As the SALON TODAY 200 marks its 30^th anniversary of celebrating the most successful salons, spas, and barbershops in North America, the 2027 application introduces a new competition category focusing on talent recruitment and retention. The industry’s landmark business will continue to establish important benchmarks, create a forum for the sharing of best practices, and celebrate its honorees, Sunday, May 16, 2027, in San Diego, as part of Data-Driven Salon Summit.

OPEN THE APPLICATION!

“Each year, we ask applicants to tell us about their biggest business challenges, and last year we ran their essays through AI to tell us what issues were trending,” says Stacey Soble, director of brand content strategy for SALON TODAY. “Nearly 80% of salon owners listed staff recruitment and retention as one of their biggest management struggles, so we decided to make it one of our Best Practice essay categories.

SALON TODAY is now calling for entries with the opening of its 2027 application, and the deadline for submission is midnight, October 31, 2026.

Our Editors’ Thoughts on Improving Your Odds

The way the SALON TODAY 200 works is 100 honorees are named in Growth, and the other 100 nominees are spread among 10 different best practices. We weigh the number of selected honorees in each best practice category based on the percentage of applicants applying in that category. Therefore, the categories that receive the most applications have more honorary positions than those that receive the least. While that changes from year to year, the most popular categories last year were Salon Culture, Compensation and Benefits, and Employee Education.

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 2024 and 2025 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 at your business 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 Invite Feedback

Each of the Best Practice questions includes a series of prompts. We aren’t expecting an exact answer to each of those individual prompts, but they are designed to help you understand the kind of information our judges are looking for in your essays 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 each area. They may remember things you hadn’t thought of.

We Judge on the Quality of Your Business Idea, Not the 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 hairstyling 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 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 demonstrate 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 or learned an important lesson that led to a stronger business decision, 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 to give us a complete enough picture 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 the following year. Others have taken the best practices and set specific goals for bettering the business in each one, with team members assigned to keep the team accountable on those goals.

The Deadline is Just That

Each year we set a deadline, and this year’s is October 31, 2027. But if you neglect to sign your application or forgot to pay the fee, we will reach out to 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:)

Pacing Your Application Process

Putting together your ST200 application is a long process, and we know most people don’t get it all done in one sitting. Our system should sent you a link to take you back into your application, so you can pick up where you left off. If it doesn’t, DON’T START THE APPLICATION AGAIN. Simply email one of us and we’ll send you your link: stacey.soble@bobit.com or Nicole.johnson@bobit.com.

Questions? Reach Out!

Access the Application HERE!

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.  

The year’s essay questions to help you plan before you start the application.

SUCCESSES AND CHALLENGES ESSAY

Looking back at 2024 and 2025, list three things that drove your growth and fueled your success. If you can share how an idea contributed to the overall bottom line, please share. As you look ahead at 2027 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, and only use AI to help you edit. We reserve the right to disqualify you if your essay is entirely written 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, and only use AI to help you edit. We reserve the right to disqualify you if your essay is entirely written 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?

TALENT RECRUITMENT & RECRUITMENT
How are you interacting with local cosmetology schools and students? How do you present your salon/spa to prospective candidates? How are you leveraging technology to help you attract prospective candidates? How are you marketing, nurturing and processing talent leads? What does your employment offer look like? What does the career path look like in your salon? How does your career path incentivize talent to grow and stay? How do you cultivate leadership from within 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?