The Director of The Skin Clinic discusses the impact of the pandemic on her business.
Tell us how you are coping in this changing environment?
On Monday 25th March, before the government ordered to shut down our industry I decided to voluntarily close The Skin Clinic. I made this decision together with my team in the best interest of my team, our clients and all of our families. I could see a lot of backlash on social media around staying open, as even with all measures taken we could not adhere to social distancing. How did I cope with this decision? To be honest I cried from morning to night, I never thought I would ever choose to close my doors and cancel all clients booked for treatments. I felt I was failing my staff, even though they reassured me I was acting in their best interests. Having to stand down my supportive team broke my heart.
What strategies have you put in place to cope with the changing beauty industry?
After closing I decided to strip my shelves and bring my entire retail floor home, and heavily promote our retail items directly to our guests. The silver lining in all of this for The Skin Clinic is that our retail floor is 40% of our business, so having a very healthy retail floor has given me some comfort that I will still be able to bring in some revenue even while we are temporarily closed. I have diverted the clinic phone to my mobile, I have been remaining active across social media, I have engaged the services of a courier company to dispatch all orders direct to their door and offering a free gift with every purchase. We are working behind the scenes creating some video content and devising at home treatments that our clients can do at home. Our suppliers Inskin Cosmedics have been amazing in providing online training during our shut down. We have made a commitment to use this time to revise our product knowledge and treatment protocols for our return.
Any advice to other businesses out there during this challenging time?
I think we all need to check in on each other. Business owners need to keep in contact with their teams to see how they are coping, check in on other salon owners to check in on how they are coping, check in with our clients to see how they are coping. It’s a strange and difficult time, and our mental health is just as important as our physical health. And for me, it’s all about planning for our return, as quickly as we were told we couldn’t operate, the announcement to return to work will hopefully be just as swift! Have your return
to work announcements and strategies in place so that we can seamlessly have our team and our clients return to our clinic and get back to performing our treatments! Ask for team members to commit to extra hours on return, I feel our clients will be running back to see us and we will be overwhelmed with demand for our services.
Visit the #BEAUTYSTRONG hub at www.professionalbeauty.com.au/beautystrong/
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