I’m so grateful to be here with you today to share my appreciation with you.
First, I want to share how thankful I am for our dedicated and talented team. This group of professionals are in it for the right reasons. Their love for you, their craft, and their community is inspiring!
I’m incredibly thankful for you and your loyalty. Our local brand is only as successful as your experiences are. We cannot do what we do without your patronage. We appreciate you staying with us through all of our growth and changes! We strive to be the most innovative salon, yet we never want to lose sight of what actually matters–relationships with each and every one of you.
A few things I’ve learned this year are, the importance of serving your entire family. I believe having a child has given me a new perspective on how precious people are at every age. This is one of the reasons we increased our child’s haircut age to ten years.
Another lesson I’ve learned is, regardless of what our team members look like, as long as they share our values, have the character of a servant-leader, have integrity, and are thirsty to learn and grow, they belong here, and they’re accepted here.
Next, I’m excited to share our 2019 accomplishments, followed by our 2020 goals as well as our vision going into 2021.
2019 at A Glance
- We grew our team significantly! A huge contributor to this is our new on-boarding initiative where our Master Stylists are empowered to bring on their own Protege Stylist. Those relationships have been so special, and as a result, our new-to-the-industry stylists are delivering exceptional results for their guests!
- Our company grew revenue by 13% compared to 2018. With this increase we’ve added a Cadillac delta dental insurance plan, we’ve sent two team members to advanced education academies and conferences, and we’ve increased compensation by 20% for our front desk and management members, and tragically, when our stylist, Brittany, lost her husband to a motorcycle accident, we were able to cover her bereavement leave so she didn’t have to worry about financials. We’ve not been in a position to do that before, and though we wish it wasn’t under those circumstances, we are grateful we were able do that for her.
- We launched the first Color Club Membership in the state of Wisconsin! You may not know that we are the only salon in greater Madison to offer all-inclusive hair color, so you never have to worry about paying for extra mixes. When you receive color, the price we quote is the price it will be regardless of additional lighteners or glazes. But then we noticed a need for those of us who receive root touch-ups and all-over colors regularly. That need was, we’d really like to look like we never need our hair done, but we want to keep an eye on our budget. So now, we can have the best of both because our monthly membership is 75 and we will always have fresh, vibrant hair color!
- We were named Madison’s Best Hair Salon + Wisconsin Brides Best for Bridal Hair & Makeup + Salon Today’s Top 200 Salon in North America. Thank you for those of you who voted for our local and state recognition. We wouldn’t receive those honors without your faith in us as your hair salon.
- We added the new Brazilian Blowout service to our menu. Remember our first salon location? We were too small and had too many pregnancies to take the risk of offering the smoothing services when they first came to market. Since then, they’ve reformulated to be safe, yet high performance. And of course we’ve got a lot more room now with better air flow. A win for everyone and we’re excited to offer this!
2020 Goals
- We are launching a new Website! We want to make sure our website is user friendly and we want it to reflect how we’ve progressed. We will keep you posted as we hope to launch this in February!
- We plan to offer Hair Extensions (again)! LOL. Remember waaay back when we offered beaded hair extensions. It didn’t serve our fine-hair guests well. And ironically, those of us with finer hair are the top candidates who’d love to add volume and length. So we were a bit gun-shy to offer them. Things have evolved and we’re narrowing down the top techniques available. So when we begin to offer them, we will deliver the very best approach and hair for exceptional results.
- We plan to create a reservation call center! Our call volume and internal guest experiences are at such a volume (love) that we need to have new staffing who handle all incoming phone calls and emails. If you have an interest in joining our team in this way, please apply here!
- It’s going to be our 10 Year Anniversary in August! We are going to celebrate hard together! In fact, save this date in advance >> Saturday, August 1st at 2pm.
- The next time you’re in, you’ll notice our NEW Be Inspired typography wall! Every month we will have a Be Inspired theme, such as Be Bold, Be-Loved, Be Courageous, and so on. It’s a new way to share what inspires our guests, our team and our love for the industry.
2021
- During 2020 we plan to scope what it will take to offer paid time off benefits as we always want to grow value for our team as well as our guests.
- We are in the midst of considering a second location. Good things take time so we want to make sure we do our due diligence in launching that at the right time in the right location. Exciting though!
- As we grow our team and our community continues to grow, we want to keep adding services. We know that wig installations are becoming hotter and hotter. Offering more memberships is on our docket as well. Remember when your grandma went to the salon every week for a roller set? What is our modern version of that experience? In my opinion, it’s a style membership. I’d love to get my hair done once per week and have it last for up to four days. For those of you know me, I’m pretty sporty and dare I say, low maintenance? Haha. I’d love to have a blowout or a thermal style, or even a curly style. You never know, this may launch sooner than 2021. We’ll keep you posted on that as well.
Lord knows…
I could keep going. There’s so much isn’t there? Like, you may not have heard, but our sister company, Inspired Enterprises, Inc. moved across the street and into our first corporate office. Though, I’m out of sight, the salon is always top of mind. We love being so close and having a space for education and a quieter work environment when needed.
Okay, I promise I’m done. If you’ve read this far, thank you. If you ever want to chat, reach out to me directly! Kati@beinspiredsalon.com
Until next time, have an awesome day and stay strong.
Cheers,
Kati
