Creating a salon service around a trend concept, a fresh idea to promote, can be so uplifting and fun for the team and the clients. It can also gain you huge coverage for your business in the press, leading to new clients and confirming to regular clients just why they choose you as their salon.
Here Zoë goes through the hows and whys to her new trend launch at Taylor Taylor Liberty…
This month the Tie It Up hair concept is in Elle, Tatler, The Evening Standard, Vanity Fair and many more titles – wonderful coverage with thanks to Octavia the Taylor Taylor PR and the trend idea that we launched together. It was designed to celebrate the new Taylor Taylor salon which opened in August in the Liberty store.
I designed five hairstyles that blended the iconic Liberty fabric into hair. These were made into a hair menu that could be booked by clients for the same price as a blowdry. The concept came from my love of Liberty prints. As a seventies’ child I spent my summers wearing dresses made from Liberty fabrics and have always been obsessed with the store. My idea to combine these iconic prints with my love of decorating and adorning hair with colour and threads came from walking past the fabric section on my way to the salon in the mornings.
To make a concept work as a salon service it’s important to factor in many things: the time it takes to do and the cost of the service are very important but the most important thing to me has always been how easy it is for the team to learn. This applies to colour, styling and haircuts equally. I have seen many slip up by launching a blowdry service with styles that are quite difficult to master for some stylists or that take many months to learn. For this reason the looks in the
Tie It Up menu take 15 minutes to braid and are very simple to learn.
Basically the hair is braided after shampooing and blowdrying. The blow out is as simple as a smoothing action and the use of dry shampoo throughout means that clients can leave the look in for up to five days.
What brought the idea to life in the first place was the ladder that displayed the fabric at reception, made in glazed wood and rose gold that Sarah, the owner of Taylor Taylor, had designed to match the salon walls. Fabric was pre torn and tied around the ladder. As part of the appointment the client will choose several prints to match their outfits.
The whole team style the looks and the apprentices have become incredible at binding braids. The fabric cost is £2 per client. Images of the looks are displayed around the salon in beautiful frames.
By blending with Liberty, the store advertised the service in its broadsheet and online as well as taking out a full page in The Guardian.
The most important part of a launch like this to me, is not the styles themselves but the conversations that they start. Like at a dinner party when the client turns up with a fresh look, and talks about it to their friends which leads constantly to new clients. The other conversations are the ones started as you braid or style hair, these lead to colour and haircut advice. As I braided the looks into clients I found myself using the time to consult on new ideas for colours. It may start as a styling appointment but will so often end somewhere else and often to a new client that comes in for a much bigger service. Trend launches? I’m an addict and maybe you should be too.
