Applications are now open for the 28th Annual SALON TODAY 200! With a new competition category focused on Business Builders, the landmark business competition for the professional beauty industry heads into 2025 focused on growing service and product sales. How can you turn in a successful application? We offer you some strategies!
At SALON TODAY, this competition tries to meet multiple goals:
- We want to celebrate some of the best business minds in the professional beauty industry, and recognize the hard work of their teams.
- We want to create a forum where leaders share proven ideas on growth and successful business practices.
- We want to create data benchmarks that all salon businesses can measure their own progress against.
- We want to develop a community of like-minded owners and managers who can support one another and raise the bar for others.
- And, for our SALON TODAY and DATA-DRIVEN SALON SUMMIT brands, we want to get a handle on the challenges and opportunities facing beauty-based businesses so that we can develop content that delivers what you need most right now.
Specific Strategies to Improve Your Odds
The way the SALON TODAY 200 works is 100 honorees are named in Growth, and the other 100 nominees are spread among the different best practices. Last year, we weighted the honorees in each best practice category based on the percentage of applicants applying in each category. Therefore, the category that received the most applications had more honorary positions than some that received the least. While that changes from year to year, the most popular categories last year were Salon Culture and Compensation and Benefits.
Always Enter Growth, Even if You Think You Don’t Have a Chance
The only reason you would not want to enter growth is if you don’t want your gross sales for 2022 and 2023 published publicly. Or, if you know for a fact that you didn’t grow at all between those two years.
Why do you still want to enter it? Because half of the SALON TODAY 200 are honored in growth. Winning in this category is all a numbers game. It’s based on your growth percentage stacked up against all other applicants. If you had growth above 10%, it’s definitely worth throwing your hat into this ring.
Read Over the List of Best Practices and Choose Your Strength
When you look over the past 18 months, which of these areas did you excel most in? Which ones did you implement specific actions that drove results? In which of these do you excel among other beauty-based businesses in your community? We’re looking for the quality of your business ideas, so if you did something unique and different in one of those categories, that resulted in a positive result, that’s your best business practice category.
Read the Entire Best Practice Question and Ask for Feedback
Each of the Best Practice questions is a series of questions. We aren’t expecting an exact answer to each of those individual questions but rather they are designed as prompts to get you thinking in the right direction about the kind of information we are looking for. Take the opportunity to discuss the prompt questions with your managers and overall team and invite their suggestions of things you’ve done over the past year to drive growth in this area. They may remember things you hadn’t thought of.
We Judge on the Quality of Ideas, Not on Grammar
When you start writing your essays, don’t get hung up on grammar, spelling and punctuation. We’re judging you on the quality and uniqueness of your ideas. Our editors don’t cut or color hair, so we would not want to be judged on our artistic hair abilities. We aren’t expecting you to be expert writers.
Focus on Your Uniqueness
I hinted at it above, but I’ll emphasize it again. What makes you unique makes you stand out. What does that mean? For example, if you had a successful client retention campaign but it was a carbon copy of one your manufacturer structured, I can assure you we will be reading multiple essays that sound like they came straight out of the same playbook. We want to know how you put your own unique spin on it, what made your program unique and how it drove results in your own community.
We are Data-Focused, You Should Be Too
In their essays, many honorees wax poetic about how wonderful they are without giving us proof that they are wonderful. In short, when we judge we tend to cut through the BS and start scoring when we see the ideas. So don’t use up your wordcount on flowery prose, get to the point.
Give us data that supports your claims. A great essay would state the goal you were trying to achieve, explain the idea or program you and your team designed, show how you implemented the program, and demonstrated that you measured the impact of the idea. Even if you didn’t meet the original goal, but you moved the needle in the right direction, that’s a win in our book.
Don’t Feel You Have to Write the Full Wordcount
We give you 1,000 words for each essay because some owners literally will write novels, and our judges don’t have time to read novels. Don’t feel you need to use every word if you can get your point across with less. In fact, if it helps you to organize your ideas in bullet points or with small headers, go for it. At the same time, each year we open essays that literally are a sentence long. Even the best written sentence in the universe isn't likely complete enough to earn you an honor.
Develop Your Own Thinktank
There are many salons who have entered and been honored in the 200 multiple times. If you know one of them, don’t be shy about reaching out and asking for advice. Many of them have developed their own strategies, like developing folders for each of the best practices and throwing ideas in each one throughout the year as they happen so there’s a collection of things to write about when the time comes.
Again, brainstorm with your team or even some of your top clients on where they think your salon excels. The process can give you some amazing fodder for your essay.
Learn From the Journey
We are the first to admit filling out the SALON TODAY 200 application can be daunting, especially the first time. But as one longtime honoree once told me, “If it was easy, then winning wouldn’t mean as much.”
For every one of next year’s honorees, there will be others that don’t make it. Don’t get discouraged if you don’t make it right out of the gate, and please don’t give up. Instead, focus on what the process illuminated for you. Many of our honorees have told us the journey of thinking through the application gives them a jumpstart on their strategic planning for next year. Others have taken the best practices and set specific goals against bettering the business in each one, with team members assigned to keep the team accountable on those goals.
