The Business of Hair Color: 19 Tips for Boosting This CategoryA strong color service business is a financial lifeline for any salon in today’s economy. And, for the professional beauty industry the color category overall continues to fuel growth.

Although the recently released 2013 Professional Salon Industry Haircare Study from Professional Consultants & Resources reported sluggish growth for the beauty industry due to macroeconomic factors of lower disposable income, high unemployment, and wage and job uncertainty, it pointed to one, colorful bright spot. Hair color services continued to grow at 3.7 percent, “due to an aging population and the desire for fashion hair color,” says Cyrus Bulsara, president of Professional Consultants and Resources.

But color experts claim, when salons truly understand the power they wield with their brushes and bowls and carefully cultivate their color growth, they can harvest exponential sales and become leaders in their own market. To get color wheels spinning for salons and their teams, SALON TODAY gathered top educators, leading salons and the owners of color-focused companies and invited them to assemble a toolbox of 19 sales-building strategies. (Click on each title to access the corresponding tip.)

Tip 1: Meaure, Then Grow

Tip 2: Be Strategic

Tip 3: Make Your Color Shine

Tip 4: Seek Color Education

Tip 5: Plan Your Appointments

Tip 6: Write Your Color Script

Tip 7: Offering Multiple Appointments

Tip 8: Under Promise, Over Deliver

Tip 9: Fostering Creativity

Tip 10: Take Technique Off the Menu

Tip 11: Prep the Color Canvas

Tip 12: Getting Back to the Craft

Tip 13: Get The Right Light

Tip 14: Eliminating Color Waste

Tip 15: Time Management

Tip 16: Promote Color Selfies

Tip 17: Technicolor Show and Tell

Tip 18: Don't Forget to Retail

Tip 19: Create a Color Springboard

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