who will benefit the most from your salon services?
An easy-to-follow template to proceed with your target market analysis
Lining out customer demographics and the amount of potential customers you will have is the first step to an accurate financial projection. LivePlan walks you through this process, step by step with an easy to use business plan template.
Analyze and identify your target market
A great way to identify your ideal customers is to evaluate existing clients. What commonalities do these people have and how can you create a marketing strategy to similar people?
Example of Salon Competition Study in Your Plan
Knowing your competition is a big piece of a successful business plan- this is called market research. For example: If you want to open a salon that offers luxury services in a high end location, that’s great!
If the demand for these services are present, most likely there are competing salons in the area.
Understanding how your salon can differentiate from current, similar salons is the key. Business plans serve to allow you to demonstrate your value proposition in comparison to what already exists.
Improving upon what other salons are doing is the best way to raise funding. Take your top 3 competing salons and list out why your salon is above the rest.
For a complete guide to analyzing your competition, we suggest using LivePlan. LivePlan is the most comprehensive and commonly used business plan software for salons.
How Do You Get Funding for Your Beauty Salon Business Plan?
Raising funding for a beauty salon can be achieved through: SBA loan, bank loan, angel investors, friends and family or salon owner financing.
Owner financing means you pay a portion of the total cost for purchasing the business upfront, and make payments for the remaining balance over an agreed upon timeframe.
Major Milestones and Salon Business Goals
Major salon milestones would be: expanding to the empty space next door, adding a new location, offering more benefits like insurance or expanding your service menu. Thinking through where you want to be in X number of months or years will help you set salon business goals.
Salon Milestones Example
Milestones are a great way to outline your salon’s success goals. You can include a detailed financial plan, or just set dates to serve as a living document of where you want to be in the future.
Get the best milestone planner with LivePlan- 40% off for one year with our special offer here.
We hope you found our salon business planning tips helpful! Salonspa Connection is here to provide a comprehensive resource platform for all of your business needs.
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