Hope White, owner of Salon Thirty-One, is finding new dollars to fund a retirement plan for her...

Hope White, owner of Salon Thirty-One, is finding new dollars to fund a retirement plan for her stylists and maybe even a second location.

Every salon owner knows salon profit margins are narrow. That’s what led Hope White, owner of Salon Thirty-One in Spanish Fort, AL, to investigate the Vish color management system. “I know my staff is honest and conscientious,” says Hope. “And I’m a hands-on owner—I’m in the salon all the time. But with 250 new guests a month, I thought there was a possibility we weren’t charging for our color services correctly, so I decided to give Vish a try. After one month, our Vish partner looked at what we had saved and projected that we could probably recover an additional $100,000.00 a year!”

The results after implementing Vish were immediately substantial, says Hope. Using the Vish system of weighing bowls of color before and after a service in order to properly charge for the amount of product used, the stylists (Hope included) discovered they were undercharging nearly every client. “It could be $35, or it could be $3, but it was always something,” Hope recalls. “One of the first times I used Vish, I discovered I missed out on $50 in just one retouch, cut and shine treatment appointment! That’s serious! I was sold.”

Hope admits she’s not comfortable with numbers, but her husband is the salon accountant and he is amazed at the value of using Vish. So are her stylists—many of whom are enjoying the 20 to 30 percent increases in their income. “We’re not bookkeepers, we’re hairdressers,” says Hope. “At first people were a little resistant to the weighing requirement, but I didn’t give anyone the option. I told them it’s what they had to do. And now they’re seeing a couple hundred dollars more per pay period.”

And how are the clients reacting to the increases? “Honestly,” says Hope, “not a single person has mentioned it.”

With the extra revenue comes new opportunities for Salon Thirty-One. Hope already offers health insurance for staff members—now she believes she’ll have the resources to provide retirement benefits as well. And she and her husband are eyeing the possibility of opening a second location…and maybe even a third. “You have to find the money to do these things,” Hope says, “and we’ve found the money. And the staff knows where the money is coming from, so they’re all for it.”

Now, just six months into working with Vish, Hope is sold 100 percent. “This is the most important new thing for our industry,” she declares. “We’re controlling our costs, we’re keeping all our color services consistent, we’re managing our inventory better and we’re growing. Vish is a game changer.”

Learn more about saving money with Vish. 

Staff Writer

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