Complete Guide to Salon Stock Management

If your business has not yet gotten to the level you'd like to be, it could be that you're not practicing proper salon stock management.

Keeping track of the stock increases profitability and customer satisfaction. Running out of stock isn't a good thing for a business and clients shouldn’t go through this. Now that you know that salon stock management is paramount, let's dig deep into how you can do it to achieve success.

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1. What is Salon Stock Management?
2. Why is Stock Management Critical for Your Salon?
3. Should All Members of Staff Have Access to Salon Stock?
4. How to Use Salon Stock Control to Boost Sales?
5. Stocktaking - How and When to Do It
6. Excel Inventory Spreadsheet or Salon Stock Control Software?
7. Conclusion

What Is Salon Stock Management?

Salon stock management refers to keeping track of the stock in a salon to help in sound decision making such as what to order and when to do it. This is aimed at meeting clients’ demands, reducing stock holding costs, and increasing profitability.

Salon stock management also ensures you market the right products. Imagine an instance where you market a product that doesn't exist on your shelves. This creates a bad reputation to clients about your business's credibility.

Why Is Stock Management Critical for Your Salon?

Stock management promotes customer satisfaction. There will always be the right amount of your clients’ favorite products in stock. It gives you real time insights on inventory levels so that you can know how much to order.

Should All Members of Staff Have Access to Salon Stock?

Whereas you cannot just trust anyone with the stock at a salon, it's a wise decision to let your staff have access to the products they want.

However, have stock control sheets or use a salon inventory management software to track the stock that gets in or out of the room to avoid cases of fraud.

How to Use Salon Stock Control to Boost Sales?

Stock Analysis

Stock analysis is one way of making sure your business survives and revenue increases. A stocktake lets you know which goods are in demand so that you can order more of them and boost retail sales. It also promotes proper product usage preventing much product wastage and salon owners get updates on the business operations and product sales trends.

Stock Shrinkage Control

Stock shrinkage occurs when the stock on the display shelves is less than what is recorded in the salon inventory list. It happens as a result of damage, fraud, or poor stock management. Using a salon inventory control seals these loopholes and eliminates shrinkage.

When you order enough inventory to meet your demand you can save money by reducing inventory costs.

Minimum Inventory Levels

Determine the minimum stock levels before ordering products to ensure you don't add slow-moving retail products. This helps in reducing cash flow imbalance and manage inventory costs. Additionally, your salon will always have retail products available for sale.

Stocktaking - How and When to Do It

Stocktaking should be done once a month either by you or a staff member you've delegated that responsibility, probably towards the end month. However, it has to be done perfectly to avoid errors. Come up with a clear strategy on how to do it to avoid making mistakes.

Ensure that only updated data is used in stocktaking, and value the stock accurately.

Excel Inventory Spreadsheet or Salon Stock Control Software?

You can choose to either use a hair salon inventory spreadsheet or a salon stock software.

Excel is common and easy to use. On the downside, it is not possible to automatically update your stock list. You have to do it manually. Such limitations make it only suitable for the early stages of your business or a small/one-person salon.

However, a stock control software is the perfect easy-to-use solution since stock can be updated automatically. A salon software or salon inventory app is also secure, and the probability of getting hacked is very low.

What is The Main Purpose of Proper Salon Inventory Management?

The purpose of a salon inventory management is to increase profitability by ensuring that products are available when needed.

Conclusion

If you don't know how to manage salon stock, you risk having financial constraints in your business.

Adopting proper salon stock management ensures that no single in-demand product lines are not available, meeting your clients' demands. It also prevents spending revenue on retail products that are not frequently purchased. Automating the process using a salon management software will make the process easier and more accurate.

And if you love these ideas or have some other ideas that you’ve used in the past to promote your salon business, why not share it with the Zolmi community in the comment section below. We would also be delighted to answer your questions, aswell.

Citations

Small business uniqueness and the theory of financial management https://www.econstor.eu/handle/10419/114623

Performance measurement of supply chain management: A balanced scorecard approach
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0360835207000617

Business creation and the stock market
https://academic.oup.com/restud/article-abstract/71/2/459/1589794