Eric discusses how Salon Republic turned physical spaces into a successful product offering by creating customizable, artistic studios for independent beauty professionals.
Eric discusses how Salon Republic turned physical spaces into a successful product offering by creating customizable, artistic studios for independent beauty professionals. They emphasize the importance of maintaining these environments to cater to diverse needs while staying cost-effective and resilient to wear.
Welcome to Elevating Brick and Mortar. A podcast about how operations and facilities drive brand performance.
On today’s episode, we talk with Eric Taylor, Founder and CEO of Salon Republic. Salon Republic is a collective of beauty experts who share their talents side-by-side, so they can focus on growing their talent, expanding their client list and building their personal brand.
Eric Taylor is the founder and CEO of Salon Republic, a 40-unit salon chain with over 3,000 beauty professionals in five states. He’s the host of one of the most popular podcasts in the salon industry, and Chair of the Professional Beauty Federation representing the 621,000 licensed beauty professionals and 53,000 establishments in CA.
TIMESTAMPS
01:06 - About Salon Republic
05:27 - Creating a new model
16:07 - Making the built environment your product
26:46 - How to evolve your vision
35:32 - Adapting through COVID
49:11 - Future thinking
52:13 - Sid’s takeaways
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[00:00:05] Welcome to Elevating Brick and Mortar, a podcast about how operations and facilities drive brand performance. On today's episode, we'll hear from Eric Taylor, founder and CEO of Salon Republic, about how he made physical spaces into a successful product offering.
[00:00:25] Now here's your host, industry and FM technology, thought leader and chief business development officer at Service Channel Sid Shetty, along with our guest Eric Taylor.
[00:00:34] Sid: Hello everyone. Welcome to Elevating Brick and Mortar. Thank you for joining us. I'm here today with Eric Taylor, founder and CEO of Salon Republic. Eric, welcome. Thank you for joining us.
[00:00:46] Eric: Thanks for having me, Sid. Your voice is rather intimidating. You have a very good announcer voice and as a fellow podcast host, I'm wondering if I should take some lessons
[00:00:56] Sid: Oh, oh boy. Oh boy. Well, thank you too, kind. I appreciate it. well, let's jump into it, right, Eric, for, for folks in our audience who might not be familiar with your brand, can you share some insight into Salon Republic, please?
[00:01:09] Eric: Sure. So, salon Republic is a 25-year-old company that I founded and run today as its CEO. We operate 40 locations now. we've got about 3,500 beauty professionals across five states. And the essence of our business is to take a space of around 16,000 square feet, so we go up to about 30,000 square feet for a max, and we have locations as small as about 7,000 square feet. So we average about 16,000 square feet, and we build kind of artistic studios within these footprints that we then, we then lease to independent beauty professionals to run their own businesses. And then we layer in certain amenities that are specific to beauty professionals, such as, onsite beauty supply.
[00:02:01] So we carry about a hundred brands of hair product that the beauty professionals use on their clients as they're doing color services or cutting services or, or what have you, straightening services. Various things like that. They can buy right there on site, which is a very unique, thing that we offer. I don't know of anybody else who does that. we do marketing services, we do towels for them and, and other things specific to, to our customers, the beauty professionals, needs.
[00:02:33] Sid: So, is it full service? Meaning you, you also have the POS and the technology needs, like everything's covered in your space and they just bring, they just bring their talent?
[00:02:43] Eric: Not quite that full service. Because they don't want us to check out their clients. So when. Yes. So let's, let's, identify one of our, we call 'em members. So one of our hairstylist members, Jane Doe let's say, has a studio at Salon Republic in one of our locations, let's say the Beverly Hills location.
[00:03:02] Jane Doe has a hundred to 200 clients who've been going to Jane for many, many years. So Jane takes a studio at Salon Republic and she can build the studio out however she wants it. She can paint the walls, you know, a lovely mauve color, and she can bring in furniture that reflects her personality in her brand.
[00:03:26] And she has access to her studio 24 hours a day. She could do whatever services she wants. She can charge whatever prices she wants. She can use whatever products she wants. She can play whatever music she wants. She can create the environment she wants. For her clients there in Beverly Hills. As part of that independence that we, we offer, she can choose, any of the probably 200 technology platforms that are available for beauty professionals that take care of things like booking, point of sale, certain customer, communication and things like that.
[00:04:06] We've decided to specifically stay out of that business, because it's become a highly commoditized thing.
[00:04:15] Sid: Sure. So, so your focus primarily is to create the space and create the environment in which, you know, a member or a beauty professional can come make it their own and kind of run a business, right?
