Before you start a women’s hair salon as your own business, have you worked out the cost of the project and prepared a feasibility study that fits its different aspects, to make sure it succeeds on solid foundations?
If you haven’t taken this step yet and this article has reached you, you’re probably looking into preparing a feasibility study for a women’s hair salon. So let me help you in today’s article, where we’ll cover the most important details to study before you start and put the project into action.
How do I start a women’s hair salon from scratch?
A women’s hair salon needs a plan and a study, just like any other business that requires careful planning and research. Here are the steps to guide you in carrying out this project:
1. Prepare a feasibility study for your women’s hair salon
First, put together the right business plans for the project by carrying out some important market research, such as defining your target market, analyzing competitors, and understanding demand for beauty services in the area where you plan to set up.
Then define the business model, the services offered, your target audience, marketing strategies, financial forecasts and the other aspects of the project.
We’ll look in more detail shortly at how to carry out a feasibility study for the project.
2. Check with the relevant authorities
Checking with the relevant authorities and taking legal considerations into account is an essential step in obtaining the commercial licenses and certificates needed to operate a women’s hair salon in Saudi Arabia — such as complying with the standards approved by the Saudi Standards, Metrology and Quality Organization (SASO), which you can review here.
You’ll also need to prepare and obtain all the legal paperwork to secure the project’s future and avoid any legal problems later — such as getting a municipal license and Civil Defense approval, obtaining a commercial registration, and preparing the salon’s lease or ownership contract. You can find out more here.
3. Choose the right location
This step is extremely important: the salon’s location should be the most convenient place for most of its target clients.
At the same time, draw up an initial idea of the salon’s interior design and fittings, so you can calculate the cost of interior design, fittings and equipment later in the feasibility study.
4. Services and suppliers
A successful women’s hair salon needs a precise definition of the services it offers — skincare, hair care, nail treatments, spa services and so on.
So decide what you can offer, to make the feasibility study easier and help you choose reliable suppliers for beauty products and equipment, as well as your staff.
Before we dive into the steps of preparing a precise, detailed feasibility study for a women’s hair salon to make sure it succeeds, let’s first understand why a business needs a feasibility study before it’s founded.
Why a feasibility study matters
A feasibility study gives you answers and forecasts for all the questions and ideas in your mind before you start carrying out the project, such as:
Is a women’s hair salon easy to set up?
Is it easy to compete with the big beauty salons in Saudi Arabia?
Does a women’s hair salon make a good financial return? Is it worth investing in at all?
Do I have the experience and tools needed to own this business?
What challenges could I face when setting up the project?
And other questions your mind raises to protect you from losing your money, effort and time. That’s what a feasibility study does: it answers these questions in a practical, realistic and accurate way.
The feasibility study plan for a women’s hair salon
When you start a feasibility study for a women’s hair salon — or any other business — you’ll usually go through the same stages with slight differences. What matters most is completing the analysis, research and planning stages so the project idea succeeds.
Here, step by step, are the stages of a feasibility study for a women’s beauty salon.
First: draw up an initial plan for the project
Drawing up an initial plan is one of the most important steps in the feasibility study and in the project’s success overall, because it helps you avoid many mistakes when you actually start.
Of course, you’ll face some challenges, but the study is there to help you overcome them and find solutions when they arise, rather than running away from them. In general, studying and planning give you a better view of the project, but they don’t decide whether it will succeed or fail.
The plan includes the following steps:
- Market study
Research current trends, gaps and opportunities in the beauty industry in your area of Saudi Arabia. For example, analyze competitors in your geographic area or online, and identify areas lacking women’s salons — you might think about meeting that need in the future.
- Defining your target audience
Define your ideal clients by considering several factors, such as age, gender, location, lifestyle, and social and financial level.
Remember that you can’t target every woman with the same salon, because salons differ in the services they offer.
There’s the mid-range salon, which serves girls and women from middle-income backgrounds and offers them affordable services to suit them — which in turn determines the salon’s interior design and the equipment used.
There’s the upscale salon, which serves girls and women from higher social and financial backgrounds who are very much looking for premium beauty services that suit their status.
And there’s the luxury salon, which serves the highest levels of society, stars and celebrities, who aren’t concerned about the cost of the beauty services you offer. Here you need to be fully prepared in terms of interior design, services and so on, to suit your target segment.
Based on this, you’ll be able to decide the design and format of the project — its interior design, the type and category of services offered, the type of beauty equipment used and more.
- Studying competitors
What are your competitors’ strengths? And their weaknesses? Study them as one of the steps of your women’s hair salon feasibility study, so you can identify what makes your business stand out and how you’ll present it to clients.
Second: define the project’s size and needs
Once you’ve completed the first stage of your women’s hair salon feasibility study in Saudi Arabia, you can now easily define the project’s size and needs.
You now know your target client and the range of beauty services you’ll offer them, so you can define the project’s size by considering several factors, such as:
- The project’s target geographic area
- Target clients
- The salon’s floor space
- The beauty services offered
- The equipment and tools to buy
- The number of staff needed
- The right marketing strategy for the project
Then comes another important step: calculating the cost of the needs you’ve identified, comparing it against your set budget, and forecasting revenue and profits.
