Booking Haircuts and Beauty Services Locally

SPONSORED FEATURE

Managing Our Lives Online

These days, we can buy or organise just about anything online, from a Friday night takeaway to an emergency plumber, but if we want to check out local beauticians, read reviews and book a wax all in one place, we’re still stuck in a pre-digital age. A potential gap in the rapidly maturing e-commerce market is an appointment booking service aimed at users of beauty salons and nail bars. While some cities in the UK have pilot programmes run by local entrepreneurs to book necessary services, we’re still largely in the digital dark when it comes to the online booking of haircuts, manicures, massages and the like. A resource which taps into Britons’ increasing appetite for nail bars, highlights and all things beauty could prove massively successful. As traditional shops close and Mary Portas is put in charge of regenerating the high street, a service which allows us to compare and book beauty appointments at home before heading out could make the best of a bleak town-centre situation.

An Important Economic Contribution

With retail beauty sales contributing an estimated £7.1 billion to the UK economy in 2013, this isn’t a market to be overlooked. In fact, some consider it to be recession-proof. In straitened economic times, women (and, increasingly, men) have continued to increase their spending on services which they hope will leave them looking and feeling good. In fact, according to the BBC, salons in Scotland report having to hire new staff to cope with the new demand from male customers, who are now said to be “tan fans” and to favour haircuts and dye jobs. This increase in male spending on beauty, fuelled by slick and trendy celebrities such as David Beckham, is estimated to create an additional 21,000 jobs in the UK this year alone. In the wake of the increased demand, salons are now driving down their prices in the face of increased competition, making beauty treatments easier to come by than ever, and an “affordable luxury”.

Growing Success

The UK beauty industry now employs over 1 million people, and it’s estimated that 30% of British women now use nail bars. A startup service named Rock Pamper Scissors aims to tap into this increasingly lucrative market, offering a one stop shop for beauty bookings. It currently allows users in Leeds and Manchester to check out salons’ offers, reviews, and prices, and then book according to preference. Shrewdly, Rock Pamper Scissors even comes with an app for uploading selfies of the finished results. Soon their services will be rolled out to the rest of the UK, but in the meantime, those of us down south (or in Wales, Northern Ireland or Scotland!) will have to make do with the old-fashioned telephone for booking our pedicures.

www.rockpamperscissors.co.uk

Sources:
http://www.theguardian.com/local-government-network/2012/feb/13/mary-portas-uk-high-street-facing-death-spiral
http://raconteur.net/business/business-face-of-uk-beauty
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-scotland-business-26714686
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/businessclub/sales/10719904/Male-grooming-boosts-UK-beauty-salons.html