[00:04:31] Eric: That's right. We occupy a place along the evolution of a hairstylist between a hairstylist having a, a, station and a traditional open salon that they rent, and a hairstylist getting their own storefront on Main Street and signing a five year lease and, you know, spending, $800,000 to build out the space and then fighting with the landlord, you know, for five or 10 years. we allow them the same independence, with greater flexibility and less investment than that storefront option.
[00:05:13] Sid: Love it. So, Eric, what, what inspired you to start Salon Republic and, you know, how did you come up with this model?
[00:05:24] Eric: So I, I went to Pepperdine, I studied finance. As if anybody, if any listeners know Pepperdine, it's located, it's not on the beach, but it's pretty darn close to the beach. Certainly looks at the beach from just about everywhere on campus. It's in Malibu, California. And so, I spent five years there and, I knew that upon graduation, my lifestyle, the quality of my lifestyle was going to plummet.
[00:05:51] And so I, I really was worried about that. So about junior year, I started thinking about businesses that I could start upon graduation that would allow me to, you know, hopefully make enough money to get back to the beach someday. And so I looked at unconsolidated businesses. I looked at, dry cleaners, I looked at car washes.
[00:06:12] I looked at, salons and various things that maybe I don't remember anymore. And so upon graduation, I moved back in with my parents in Dallas, Texas, and my girlfriend at the time. Her hairstylist had moved to a studio based salon, very similar to what Salon Republic is today.
[00:06:32] And so she went, she visited her hairstylist and she called me from the landline because we didn't have,very good cell phones back then. And she said, you gotta check this out. This, I, I just got my haircut. It's the coolest salon. My hairstylist has her own space and she's just crushing it in there.
[00:06:50] And it was five minutes from my parents' house. So I jumped in the car, drove down there. I met the, the founder of the concept of the Studio Suite concept. Some people call it Salon Suites. I like to call it Salon Studios. It's the same thing. And so I worked with the founder of the concept for about a year for free.
[00:07:09] He was my mentor. And I learned everything about the salon business. I learned what makes hairstylists happy. I learned what makes clients happy, and, how the economic wheels of the industry turn. And I thought, wow, this is really cool. I, I really wanna do this. it, it also checked another box for me personally.
[00:07:31] My mom is an artist. She's a, she's been a very successful oil painter for many years. Her studio was in our house growing up, and my, and my dad was in the real estate business and, very, very boring business. He, he owned warehouses. And it was a dirty business. It was just, it was, you know, horrible. But I had to go over there and sweep out warehouses and I had to do that stuff regardless.
[00:07:57] So I kind of wanted to combine the, the interesting nature of art with the, with the, with the, simply, simply the pragmatic need of something like real estate and the recurring income of real estate. And so this idea of, you know, salon studio operation checked those boxes very, very well. And so, I got into the business. I moved back out to LA and, and opened up my first salon in December of 2000.
[00:08:31] Sid: Wow. That's fascinating. I love it. Thank you for sharing that. Did, did, does the business today look like what you conceptualized 25 years ago or did it go through, some sort of, you know, changes during that time based on the evolving needs of the customer today?
[00:08:52] Eric: The foundations are the same.
[00:08:54] Sid: Okay.
[00:08:55] Eric: The essence of, of me taking space with certain characteristics, improving the space in such a way that this industry, the beauty industry is attracted to it, and then maintaining the facility. All of that remains the same. There, there are, of course, there's nuances, lots of very important nuances to the ways that, taking care of the space, designing the space, choosing the space has changed.
[00:09:26] We've added a lot of amenities on top of just the foundation that I just described. So that's changed a whole lot. And it, it was 15 years until I figured out how to,create a beauty supply offering within the facility. For example, it was many, many years until I figured out how to offer complimentary towel service, for example. Nobody else does that in my industry. and, and various other things. But the foundations are surprisingly, maybe not so surprisingly the same.
[00:10:00] Sid: I love it. Perfect. So what's your brand promise and, and your North Star? When you look at, you know, both what you offer to the beauty professional, but also the end consumer, who, who is their customer?
[00:10:15] Eric: Our brand promise is to provide the beauty professional for the ideal working environment and whatever that means to them. And so the challenge to us is to take our 3,500 beauty professionals, 3,500 individuals with different styles, different needs, different types of customers, different services, different schedules, different personalities, and to build a platform that allows each of them to create their ideal working environment.
[00:10:53] So it's a, it's a very interesting blend of. Us creating certain specific unchangeable, natures to the space and allowing flexibility for what our beauty professionals are, what our members want to do. And, and this is a constant tug of war and constant trade-off that, that we have to balance on a daily basis.
[00:11:24] you know, we're constantly opening new locations, constantly, obviously managing our existing, fleet of stores out there. So we have to, we have to, make decisions that account for, that that balancing act.
