The swelter of summer has barely subsided, which makes it the perfect time to start your holiday planning. We know what you’re thinking: it starts earlier and earlier every year. But for beauty and fitness professionals, holiday prepping in advance will get you through your busiest time of year without breaking a sweat! No matter how much planning you put in, it’s sure to be a crazy time for you and your staff. But by getting a head start, no matter what curve balls the holiday crunch throws your way, you’ll handle it with style. Here’s how to minimize the chaos the holidays bring about and make sure this year is your busiest one ever!
1. Order Gift Cards Early
In the time it takes between ordering, shipping, and
delivery of gift cards, you might be missing out on sales! To avoid holiday
design and shipping delays, give your business a head start by ordering your holiday gift cards in September.
Not sure how many gift cards you’ll need? A great rule of thumb is to pull last year’s sales report, review your
gift card sales totals, and then add 10% to give yourself a margin of error. To
prevent having holiday backstock gift cards, keep your design holiday-agnostic,
and go with your business branding logo and colors. Then, throughout autumn
downtime, you can create seasonal packaging like holiday-themed envelopes and
gift boxes, keeping your gift-cards sale-ready, even after the holiday season
ends.
Pro Tip: Set up a dedicated station to exclusively handle gift card sales and use the Vagaro iPad App to quickly check people out.
2. Make Sure You’ve Got Enough Staff for Walk-Ins and Check-Outs
If your business is primarily booth renters, you might want
to hire a seasonal staffer
to handle retail sales for a few hours on weekends or high-volume days.
To accommodate walk-ins, make sure you’ve got your booking limitations set and your waitlist feature enabled. You may even
want to take on a seasonal apprentice or newly licensed service professional to
cover seasonal walk-in customers. In salons and spas, you can take on seasonal
staff as “floaters” who move through the shop with the business iPad to check
out or re-book clients while their service is processing. Both customers and
busy service professionals will appreciate the extra minutes an expedited
check-out provides!
Pro Tip: Going into the season, pull last year’s sales and services reports to review and figure out what your peak days were last year. That way, you can project the days you’ll want to make sure you’ve got some extra staff scheduled to handle walk-in traffic and busy checkouts.
3. Stock Your Online Store for the Holidays
Modern shoppers start their holiday purchasing online, and
beauty and fitness businesses aren’t an exception! Since you already know
customers will be visiting your website to book holiday services, make sure
your online store is stocked
to sell! Make sure that you add gift cards to your store for easy online
purchase (that can even be digitally delivered!) Then, re-arrange your store
pages to show seasonal packages and holiday best-sellers. The easier you make
it for customers to find great gifts from your business, the less likely
they’ll be to shop an online superstore. For gyms, fitness centers, and
specialized studios, prepare to see an increase in memberships and start
planning on how your business will handle retention efforts with new customers.
Pro Tip: Try creating a marketing campaign to run throughout the holiday season, so customers feel rewarded for shopping with you. Ideas might include a free $20 gift card with purchase of $100 in gift cards, or a free product of their choice with the purchase of $100 in retail.
4. Stay on Top of Inventory
During the holidays, it’s a given that you’ll sell seasonal
gift packages and gift cards. But think back to last year. Were there any hot
sellers that surprised you? Any products you’d thought would be fast-movers
that fizzled instead of sizzled in the sales department? Early fall is when you
should pull and review your sales and services reports from the previous year’s
holiday season. This report provides a heat map of which days you were busiest,
how many walk-ins you accommodated, and what kind of services were getting
booked. But it also shows sale-by-sale insights for what your customers want. Then
you can pull a more recent sales report and compare your figures. Then you can make
sure that whatever products are trending in your store right now are on hand,
as well as stocking last year’s hot sellers.
Pro Tip: Make sure to adjust your low product warnings and minimum quantities for increased holiday sales. Try pulling a sales report from last year’s holiday season to project this year’s sales so you won’t be left empty-handed if there’s a rush on a product!
5. Push Pre-Booking for Services and Classes
For beauty professionals, the weeks between Thanksgiving and
New Year’s Eve are full-tilt boogie, while for fitness professionals, January
is the busiest time of year. Whichever industry you’re in, you know how hectic
it can get with customers and clients trying to get scheduled last-minute.
Pre-booking services and classes will help you keep your sanity and your
business booming! Starting in September, begin asking clients if they want to
pre-book for the holidays. Explain to them that pre-booking means they’ll get
first pick of the schedule, instead of what’s left over, hoping the last-minute
waitlist opens up.
Pro Tip: Use email marketing to send out bi-weekly holiday pre-booking reminders to clients and add pre-booking information to automated confirmations of appointments scheduled before the holidays.
Your Early Planning Checklist for a Stress- Free Holiday Season!
Get holiday ready with Vagaro! Order your gift cards and additional POS equipment today & be ready for the holiday rush!
Header image: Giorgio Trovato via Vagaro
