I have always wanted to have a super salon, one space with one team delivering the very best hairdressing service for all our clients and with that I felt strong that opening Sunday would be essential. And it was! Sundays became as quickly fully booked as Saturdays but it soon presented other challenges for us as a business. Over time there began to be a sense of negativity around having to work every other Sunday within the team and it was also becoming increasingly difficult to get everyone together for team meetings and training without having to bring people in on their days off.
The challenge now was that the clients loved Sunday appointments! It provided weekend clients with another option when Saturday was fully booked and our clients that worked in retail particularly appreciated this.
So the Sunday Club was born, at the start of the year I set down specific Sundays we would open. I worked it as being open every 4 weeks, so it fitted in for clients to be able to rebook as Sunday regulars. Setting down all the 2019 dates in one go also meant I could work around bank holiday weekends and Easter so the team felt the benefit of those lovely long weekends!
The whole team are in for Sunday Club so it’s a full and busy salon day but we’ve changed it up slightly to create a more intimate vibe. The three ‘p’s make our Sunday Club – prosecco, pastries and papers! Every guest is welcomed in to the salon with a glass of fizz (or orange juice if they prefer), the Sunday papers are all available for whichever supplement takes their fancy. There’s a choice of pastries available and because we love to support other local businesses there’s always a locally made Welsh cake on offer too. The music is more of a relaxed playlist so all in all there’s very much a “easy like Sunday morning” feeling going on.
Clients love it as much as the team do and it’s had an added bonus to in that the salon is closed for clients on the Tuesday following Sunday Club so team meetings and training days are much more easily organised! We take these Tuesdays as opportunities to do whatever the business needs, whether that’s bringing an educator in for a guest training day or salon maintenance, like rewiring the phone system. The flexibility of this Tuesday helps the business move fluidly around everything we need to do.
Thinking outside of the box and working out a compromise on Sunday appointments has led to a win, win situation for Ken and his team. Since starting in January this year every Sunday Club has been fully booked and the upcoming ones are heading in the same direction, food for thought when it comes to how and when salon businesses deal with their opening hours.