[00:11:42] Sid: That's great. And, and I'm sure the business has evolved, you know, as time has progressed and as your members are giving you more feedback, but I'm sure there are some members that you hear more from and are you, do you, can you share some success stories of beauty professionals who, who've been with you for some time, and have thrived in, in building their own brand?
[00:12:04] I, I presume like they, they eventually build their own brand around, you know, their art, right? And, and they use your space to go and, and deliver, on their own promise to their customers, right.
[00:12:16] Eric: It's pretty evenly split between those who have created their own brand. They're bringing it into a Salon Republic facility physically. And then, within our facility, they're allowed to evolve the brand maybe more deeply than they were able to before. and this is an, this is the type of hairstylist, which is probably the most typical, where they essentially, when they work in a traditional salon, they're essentially trying to fit their brand, their personality themselves, their identity into somebody else's world.
[00:12:50] Sid: yeah.
[00:12:51] Eric: So, but what the, the, the landscape, you know, before us was a, successful hairstylist maybe with who was able to save a lot of money, goes out there, opens the storefront and creates what they think is, you know, their ideal working environment. And, you know, that might be a certain kind of floors, certain kind of paint color, certain kind of music, certain temperature, certain opening hours and closing hours, et cetera.
[00:13:17] And then they go out there and they try to attract other, beauty professionals to work with them. And so these other beauty professionals are quite literally trying to fit. Into this other person's world. And the, the very disparate nature of this creative, artistic profile of person means that not that many want to fit into somebody else's world.
[00:13:45] They wanna create their own world. But then you have that difficulty and expense and commitment of going out and getting a storefront, which is very difficult and probably, and not a good idea. You know, for a lot of beauty professionals who are very, very good at being beauty professionals, servicing their clients, not so good at finding landlords or finding contractors or, you know, spending 30 hours a week, managing vendors to fix problems, you know, in the facility.
[00:14:13] We do all that kind of stuff that's maybe not so fun. I mean, listeners to this podcast, you know, this is, this is the profession in which all of you have chosen. So, so hopefully you do enjoy it. But, but people on the outside, trust me, they don't want to maintain facilities. You know, it's not fun when there's a leak or there's a, you know, the front door breaks or something like that.
[00:14:36] You know, it becomes a nuisance to do that. So we, we essentially take care of all that and allow the beauty professionals, both the independence of having their own place, while at the same time taking care of, of the, of, of the not so fun part.
[00:14:50] Sid: Yeah. You know what's interesting is like this entire show is based on, you know, the premise that many times the businesses don't appreciate the impact the built environment has on the product or their business or their brand promise to their customer. And what we're trying to do, you know, as the, you know, the name of the show explains is, is to elevate the conversation, elevating the brick and mortar and the dialogue around it to tie it to what you know, brands really care about, which is how they engage with your customers.
[00:15:23] Everything that deals with a built environment is tough, and it's tough to maintain those spaces, design those spaces, and create those spaces which are warm and welcoming and look and feel like they're day one on a constant basis if you don't have the right tools, the right technology, the right investments.
[00:15:43] What I love about our conversation and the fact that you're a guest on the show is that the built environment is your product. That is the product that you are, you know, that, that makes, who you are as a brand and what you're, you know, offering to your customers, your members. So that, that is, that is perfect.
[00:16:00] Eric: That's right. It is our business. We take it extremely seriously. If, if a beauty professional walks into a salon that is a Salon Republic, and they've been in, you know, a number of other salons, as well as a Salon Republic, that they will likely be able to tell you, oh, this is a Salon Republic. You know, that it's, it's modern, yet comfortable, it's high end. It's a place where they feel comfortable. It's a place where their clients enter and they think, okay, this is a really nice place I am. I enjoy coming here. I feel like this is a luxury experience. I am willing to pay my hairstylist more money because I could see that they've elevated their business from maybe where they were before.
[00:16:51] And then of course we provide that white box of the studio to the member for them to, really refine and hone down, into the very, you know, specific finished details to reflect their specific brand. I.
[00:17:07] Sid: Now you had mentioned that you were actually going through, you know, a process of updating your design and your layout right now. How do you approach that in the first place and what made you now look to, you know, tweak your offering? What's making you go through this iterative process of, of refining your design and the layouts of your, of your locations?
[00:17:33] Eric: I would say that the, the main catalyst for this, well, well, first of all, over 25 years, we've gone through this process several times where, where we, we've had to, recreate the prototype, of our, of our stores. early on there was no prototype. It was what can I afford and what do I think is gonna work? Based on what I learned from my, my mentor. So, but fast fa, fast forwarding through the evolution of Solan Republic, we've probably had five major, you know, design changes and some of it been more significant than others. this most recent design change is a result of, increasing costs.