The Deadline is Just That
We recently extended the deadline for all those procrastinators out there. Deadline is now 12 midnight PST, November 15th.. But if you neglect to sign your application or forgot to pay the fee, we will reach out and see if you meant to complete the process. If you have a true emergency, we also are compassionate and will work something out with you to give you a bit more time. Just keep in mind, just like you know those clients who constantly no-show, we tend to remember those who always ask for extensions:)
Good luck, and we're here if you need us. If you have a question, just reach out to stacey.soble@bobit.com or nicole.johnson@bobit.com.
This year’s essay questions to help you plan before you start:
SUCCESSES AND CHALLENGES ESSAY
Looking back at 2023 and 2024, list three things that drove your growth over the year and fueled your success. If you can share how an idea contributed to the overall bottom line, please share. As you look ahead at 2025 and into the future, what unique challenges are you and your team facing and what changes are you making to try to tackle those challenges? Please write your own essays. We have the ability to run your essay through a service that detects what percent of it was written by AI, and reserve the right to disqualify you if your essay is written primarily by AI. (Please note, we won't be judging you on the challenge portion of this essay, but it helps us determine what content themes to focus on for our media.)
THE BEST PRACTICES ESSAY
Review the 10 different best practices and pick ONE in which your salon/spa/barbershop excels. This section will be judged strictly on the strength of your essay. The questions in each category are intended as prompts to get you thinking in the right direction. You do not have to answer every question. You also can add something additional about that best practice that you do, even if it isn’t an answer to one of the questions. Please write your own essays. We have the ability to run your essay through a service that detects what percent of it was written by AI, and reserve the right to disqualify you if your essay is written primarily by AI.
The Best Practices Categories:
COMPENSATION AND BENEFITS
Explain your compensation plan for your team members. What do they need to achieve to grow to the next level? Do you track specific KPIs and if so, what? How do you track and communicate their progress? When a stylist is promoted, how is that communicated to the team/guests? How have your practices changed regarding schedule flexibility? In addition to salary, what other benefits or creative opportunities do you offer employees.
CLIENT RETENTION AND REFERRAL PROGRAMS
What specific programs do you have in place to attract new guests? How are incoming guests assigned to team members? Do you have a loyalty program for established clients? If so, how does it work? How do you encourage both clients and team members to pre-book future appointments? Do you have an active referral program, and how does it work? How have any of these programs shifted retention or new client numbers? What kind of employee or client competitions have you hosted to encourage growth in retention, pre-booking or referral numbers?
CUSTOMER SERVICE
From check in to check out, describe the expected guest experience at your salon/spa in terms of customer service. What specific things do you and your team do to enhance the guest experience? What’s your procedure for training service standards? How do you ensure that customer service is consistent from visit to visit? How often do you reevaluate your standard customer experience and look for ways to add more value? How do you test your team on guest service standards?
ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY
What specific actions do you take to make your salon, spa or barbershop more environmentally sustainable? Do you participate in philanthropies that benefit the environment? How do you involve/educate the team about environmental sustainability? How do you involve/educate clients about environmental sustainability? In what ways does taking a stance on environmental sustainability positively impact your salon?
EMPLOYEE EDUCATION
Describe your education program for new hires, including who does the training and how long it lasts, how trainees are evaluated throughout the program and how they are introduced onto the floor. Describe your education program for all employees, including how often you meet, how do you encourage attendance, and who teaches the classes. How do you bring outside educators into the salon if you do, and how do you encourage/support team members to seek outside education?
SALON CULTURE
As the owner, how do you establish the desired culture for your salon? How do you ensure that new hires match this culture? Do you have a team mission, vision or culture statement? If so, please share them. What specific activities have you established to encourage your culture? How do you evaluate that employee attitudes and actions are in line with your culture, and what steps do you take when they are not? What is the last culture-building idea that you implemented into your company?
BUSINESS BUILDERS
Describe in detail one business idea you implemented in the past 24 months that really moved the needle on sales? (This could be a new service category, the addition of a new product line or the implementing a system that improved efficiency.) What was the impact on your sales? How did you inform and educate team members on the new idea? What did you learn from implementing this idea that you would share with others attempting the same?
PHILANTHROPY
Describe your salon’s philanthropic activities? Do you partner with a particular charity? How do you raise funds, assistance or awareness for this cause? If you have developed your own philanthropy or program, please explain in detail. How do you encourage team participation? How do you encourage your clients to support or participate? What is your system for donating services/products to organizations who ask for your help? How do you let your community know about your philanthropic activities? How has the philanthropic work you do helped your salon grow?
TECHNOLOGY
What are the most important technology tools you use to manage and grow your business every day? How do you educate yourself and your team about new technology and what is your adoption process? How do you use technology to recruit new team members? How do you use it to attract new clients? How does technology enhance growth in your business? How do you use it to market to existing clients? What technology tool or idea have you borrowed from another business and how did you implement it?
RETAIL AND MERCHANDISING
How do you educate and encourage team members to retail to clients? What are the different ways that clients are educated about your retail offerings? Who manages retail displays throughout the salon and how often are these changed? Describe a successful retail competition or merchandising display, and how did it fuel sales? (Specific results are always appreciated.) What is the last retail idea that you borrowed from another business and how was it implemented?