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Third: calculate the financial cost and expected revenue
Calculating the cost of a women’s hair salon is preceded by another step: deciding the sources and amount of funding or capital. Will you turn to external funding through bank loans or business incubators? And what exactly is the expected capital, whatever the source?
Then you start calculating the project’s costs and expenses, which include:
- Set-up costs, such as obtaining official and government paperwork.
- The cost of renting or buying the salon’s premises.
- The cost of buying the necessary equipment and tools.
- Operating costs, such as staff salaries, electricity and the like, and regular maintenance of devices and equipment.
Once you’ve calculated every element of your women’s hair salon’s costs and set a price for each service, you should arrive at an expected rate of revenue and profit, and be able to judge how well this return matches the project’s total costs.
Fourth: assess the risks
Identifying expected risks is an essential step in a feasibility study for a women’s hair salon or any other business. You need a list of the most important risks and challenges you may face, with initial solutions for each.
Knowing what could threaten your business and having a solution ready will give you a sense of security and help limit the impact of these risks later. However well you plan your project, never underestimate this step.
Let me give you an example that shows why it matters:
If the manufacturer or supplier of your beauty equipment or one of your beauty products doesn’t deliver as agreed for any reason — whether through their own failure or because of an administrative or financial problem — what should you do?
That’s why you need to be careful and keep a list of alternative suppliers you’re in touch with, so you can contact them quickly, get the resources and equipment you’re missing, and solve the problem as fast as possible.
Fifth: evaluate the results
The final step in a women’s hair salon feasibility study is evaluating what the study has found and deciding whether the project will succeed and whether every step is well thought out and sound — including evaluating the expected risks and costs. Then consider whether you need to change or replace any of the inputs and redo the study to give the project the best chance of success.
Remember that evaluating the results of the feasibility study is just as important as any of the previous steps, because it gives you an initial picture of whether the project is likely to succeed.
For more detailed knowledge, let me walk you through a practical feasibility study template for a women’s hair salon with realistic inputs below.
You may be able to use this template and fill in the blanks with your own inputs and plans.
Women’s hair salon feasibility study template
Here’s the template — you can fill in the details according to your project’s information:
- General information:
– Project name
– Project idea
– Legal form of the project
- Executive summary:
Here you’ll write a brief, general summary of what you’ve concluded from your women’s hair salon feasibility study, so it’s best written after you’ve finished the study.
- Project description:
Write a full description of the salon and the beauty services and products you’ll offer clients. To make it easier, we’ll ask some questions for you to answer, such as:
What beauty services will you offer (with a precise explanation of each service)?
For example:
| No. | Service | Description |
| 1 | Hair restoration treatment | A therapeutic beauty service provided once every 6 months, requiring raw materials (–). (This description will later help you determine the quantity of raw materials, set the price, assign the staff responsible for the service, and communicate easily with your clients.) |
| 2 | Nail care (hands and feet) | A one-off beauty service requiring raw materials (–). |
What are the unique features of your salon’s services?
For example:
| No. | Service | Unique features |
| 1 | Hair restoration treatment | Using top-quality imported raw materials that no competitor uses, or hiring highly experienced staff for this type of hair treatment. |
| 2 | Nail care (hands and feet) | No unique feature yet, but I need to define one. (You don’t need to stand out in every service — it’s enough to stand out from your competitors in one service and become known for it.) |
What added competitive advantage do your salon’s services have?
Some of your services should have a competitive advantage your competitors don’t have — such as a full team available for home visits. Many women in Saudi society in particular want this, as they often can’t go out for various reasons.
- Market and target audience study
You need to understand the surrounding market and your target audience before entering this field and offering your project’s services.
In short, you’ll need to record some important information about your services and target clients, such as:
Target group: girls and women of all ages.
Future target groups: women and men.
Share of local products in the market: only three local products are used in competing salons.
Share of imported products in the market: more than 10 imported products are commonly used in beauty salons in Saudi Arabia.
Best-known competitors in Saudi Arabia: record the competitors operating when you set up the project.
Best-known competitors around the salon’s area: note the competitors located near you.
- Financial forecasts and costs
Financial considerations cover the budget, calculating start-up and operating costs, and whether you’ll need financing options or have enough capital. You need to be fully informed about all of these.
And remember that defining financial costs isn’t just about setting the budget or capital — there are other points to consider, such as:
- Setting the average capital needed to establish the project and fund it for several years (stating the exact number of years).
- Setting the average expected revenue and sales during the first year after the project starts.
- Setting the expected time to profitability and the average value of that profit.
- Expected risks
Every business faces some risks, whether external or internal, so you need a plan to deal with the most common ones — especially those that have affected the market more than once before.
We can divide these risks as follows:
- Expected internal risks
- Plans to overcome them
- Expected external risks
- Plans to overcome them
That completes your project’s feasibility study plan — though there are many more elements you can add depending on your plan and the size of your project.
Finally
We’ve reached the end of today’s topic, in which we discussed the importance of preparing a feasibility study for a women’s hair salon, and how it helps you understand the market and analyze data and competitors properly to make sure the project succeeds and achieves its goal.
We also covered a simple feasibility study template and its key elements in the form of questions you can answer, so you can easily put together your plan for setting up your own business.
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