[00:18:19] Sid: Hmm.
[00:18:19] Eric: In, in certain categories as well as, feedback from our beauty professionals on what looks good, what feels good. And, and I say that with a little asterisk, which, which, which I'll identify as from a maintenance standpoint. Okay, so, so what looks good on day one isn't necessarily, what looks good in year three.
[00:18:48] Sid: Yeah. That's the bane of every, every professional in this, in this industry, right?
[00:18:52] Eric: That's right. And the interior designer, if, if left to her own fruition, the interior designer would, of course spend way too much money. build something that took way too long, would be way too complicated, require too many people, and looked absolutely tremendous on day one. It would win awards on day one, and nobody would wanna be in the space in year three because it would look so bad, and likely the company would've gone outta business by then because it was so expensive to maintain that environment that it didn't make any sense to run the business.
[00:19:29] So it's incumbent upon the owner or the manager, whoever's making those ultimate decisions on, on finishes and things like that. To balance the trade-offs between, aesthetics and everything incumbent upon the aesthetics, you know, what are you trying to, to signal to your customers, what kind of environment are you trying to create? What kind of customers are you trying to attract, things like that. With the practicality of the upfront costs, the upfront capital costs, with the reality of the ongoing maintenance costs and the ongoing maintenance costs. for a business like ours, we have to look at it in a 20 year plus lens, because we sign, we sign 15 to 20 year leases with, with extensions.
[00:20:21] So we've been in business 25 years. Our first location that I signed 25 years ago in Studio City, California, we still have, we still operate it. We still have members that I, that I met and they chose to work in the salon with me before we even opened the salon. They're still in there servicing their clients.
[00:20:44] Sid: 25 years.
[00:20:46] Eric: 25 years. We probably have, let's see, there's probably 50 people who work in that salon. Of the 50 people work in the salon, 10 of them have been there for 25 years.
[00:20:57] Sid: Fascinating.
[00:20:58] Eric: So we have to look at things from that kind of perspective. What, how are we designing this place? How are we building this place? What kind of finishes are we choosing and what, what is it gonna mean to our, you know, our ROI, you know, what are we spending, what are we gonna get?
[00:21:18] And then what is it gonna mean to, the P and L, right? What, what is our repairs and maintenance line gonna cost because of, of these things? So you have to look at it from all these perspectives. And because costs change, the prototype has to change. And because trends change, the prototype has to change, you know, just aesthetic trends.
[00:21:42] And so I'll, I'll, I'll bring up one example to kind of, because this is something we're dealing with right now. So 25 years ago, I remember talking to our architect or designer, whoever I was talking to, and I said, okay, what kind of floor? So threw out a couple floors, that are options and, and I'm like, I really like the, the look of sealed concrete. You know, as long as we get this kind of finish and as long as we can make it durable. And so we put in sealed concrete in the reception area of the salon. but it wasn't the right kind of sealed concrete because at the time to do the right kind of sealed concrete was probably double the cost of carpet.
[00:22:25] So, so we did carpet in a lot of the common areas of the salon, but we did kind of the wrong kind of seal, concrete, cheaper version of seal concrete in the reception area. Okay, let's just fast forward to where we are now. Now, the cost of carpet, the cost of tile, and, whether it's LVT or porcelain, ceramic types of tile is more than a, a highly, a much more durable variety of sealed concrete.
[00:23:01] Sid: Hmm.
[00:23:01] Eric: So now cost of changed, and over the years as we've run these facilities as, as we've suffered some of the elements of maintaining, of maintaining these facilities, whether it's clients dripping hair color on the ground, or. Floods happening now and then, or you know, the maintenance staff dragging, trash bags down the hall that are dripping and staining the carpet or whatever on the way we're back to sealed concrete.
[00:23:35] Sid: Hmm.
[00:23:36] Eric: Right? With, with the much more,the much more durable nature of the products, they're now on the market and the increasing labor costs of installing those other, al alter flooring alternatives, we're now back to, sealed concrete as a, as a good solution for the floor. So the, and, and this probably, you know, that the inflection point where those costs changed was probably three, four years ago.
[00:24:05] You know, because labor costs have absolutely skyrocketed, you know, to lay tile now in Southern California's 22, 20 $5 a foot to lay. To lay tile and grout it and all that kind of stuff. That's crazy. I mean, 10 years ago, 12 years ago, it was 12.
[00:24:22] Sid: It's a big challenge. We, we talk about this all the time. There's a massive shortage of skilled labor and, you know, we're seeing that across all types of trades. it's becoming more expensive to hire and keep talent, and then those costs and ultimately get passed on to the customer. And so prices are skyrocketing.
