Owning a business with multiple locations can prove to be an arduous task at times, but that doesn’t always need to be the case! At this year’s iconic.23 conference, attendees had the opportunity to attend a panel that shed a light on the benefits of using Vagaro for businesses with multiple locations. Joined by Humble Bee Sugaring Studio and Alchemy Face Bar, Nick Romero (CEO of the Thank My Barber Association) led the discussion, speaking on the very real obstacles that one faces when running a multilocation business and how you can overcome them. Before we explore some of the common themes from the panel, check out the 1min teaser, below!
The One-Team Mindset
With owning multiple locations comes working with multiple mindsets, backgrounds, and personalities. How do you ensure that you’re still creating a cohesive, like-minded experience for all who visit your business, though? Well, it starts internally. Humble Bee and Alchemy both note that they prefer to use Vagaro for its ability to easily track and manage things like employees, service menu, and booking settings for any of their locations at the click of a button. (Check out one of Vagaro’s latest features for multilocation businesses, Flagship Syncing.)
On a more human level, though, it’s all about “letting your employees express themselves,” say Dulcinea & Olivier de Roany, owners of Humble Bee Sugaring Studio. By allowing other people to contribute to your vision in their own unique ways, you might reveal things to yourself that you would have otherwise not noticed! Gathering honest feedback about your business is an essential piece to expanding it. Not to mention, when your employees feel as though their voice is being heard, they’ll be more likely to stick around. This ties directly into hiring talent that aligns with your brand’s core values & mission.
Making a New Location Profitable
Getting clients inside your new location can be tough sometimes, even if your other locations are already established and successful. Tina Merli, manager of Alchemy Face Bar, talks on the significance of building rapport with your clients. She recommends that when entering a new area, you try connecting with other local businesses, networking at local events, or do some self-promotion at the local café. Olivier de Roany of Humble Bee Sugaring reassured conference attendees that “people are just about the same wherever you go.” Meaning, if your business is successful in one town, it’ll likely be popular elsewhere! This might not be the case when taking things like international locations into mind, or not paying attention to demographics in new areas, however. Heavy market research should always be conducted prior to a move like that anyway. But if you’ve done your due diligence and just opened a business in a new area, and things are slow, take pride in the small wins and embrace incremental success. The right people just need to know about you. Humble Bee and Alchemy both explain how they rely heavily on Vagaro’s granular marketing reports for email & text campaigns to ensure they’re effectively communicating to their target audiences and getting the results they’re looking for.
Panel Q&A
Wrapping up the panel, and frequently throughout, Nick Romero opened up the floor for conference attendees to ask any burning questions that they might have had regarding their multilocation endeavors. Humble Bee Sugaring and Alchemy Face Bar, being the multilocation empires they are, shared their recommendations, personal experiences & success stories, as well as expert advice that they’ve accumulated over the years.
Make sure you catch the 1min teaser for this panel above, and click HERE to see how you can get started with Vagaro for 30 days, entirely free.