For most salon businesses, there are just a handful of key performance indicators that monitor how well the team is doing. Rebooking is up there, along with retail per service and average ticket. But at Indira Salon, an Aveda salon group with a location in Wisconsin and two in Chicago, there is an additional KPI considered crucial for the financial wellbeing of the salon and the environment: reweighing the color bowl.

"We reward those top stylists who achieve the best rates in the usual KPIs but we consider monitoring color use and waste as important as any of the others," says Mike Nass, owner along with his wife Tracey. ‘Using the color app Vish we are able to see how much is being dispensed and how much is wasted, but only if all members of the team are reweighing their bowls every time. So each month the stylist from each location who has the best reweigh stats is recognized and celebrated."

Indira was one of the first salons to install Vish, more than three years ago and reweighing is almost second nature to the team, with between 93% and 95% of bowls reweighed after service. By calculating how many grams are left over, Vish guides the stylist to dispense less the next time the client attends. Refining the formula has allowed the team to drop the cost of waste to an average of 23 cents per service.

Indira now has its color menu organized into type of color and quantities required. If a client has long hair, the additional color costs are already incorporated within the bill.

"We had a scoop bucket for waste before Vish but you can’t always be sure every stylist has emptied their waste into the bucket, or monitor who is disposing of the most waste. By using Vish we can track our team and encourage those who waste more to be more careful, which is better for business and the planet," adds Nass. "Vish fits with the ethos of the business and our clients. They come to Indira because they know we care about the environment as much as they do."

Check out these additional articles in the Sustainability Series: 

Greening Practices While Boosting Profits

Sustainability Series: Cutting Color Waste Helped Zazou Salon Stay Strong Post-Pandemic

Colorists at Reve Salon Drive Product Cost Per Service to New Lows