[00:24:40] And so a lot of our customers and a lot of folks in the industry are now exploring hybrid, you know, models where they have folks on staff. And sometimes it's cheaper to have people on call, and working within the facility depending of course on your facility.
[00:24:56] Businesses are exploring different models, but you're a hundred percent right. The price of materials has gone up, the price of labor has gone up. and so it's an interesting time, you know, for, for the, the physical built environment in terms of what it takes to actually build and then, and then maintain these spaces. Now you've also talked about the fact that, you know, salons are a harsh environment for materials, right?
[00:25:22] We're talking about hair and water and chemicals. that can be a lot. So I'm sure when you're looking at, you know, the different types of materials and also how you upkeep your spaces, these, these decisions can have a significant impact on how easy it is to, you know, wrap up the day, and keep your locations feeling welcoming but also, clean.
[00:25:46] Right. what, what are your thoughts on, on that in terms of today you're, you're CEO of the company. You're, you've got 40 locations. Are you still in touch with the day-to-day facilities management of the business? How do you ensure that the vision that you started out with continues to be part of, like the culture within your company in terms of how those spaces are maintained?
[00:26:10] Eric: Yeah. So I am in touch, on a day-to-day basis with, the management of our facilities. I just, yesterday I sat in on a meeting with about 11 of our team members, three of which were in our facilities team, and we were talking about the best ways to communicate between the, ground level salon managers and the service team to take care of problems because that communication, sounds easy.
[00:26:40] It's not easy. You know, the, the, the communication needs to be, systematic and it needs to happen in a good, efficient, yet, detailed, way. And, you know, needs to be sent properly. It needs to be received properly. And then the, so the service team can execute a solution to whatever, you know, started the problem, started the communication in the first place.
[00:27:04] Sid: we are, dealing with a, a flood right now in one of our salons. It was probably the worst flood in our 25 years. Sorry.
[00:27:13] Eric: You know, and it, it was not our fault. It was nobody's fault. It a, a, bit of material in a relatively new salon. The salons only probably three years old, failed and flooded the entire facility, 16,000 square feet.
[00:27:29] So, how do we make sure that we maintain a facility that, is appealing to and, and, satisfies that promise to our customers, our members? It's, it really boils down to creating systems within the company, creating this facilities team that I'm referencing right now, and then, making sure that the processes and procedures that the facilities team is using are fixing things really quickly.
[00:27:59] Sid: Hmm.
[00:28:00] Eric: Really effectively and within a reasonable budget, you know, that that's basically it. Now, to get in, to respond to, to something that you had mentioned, people trying out different models of, of, of, of running facilities. We, for a vast majority of our history, we've, we've used outside vendors for things, you know, whether it's changing HVAC filters, you know, routine preventative maintenance to, to this specific stuff, you know, mitigating,floods and things like that.
[00:28:37] We now have, I, I believe, two full-time handyman type, team members in our facilities group in two different regions. And they take care of a lot of the preventative maintenance routine stuff as well as, you know, some of the lighter. ad hoc needs, of the facilities. let's say if there's a plumbing issue or something like that. So they, and then we have outside vendors who supplement, those, those two guys.
[00:29:06] And that seems to be working pretty well right now. but one of the important things that, that is a component of trying this model out is to have a, a good manager leading the facilities team.
[00:29:24] Sid: That's right.
[00:29:25] Eric: To, to build a team, you need a really great leader. You need a really great manager. And so it took us years to really essentially be able to afford such a person. Okay. Because they're not cheap. And so we have a really great leader to, to the facilities group. He also actually leads our, construction, you know, our superintendents, our project managers who were all in-house. and, he has done a phenomenal job finding, you know, great, handy guys as well as managing them.
[00:29:56] Sid: Love it. Yeah. I mean, you know, there's, there's massive talent in this space in terms of folks that understand the business. But when you find the right person and they understand the business beyond just the function that they serve, you know, you wanna hold onto them, right? Because that is something that, especially in your business, is super important, because the product is the physical space, you know, itself. Right.
[00:30:20] Eric: Right.
[00:30:21] Sid: Eric, you've, you've done this for a while now, you probably have seen a lot of change in terms of consumer expectations. You know, how consumers walk in, what, what are they expecting? You know, was it ever transactional? I mean, there are some types of interactions with, you know, salons that are transactional depending on who you are and what, what you're looking for.
[00:30:41] what has, what has been your experience in terms of, how it was maybe a decade ago, two decades ago versus, you know, how it is today. And, we'll, we will talk about Covid as well, but, you know, I'd love to see your, you know, your perspective on how time has, has kind of changed people's perspectives and, and clearly you have endured the, the test of time. So, that, you know, congratulations.
