You Get What You Pay For

We are all watching our pennies. It’s difficult as women and moms to spend money on ourselves without feeling guilt. So we shop around to get the best price. That’s great except we need to make sure we are getting the best price for the best value.

Group coupon websites have brought a surge of online shopping to our households. We can look for a great deal everyday from our computer and purchase services and items at an extremely reduced cost. At the beginning these sites were promoting that businesses could gain new clients by allowing them to “try you out” for little money. This caused floods of people to buy unbelievable deals for awhile. Then came the problems. I will speak about the service industry such as spas. Many spas sold hundreds or thousands of spa services and when people came to claim them they realized that they were operating at a loss. Let me show you the math:

Manicure/ pedicure $40 (and many were for much less than this)

Group coupon site keeps $20

Nail salon gets $20 but paid over three months time frame

It takes at least 1.5 hours to do a mani/pedi

and at minimum wage $10.25 per hour the esthetician needs 2 hours for the services, set up and clean up.

Before the salon has paid for any towels, sanitation supplies, electricity, insurance and disposable products they are at a .50 loss per appt.

From experience, clients that purchase these deals do not tip or tip on the value they paid not the actual value so the estheticians don’t get much extra. Also instead of getting repeat clients it caused people to shop for the latest coupon instead of paying the original full price and go from deal to deal. Of course with a loss leader with every client and minimal repeat business, many spas make it very difficult to redeem the coupons or have closed not being able to service all these clients.

Group coupon sites are not as popular as they once were but the damage has been done. Now many spas offer the same mani/ pedi for $38 cutting out that middle man. To make a profit something still has to give. Sometimes the time is shortened so the esthetician can do more services. Often nail files, towels and other things are reused to reduce costs. Now I’m not saying that a very expensive place will not have any of these issues because many have been cited for unsanitary conditions. All business need to charge the necessary amount to stay in business and still stay competitive.

I’m not against coupon sites. I have bought and used them myself never to return to that vendor so I am as guilty as everyone else in creating this market. I just wanted to get the info out there on the business side instead of as a consumer. I have learned that price is not always the defining factor of whether clients will come. If you provide a good service, conversation and the client leaves happy and valued they will most likely return. I am blessed with amazing clients as well as the estheticians that work with me and I let them know as much as possible. If I haven’t said it lately- I love you guys!! xoxo Until I write again……….