Considering Raising Your Hair Salon Prices? Here’s How to Do It

After being in the hair business for quite some time, you may be considering raising your hair salons service prices. There can be plenty of reasons to raise your prices whether it be the amount of education you received, the cost of supplies and tools, or because you’re always booked to capacity.

Regardless, you recognize the opportunity but don’t know where to start. Here are some tips on raising hair salon prices so that you can continue to service your loyal clientele!

How to Raise Hair Salon Prices

Raising salon prices isn’t as easy as it seems. Here are some factors to consider before so you can set a good price for a haircut and other services.

Assess Your Business Situation

Raising prices can ward off old customers. If you cannot afford to lose clients or don’t think you can bring in new clients to fill their spots, then it may not be the time to raise your salon prices. If you aren’t booked to 80% or more capacity, than it may be beneficial to spend more time to find clientele.

Analyze your business performance carefully. Being too quick to increase prices can be detrimental to the business, leaving you to lose longtime clients and money. Once you figure out where you are in your business, you can think about pricing increases. It is best to do the price increases in increments, and slowly over time.

Another way to raise price increases while assessing your business situation is to raise prices in areas where you have more clientele. If you are fully booked for color treatments, and not haircuts, then you can look to increase prices in your area of expertise.

Raising prices, while notifying clients, is a way to show that you are more experienced in your specialization and have customers take you more seriously. It also allows you to position your services higher in the market, bringing in more expensive clientele.

Increase Price in Increments

When deciding to increase the price, you should do it slow and steady. Hiking up prices drastically will cause many clients to look elsewhere. Look back to your assessment of your business calculate the incremental cost.

This will help you decide how much you should increase your prices in the services you provide. It is safe to increase haircuts yearly from $1-$3. Haircuts are more frequent so raising it by more than $3 will be a shock to clients and have them not coming back.

Hair color and other chemical treatment services can be increased yearly by $5. These services are infrequent but do take more time and supply usage so the price increase is justified.

Another way to go about price increase is to honor original prices with loyal clients and charge new clients more. Prices at hair salons matter to loyal clients that come to you often and have already chosen you as their designated stylist. To thank them, charging them the same prices is an option. Charging new clients who pop in from time to time higher prices can balance it all out.

Look at your supply and tool usage. Many do not know how expensive it is to restock so pay attention to your supply and demand. If you’re booked for weeks’ end, price increases are right for you.

Having these incremental prices raises will have customers value your services and it makes them understand that they are paying for professional, quality service.

Notify Your Clients

No client likes surprises especially if they chose your salon for the price point. Always let clients know that there will or has been a price increase so they aren’t caught off guard or upset that no one told them.

Having clients sign up for the salon’s email list, or social media platforms is a great way to get the message out. Coming up with a salon loyalty program is also an option to notify your clients and keep them. This also strengthens the bond between business and consumers so they feel that they can trust you not to take advantage of them.

Over time, if you continue to increase your prices yearly, your clients expect it so you don’t have to remind them of the change. Open dialogue makes customers appreciate hair salon management.

Decide When to Raise Prices

It may be intuitive to think that January is the best time to increase prices since it is such a slow month. This could work if you do decide to do so, but it isn’t the only option.

Whichever month you choose to increase brings on different results of success. January works because it is a slow month and not many people come in so when they do return for busy months, it is expected because of all the time that has passed. Others may think that January is too late because they missed out on the busy holiday season.

Some may increase right before summer starts because from the summer continuing into the holiday season proves to be very busy. Fall is ideal for some hair salons because from the end of August till the end of December, clients are getting ready for holidays and celebrations.

Raising prices during busy times, as long as clients are notified, will be a profitable time for salons. During the holiday season, clients are less likely to look for other places to get their service with lower prices because everything is usually booked and busy.

It’s too much of a hassle to do keep this in mind when determining what month to raise prices.

Elevate Your Salon Prices

Increasing hair salon prices shows that the hair salon has improved upon their services and the stylists have received specialized education to perform those services. It helps customers value their stylists more and over time, create customer loyalty. No one wants to jump from stylist to stylist.

Key takeaways to increase hair salon prices is to keep the price increase minimal and to make sure to always notify loyal and new customers of the change to make sure they aren’t caught off guard. Deciding when to increase prices is also pivotal in the number of profits you bring in. Finally, do not increase prices if you are not booked out for weeks.

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