[00:31:08] Eric: Thank you. that's a really interesting question. I think, I think the fundamentals of my business are very much still in place. My business is a very human to human relationship type, business. It's not very transactional, I would say, you know, relative to most other businesses. this is probably as human to human relationship driven as you can get.
[00:31:37] Whether that's our relate or the salon's relationship with the beauty professionals, given the amount of time that our members spend in our facilities around the salon manager. they live there. I mean, they spend as much time in the salon as they do at home, some, in some cases more. And our average member works in our salons for, I dunno, four years or something like that.
[00:32:06] It's somewhere between three and five years. So, so those are deep human relationships, which are, are, are, which kind of overcome the sense of transactional kind of nature that a lot of businesses deal with. Now one of the, one of the qualities of what I'm describing is that because we get to know the same people for so long, you know, there's fewer customers.
[00:32:33] So we have, you know, 3,500, but that's a lot less than say, a retailer that has 40 locations. You know, they're, they're, they might have a hundred thousand customers or something like that, that they have to deal with. But those are, those are,less intimate relationships right now when it comes to the relationship between the member, the beauty professional, and their clients.
[00:32:59] That's on a whole different level. I mean, thi this is even deeper, on a human level. They share their most intimate, deepest, darkest, happiest, fears and times and weddings and births of children. You know, the, the beauty professional, the hairstylist gets to know their clients in the deepest way. I, I've, I can't tell you how many times on my podcast when I'm inter, when I'm interviewing a hairstylist about, you know, what it's like to be a hairstylist, best practices and stuff like that.
[00:33:32] The hairstylist has mentioned just how deeply they're ingrained into the lives of their clients. And, in some cases knowing that a divorce is going to happen before the husband knows. You know, things like this, knowing that, knowing that they're pregnant before the boyfriend knows that the, that his girlfriend's pregnant, you know, that that's how deeply, the, the hairstylist know their clients. So it's, it's not a transactional business. And, and so there's, there's benefits to that as well as challenges.
[00:34:01] Sid: Yeah. Fascinating. Let, let's talk about Covid. I mean, it's been five years. That's pretty amazing. a lot of businesses were affected during that time and, and especially your business, which is, you know, a people business.
[00:34:14] close interactions. I'm sure you know, it impacted your business, it impacted your members. Tell us about that. Like what, what was that like and how did, you bounce back out of that and, and came back strong?
[00:34:27] Eric: We were unfortunately unusually, impacted by, by the Covid shutdown. just the geographical nature of our business located in California. I. California had was the most,strict on Covid Lockdowns. New York was also strict, but a lot of, uh, the shutdowns in New York were, um, local, uh, you know, New York City for example, versus upstate, uh, California had statewide shutdowns and we had three of them that lasted into 2021.
[00:35:01] and so the nature of my role as the, as the head of Salon Republic and the size of Salon Republic within our industry, forced me, I, I say forced because I, I'm not, um, naturally a rabble rouser or an activist or, you know, politically, uh, engaged in an official way.
[00:35:25] But I had to become all of those things because we were fighting for our survival. And when I say our, I'm not just talking about Salon Republics or mine, I'm talking about the survival of the beauty professionals, um, as the industry existed pre covid. So I'll, I'll, I'll kind of narrate quickly, you know, our experience. we, we shut down in March, March 12th, Santa Monica, shut down March 13th, I believe. Everything else shut down in, in La. And then I think maybe less than a week later, the state of California shut down. And we abated the, the rent for all of our beauty professionals, because if they're not able to work, how can they afford rent and stuff? And we just figured we'd have to go after landlords. You know, in the end, the landlords didn't give us hardly anything. I think maybe one landlord gave us some deferral or some abatement to a small degree. the government programs, we received some benefit from it, but it only lasted, like, I think we calculated it, it, it, paid for about three weeks of the, of the money that was flying out the window.
[00:36:38] Sid: Wow.
[00:36:38] Eric: Okay, so I was asked to be the chair of the Professional Beauty Federation. Okay?
[00:36:43] But it was a, it was a very interesting and horrible time, i, for the 621,000 licensed beauty professionals in California.
[00:36:53] Sid: That's fascinating. To your point, I don't think it people realize, um, all the intricacies behind what was happening at that time. Uh, and it's very interesting to hear the role that you played, um, in helping kind of guide the industry through a very tumultuous time. So are you still involved in that? Are you still in, in many ways, helping the industry as a whole?
[00:37:20] Eric: I'm still the chair of the Professional Beauty Federation and, the, the job of that organization, since I, I became part of it and post Covid, I has been to try to funnel money as much as possible from the stimulus programs that various governments have put out there into the pockets of the beauty professionals who suffered so gravely. The, the programs that the government put out there were vast.
