Boost retail sales in your hair salon: the quarterly review of your retail shelf

Why your shelf can hold back your retail sales

Retail brings in revenue without extra chair hours. But every product on your shelf also costs something: you bought it, it takes up space and it needs attention from your team. A bottle that sits there for six months is money in the cupboard instead of in your bank account.

A full wall does not help the client either. Someone who sees twelve shampoos often picks none and says she will think about it at home. A clear shelf with a reason behind every product makes choosing easier, for the client and for the stylist giving advice.

In retail, this interplay of product, price, place and people is known as the retail mix. For a hair salon it comes down to four questions: do you sell the right products, at a price that leaves a margin, in a spot where the client sees them, with a team that knows why they are there? The quarterly review below goes through those four questions in a fixed order.

The advice conversation itself, with the questions you ask and how you handle objections, is covered in our guide to increasing retail sales in your salon. If you mainly work with skin care, also read how a home care plan per client works. This article is about what comes before that: the shelf itself.

Step 1: put four figures side by side for each product

Pick a fixed moment, for example the first Monday after each quarter, and take the past three months. For every product on your retail shelf, note four things.

Units sold. How many bottles, jars or tubes went out the door?

Revenue. What did they bring in together?

Margin. Work with amounts excluding VAT: (selling price minus purchase price) divided by the selling price. If you sell a shampoo for €20 excluding VAT and buy it for €9, you keep €11 and your margin is 55%.

Stock on the shelf. How many are left now, and how many were there three months ago?

In Salonnare, the reporting shows for a period you choose which products brought in the most, with the number of units sold and the revenue. You record the purchase price per product in inventory management, where you also see the current stock. You calculate the margin yourself by putting the two side by side. If you still work without software, a till list and a spreadsheet will do, but count on an afternoon rather than an hour.

Step 2: split your range into four groups

With those figures you place every product in one of four groups. You decide where the line between high and low sales, or between a good and a thin margin, lies: for example the average of your own shelf.

Carriers: high sales, good margin. These are the products your retail revenue rests on. Give them the best spot at eye level by the counter and make sure they never run out. A client who cannot take her usual shampoo home often orders it online that same evening.

Hidden opportunities: low sales, good margin. Often a good product that nobody mentions. Give it a fair chance for one quarter: use it during the wash or styling, place it next to the service it belongs to and make sure your team can say one sentence about it. If it still does not sell after that, it moves to the shelf warmers.

Fast movers with a thin margin: high sales, low margin. Clients expect to find this product at your salon, so dropping it is usually not a good idea. Keep it in stock, but do not push it. Take it into your next purchasing conversation.

Shelf warmers: low sales, thin margin. Do not reorder. Sell what is there, for example by giving it a place next to a matching service, and then take it off the shelf. The space that frees up goes to a carrier or a hidden opportunity.

You will not find the shelf warmers in a top list, because that shows exactly what sells well. You find them in the stock overview: they are the products whose stock has barely dropped since the last review.

Step 3: link every product to a service

A product without a fixed place in your service menu is hard for your team to recommend. So go through your menu and put at most two products next to each service that help the client keep the result at home.

Colour or highlights: a shampoo and conditioner that protect the colour.

Bleaching: a repairing mask for hair that has become drier and more brittle.

A perm or curls: a product that defines the curl without drying it out.

Cutting short or fine hair: a styling product that adds volume or grip.

This is cross-selling in the good sense: you suggest an additional product because it fits what the client has just had done, not to make the receipt bigger. The test is simple. Can every stylist on your team say, for every product on the shelf, which service it belongs to? Where that fails, the product is probably there without a reason.

Then group the shelf the same way: by hair need, such as colour, repair, curls and styling, instead of by brand. A client is looking for a solution for her hair, not a wall of brands.

Step 4: bring your team and your supplier along

After every quarterly review, plan a short team meeting of twenty minutes. Show which products are leaving and which hidden opportunities get extra attention in the coming quarter. For each hidden opportunity, agree who uses it during the wash or styling and how to explain it briefly. A stylist recommends a product she uses and knows herself more easily than something that only stands on the shelf.

Also separate retail from professional use. A large bottle of shampoo at the basin is something different from the bottles on your retail shelf. In Salonnare's inventory management you can mark per product whether it is sold, only used internally or both, with separate low-stock alerts. That way your own consumption does not distort your sales figures.

Then take your figures into the conversation with your supplier or sales rep. Research firm Kline describes how salons and independent stylists purchase professional hair care products and what role brands and distributors play in that. If you sit at the table with your own sales figures, you can explain why a shelf warmer will not come back, or ask for better terms on a fast mover with a thin margin.

Step 5: align your stock with your sales

After grouping, adjust the minimum stock per product. A carrier that sells ten times a month needs a higher floor than a hidden opportunity you are just giving a first quarter. A shelf warmer no longer gets a floor: you do not reorder it.

In Salonnare you set that floor per product. A sale in the point of sale deducts the stock immediately, the till warns you if you sell more than you have in stock, and you get a notification as soon as a product drops below its floor. That way you see a carrier running low before a client asks for it.

If you want to set up your stock more broadly, including purchasing and the difference between retail and backbar, read our guide to salon inventory management.

After three months: measure whether it works

The review only works if you repeat it. At the end of the next quarter, take the same four figures per product and compare them with the previous time. Three things show whether the shelf has improved.

Fewer products, equal or higher retail revenue. Then you have freed up space and money without losing sales.

At least one hidden opportunity has become a carrier. Then the link to your services is working.

No carrier has been sold out. Then your stock floors are set right.

Also look at the average spend per client, services and products together. That measure shows whether retail really adds to what a client spends with you per visit, and not just to the revenue of a single product. Loyalty points can help here: in Salonnare a client earns points on the full receipt amount, including products, and redeems them at the till as a discount on a later visit.

How to get started with Salonnare

Salonnare has a permanently free plan at €0 per month for one staff member and 50 appointments per month, with the online booking page, the till for cash and card, client management and email reminders. Inventory management, reporting and loyalty are included in Starter at €29 per month (up to three staff members, unlimited appointments). Pro costs €59 per month, with unlimited staff members and email campaigns, among other things. All the differences are on the pricing page, and what Salonnare does specifically for hairdressers is on the page about hair salon software.

Salonnare charges no marketplace commission on new clients. A transaction fee of 0.5% does apply to every online or card payment through Salonnare, with a minimum of €0.30 per payment. From Starter, online payments via iDEAL (Mollie) or Stripe go straight to your own account. The software works in five languages, you decide per staff member what they can see, and your data is stored in the EU.

Want to do your first quarterly review with real figures right away? Start free with Salonnare and start recording your retail sales today.

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