Filling Vacancies While Boosting Your Bottom Line

When a styling station, nail station or treatment room sits empty on in your salon for a day, a week or even a month, your lost revenue opportunity continues to tally. At the end of the year, that can make a huge impact to your potential bottom line, depending on how many unbooked hours ticked by.

Dharmendra Manwani is a serial entrepreneur and CEO who cofounded Jean Claud Biguine, Asia, one of the world’s largest salon and spa chains. Over 25 years, he launched and scaled more than 320 salons that employed 10,000+ stylists. Like most commissioned-based salons around the country, he witnessed his stylists leaving to go independent and in 2014, he determined to find out why.

“The first reason was they didn’t want to be ‘schooled’ anymore, they wanted to be their own boss,” says Manwani. “The second was they felt they should get a bigger share of the pie—they were doing as many clients a day as they could do, and they didn’t see how they could grow. And finally, they wanted flexibility in their lives and the opportunity to dictate their own schedules.”

While many of the stylists felt they had the clientele, the experience and the skills to go it alone, they didn’t have the infrastructure or the money to create the infrastructure, and many   didn’t want to open their own salon or commit to a long-term suite lease while they were sampling their independence. 

In trying to puzzle out how he could address the needs of this changing workforce, while also stemming the lost revenue for salon owners everywhere, Manwani partnered with two other powerhouses—Pat Parenty, the former president of L’Oreal Professional Products and a tech visionary, and his sister Aarti Manwani, who was the product brainpower behind companies like E*TRADE Financial, Pager and Gemini.

Together, they created Artist On Go, an Uber-like app that matches salons that have empty chairs with professionals who want to rent them by the hour, the day, the week or the month.

“I’ve always been sympathetic to the owner, and we’re going through a time when artists are leaving salons for all kinds of reasons,” he says.  “It leaves an owner looking at these empty chairs and wondering how you can monetize them. I had tried renting the traditional way, but it felt like it took us a year or more of negotiating back and forth to lock in a lease—so we thought why not create a different marketplace like Airbnb, where an individual can filter by budget, the location they’re looking for, the days they want and the amenities they prefer?”

With Artist on Go, salon owners can create a profile and select which amenities they want to offer. Every artist is meticulously pre-screened, and owners choose to work with the artists who fit the vibe and culture of their salon.

Artist On Go provides salons with all the tech tools they need to manage chair availability and handle bookings on-the-go. Service providers prepay the rent on ArtistsOnGo’s website and the money is automatically released to the salon owner when the commitment is complete, so they never have to worry about chasing down rent. In addition, owners can keep a finger on the pulse of their rent income with comprehensive annual, monthly and weekly reports.

Jeff Chastain is the owner of Jeff Chastain Parlor in the Union Square area of New York City. Chastain had a commissioned salon but had experience with a few of his experienced staff members transitioning to renting a chair within his salon, as many salons in New York were doing. When the pandemic hit, his landlord sold the building his salon was in, and the new owner determined he was going to tear the building down.

Initially, Chastain tried to go the whole suite route for himself, but he found it professionally lonely and missed the energy of bouncing ideas off other stylists. So, he reopened with a handful of established renters, and has tapped into Artist On Go to fill the salon’s additional chairs.

So, who are these artists seeking temporary space? Manwani explains there traditionally are three different kinds of stylists who tap into Artist On Go, and the app-based technology provides different products for them. One is a serious, established hairdresser with a full book who is looking to work a steady number of days a week with a set schedule. ArtistsOnGo offers monthly memberships for them.

Then, there are more casual renters, such as an editorial stylist, who is looking for a temporary space to work close by to where they have an assignment. With ArtistsOnGo, they can rent the day or even by the hour. Thirdly, then there are renters who are still trying to build their own book and only want to rent the days they can fill, then build as they grow.

Chastain says some of the artists came from commissioned salons but decided they wanted to handle their own business. “There are good about prebooking, and run a tight ship,” he says. “Others artists we’ve hosted are more freelance—maybe they are doing a wedding, working a photoshoot or have a handful of clients they need to cut, color and style for a film project they are working on. In our salon, we get about half and half.”

With Artist On Go, stylists can also choose their preferred location and vibe, the kind of schedule they want to work, and the technology matches them with salon. Artists have the benefit of working within a salon culture, instead of shuttering off alone in a suite, but they can still call the shots for themselves.

“Everyone handles their own client booking and processing, with programs like Square or Gloss Genius,” Chastain says. “I supply the backbar products, robes, towels and a locker to store their things. The Artist On Go stylists bring their own tools and color—most set up an account with Salon Centric and simply have what they need shipped here.”

With Artist On Go helping Chastain fill the chair vacancies, he says his salon is now open seven days a week, and frequently Sundays are their busiest days with all eight chairs booked. “All I’m trying to do is cover my salon’s rent and the rent on my apartment, and ArtistsOnGo helps me achieve that,” he says. “And, because I’m working on launching a retail line, it also gives me a bigger network of stylists to try things out with.”

When Chastain’s new landlord recently hiked the rent, he called Artist On Go and told him the additional amount of rent they needed to cover, and they quickly helped him fill some additional space with the right artists to make it happen.

To commissioned owners who feel they are in a constant competitive battle against booth rental, Manwani says, “It is the market right now, and there are artists who want to be independent,” he says. “If you can be flexible and open to the idea, you can list your salon for just $3—if you like it, you can continue, if you don’t, you can turn it off any time.”