[00:37:51] And so, you know, there's certain, certain law firms who developed teams of people to learn how to get the money, how to apply for the money from the government, and in entire parts of the population who, who had no idea that this was even available to them.
[00:38:09] To give money back to the people who suffered. And, and so that's what we've been working to do. And, and we did. And, you know, millions of dollars that we were able to get back into the pockets of beauty professionals who suffered greatly financially.
[00:38:23] Sid: Well thanks for sharing that. In retrospect, as you look at the, the end consumer who's walking into, you know, these salons, has there been a change in their expectations like post covid?
[00:38:34] You know, we see that in other industries, right? People, you know, before maybe overlooked certain parts of, you know, cleanliness or whatever, depending on the type of, you know, business that they're walking into, they're like, Hey, this is a, you know, a discount store. I'm gonna ignore, you know, the stained tiles.
[00:38:54] But that's not the case. And it doesn't matter what kind of business you are, consumers expect that the, the, the place is warm and welcoming and clean. and the, the expectations have skyrocketed. You know, have you experienced that in your business?
[00:39:08] Eric: Oh yeah, I, I mean, you know, I said that a, a human relationship based business has positives and negatives and, and you know, maybe I'll speak to the negatives to some degree here, because what, where we found ourselves was in, in an environment where we're trying to satisfy the disparate, perspectives and needs of, you know, tens of thousands of people. When, when you consider, you know, all the clients who come in, come in and out of our salons.
[00:39:39] So you have clients who walk in, who expect the facility to, to behave more like a, a, a microchip clean room with everybody dressed in hazmat suits, you know, than, than a functioning salon. You have people who expect that.
[00:39:59] Sid: Hmm.
[00:40:00] Eric: Then you have, on the opposite side of the coin, you have people who are pissed off as somebody who's wearing a mask, right? And so you, we, we had to navigate. You know, both of those extremes and everybody in between. And so how do you navigate trying to take care of customers with that disparate nature of expectation?
[00:40:22] Sid: Right.
[00:40:23] Eric: And so that was the environment for a business like ours. I'm sure there's other, good examples, but, other types of businesses that are good examples of trying to navigate to the same degree that we had to.
[00:40:35] Well, there you go. Well, well, let's pivot a little bit, right? And talk, talk about the future. you know, you are very in tune with juxtaposition of, of design and, and service and, and, and the human touch, you know, because of the business you're in. how do you see the built environment and salon design changing, you know, what kind of meta metamorphosis might it go through the next five, 10 years, if even, or will that you think stay the same?
[00:41:06] Lots of companies are, trying to come up with ways to improve the environment, with, with, you know, technology that that's, that's advanced to the extent that a lot of these, these things are possible. You know, ring cameras, that's a big one. So many people have ring, you know, doorbells on their homes and within offices.
[00:41:28] I notice in my office building, a lot of the offices have ring cameras installed, you know, outside of their, their main door to their offices. So they no longer have to actually employ a receptionist to sit inside to, accommodate, you know, guests coming in. you know, there's digital directories.
[00:41:48] That are, that have proliferated out there, that allow a great deal of flexibility and, and, you know, a better customer experience walking into to a business. digital access, which is maybe a little bit of like the ring does, but there's, there's also, you know, digital access that's more robust.
[00:42:08] It's more manageable, it's trackable. There's video now. you know, these things were not, maybe they were around 15 years ago, but they weren't affordable. and, and you know, the internet connections that you would have and the average business probably wouldn't support, you know, product like that.
[00:42:25] These things are now, they've proliferated everywhere. surveillance. So in, in our facilities averaging 16,000 square feet, we only have one to two employees on site, you know, during the day. So a lot of our facilities. Are kind of unmonitored, unmonitored to some degree. So, digital surveillance, has now become very affordable.
[00:42:50] The cameras are very affordable. You know, for 150 bucks you get a, you get an amazing 4K camera, color. There's, you know, there's audio, two-way audio. You can hear what's happening. You can speak through the camera. You can pay a company that, pays an employee to sit there and watch you, you know, I don't know how many they can watch, but probably 40 different feeds at a time.
[00:43:15] we've employed this in one of our locations that it's in, it's in a really cool area, but it's also a very high crime area for one of our locations. So, we, we have, you know, transient issues in this one location and they love to break into the salon and just cause property damage.
[00:43:33] They don't actually steal anything, but they just screw things up and cost us money. So we have a monitoring agent where, where 24 hours a day, you know, there's an actual human watching this screen. So if something bad is happening, you know, they can get on there and they can say, Hey, step away from the window.
[00:43:51] You, you know, the police are on their way. You know, like, that's amazing. I, I don't know if that was even, possible a few years ago. The data around foot traffic has gotten better, you know, foot traffic capture, different things like that. Stuff like that isn't that important for us. But it is, you know, for retail and many other, many other people, things like, preventative, maintenance or, or, leak detection, detecting problems faster, that stuff is out there.
[00:44:19] You know, we're looking at that right now to detect leaks. That, of course, always happen in the middle of the night. And then when the salon opens in the morning, you know, there's, there's a foot deep of water, right? So water flow monitoring has gotten better. and, and a lot of this is. Has become necessary, you know, as insurance costs have sky, or I'm sorry, construction costs have skyrocketed, insurance costs, premiums have skyrocketed, and deductibles have increased a great deal just to make the insurance affordable, which means a lot of the risk, of a lot of these things like a leak, has been shifted from the insurance company onto the owner or manager of the building.
[00:45:03] And so you have to start spending money on facilities related things that can detect kind of these disasters like a leak. so there's much better products out there. and maybe the last one, I think finished material innovation, has come a long way. One of the great frustrations of me running this business for 25 years is we come up with a great spec.
[00:45:26] Let's say it's a light or it's a, a floor or whatever. And then it gets discontinued, you know, and you're like, oh God, you know, now I need to find a new spec that meets all the, the criteria,
[00:45:40] Sid: The pace of innovation, right.
[00:45:41] Eric: The pace of innovation. But of course, the flooring material to st stay, stay on that example is more resilient, in some cases, less expensive.
[00:45:50] shorter lead times, you know, more, more varied aesthetics and, and things like that. So I think all those are kind of new interesting things that are, that are, in our industry.
[00:46:01] Sid: There you go. Love it. As we wrap up, Eric, can you share anything about your vision for the future of Salon Republic and what do we have to look forward to?
[00:46:12] Eric: Well, you, you have new locations to look forward to. So we're building six new locations, primarily in California, Washington State, Pennsylvania State, and some other yet to be mentioned locations. And on a daily basis, we just try to deliver on that promise of offering the best possible working environment for beauty professionals so they can be happy and successful and do what they like to do while leaving the, the unfun stuff to us.
[00:46:42] Sid: There you go. Can people expect to see you nationwide in, in the future?
[00:46:46] Eric: Yeah, so I mean, we've got 40 locations. I think we'll be up to 44 in, in a few months here. We're looking, farther afield in the Northeast, but too early to to mention any names.
[00:46:59] Sid: Got it. Well, I wish you all the best. I mean, congratulations on your success and, and hope to, you know, see more locations sprout throughout the country. Eric, what advice would you give folks in our audience who are listening and, maybe they realize that the impact of the physical built environment isn't as well known in the businesses that they're a part of?
[00:47:20] How would they articulate, you know, the words that they heard today from the founder and CEO of a company whose product is the built environment?
[00:47:28] Eric: I, you know, I think, of course every bi, every business is gonna have different trade-offs, different interests, different priorities, but something that I see over and over again, and so I'll just make this, my re recommendation is to, to hire a professional to do certain things. And in most cases it's an interior designer, hire a really good interior designer.
[00:47:52] You know, don't try to design things yourself and like, if, if you don't think a physical environment matters very much, it's unlikely that you're gonna justify to yourself hiring, taking on the expense of an interior design professional. But the reality is people can tell, you know, I, one, the, the built environment matters a lot.
[00:48:15] And, and two, you know, how it, how it looks I think is very important. So just bite the bullet. Pay for somebody you know, who can match the floor, finish to the wall, paint color. It's not that big of a deal. You're gonna do yourself a huge service, versus ending up with something that looks like a disaster at the end.
[00:48:38] Sid: Well, there you go. Well, Eric, thank you so much for, for taking the time and having this conversation, absolutely fascinating. And thank you for sharing all the stories. I'm sure people, will, will appreciate, you know, your, your experience over the past 25 years, especially, the past five years.
[00:48:54] Eric: Thanks for having me, Sid.
[00:48:55] Sid: Eric, thank you so much and for all those in our audience, thank you for joining us, and we'll see you on the next episode of Elevating Brick and Mortar.
[00:49:06] music break
[00:49:07] That was Eric Taylor, founder and CEO of Salon Republic. We talk a lot on this show about the importance of the physical built environment on delivering a business's brand promise. In Salon Republic's case, the built environment is the product. And they ensure that beauty professionals around the country can foster their own businesses and customer base. What is really interesting is how Eric shares the human elements of the business, though yes, it's about the talent, but it's also about relationships, trust and customer loyalty.
[00:49:39] Businesses like Salon Republic create an environment where members can focus on their craft and then they take care of the rest. Clearly, they're doing something right with some of their members, supporting them for over 25 years. With that, I'm your host, Sid Shetty, and I'll see you on the next episode of elevating Brick and Mortar.