Oscar Oscar Salons is an extraordinary example of success in the Australian hair industry. With 15 locations across the country, the luxury brand is known for delivering high-end experiences to its clients.
Watch the video below and keep reading to learn how Laura Hunter, salon partner at Oscar Oscar Indooroopilly in Brisbane, empowers her team to consistently deliver exceptional client experiences, retains top talent by providing career pathways, and has eliminated no-shows from her salon.
Tell us about your journey at Oscar Oscar
I joined Oscar Oscar 15 years ago as a salon coordinator in our old Brisbane City location. Over time I grew to be so passionate about what the brand represents so I became a salon partner. I teamed up with my business partner Indira, to run the Indooroopilly salon in Brisbane, and haven’t looked back since!
At Oscar Oscar Indooroopilly, we have a team of 18 stylists, apprentices and salon coordinators. Our target demographic is a well-heeled, high-end type of person who sees the value in the services that we offer. Our salon is well-known for our blondes, high-end balayage services, and precision cuts.
How do you consistently deliver a high-end client experience?
We pride ourselves on running the salon like clockwork so that the staff have days that feel very natural, which also creates a relaxing experience for our clients. This is especially important in a large salon environment where we have very busy days.
Provide luxurious extras
We focus on delivering luxury extras that differentiate us from other salons. People are a lot choosier with how they like to spend their money these days, particularly when it comes to hair services, so to deliver value for the money they are investing, we provide lots of extras that contribute to an amazing client experience. Some examples include massages while colours are processing, and even mini-facials.
Building lasting connections
As a salon partner, I’m also full-time at the front desk. Therefore, it’s really important to me that I engage with our clients in a meaningful fashion, build those relationships, and really get to know people.
I think one of the most important things about delivering an excellent client experience is having fantastic relationships with your clients. At Oscar Oscar, we make it a priority in the salon for everyone to really get to know their clients, and we ensure that we follow up with clients after their appointments to make sure that we receive any feedback.
We do client follow-up calls every single day for clients of the previous day, who may have had a big change or are new to the salon, to ensure that they’re happy with their experience with us. In the odd instance that there are issues, it allows us to correct them. The better you know the clients, the more you can do for them.
How do you attract and retain great staff?
I believe that staff are the greatest challenge and the greatest reward that you have in your business. Attracting and retaining team members is harder than it’s ever been. I do believe though if you focus on your people, offer outstanding education experiences and clear career pathways, you’ll be on the right track.
Offering career pathways and education
I believe that attracting and retaining great staff is about creating excellent pathways for them and making sure that you can upskill them no matter where they are in their hairdressing journey. Our apprentices receive industry-leading education so that their apprenticeships are timed to perfection, nobody runs over, and they enter that next phase of their hairdressing career fully skilled, and ready for anything.
Oscar Oscar Salons are very KPI-focused whilst never losing the human component of being in a workplace. We try to keep it fun, we try to keep it energetic and we try to make sure that our team are very well compensated for what they do for us.
KPIs and incentives
My team is very KPI-focused. I love to focus on the average client dollar, which is comprised of your services average and your retail average, and I look at the individual stylist targets.
My team KPIs also help me see where my team members need more training to help them improve their service or retail selling skills. One of the biggest goals for Oscar Oscar Indooroopilly in 2024 is to grow our colour business. So being aware of our current colour percentage is an excellent benchmark to figure out where we’re at and where we need to go in the future. I can then use these numbers to see how everyone in the team works towards this common goal with their clients.
What Kitomba features help Oscar Oscar to succeed?
Letting clients book when suits them best through Online Booking
Kitomba Online Booking makes it so easy for clients to book whenever they want and it’s incredibly easy to use… I couldn’t live without it. I love walking into the salon every morning and seeing fresh online bookings, whether they’re existing clients or whether they’re brand new clients. It’s money in your appointment book that wasn’t there the night before.
Eliminating time-wasters with Online Booking Deposits
We take online booking deposits for our services. I do think it’s a really important feature of Kitomba to have introduced. It’s normal to pay a deposit for a restaurant, or pay a deposit for an appointment—it’s absolutely standard these days. I very much find that clients forget that they’ve paid a booking deposit online, which is great because they get to the end of their appointment and surprise, it’s a little cheaper than they thought it would be.
To a salon owner who is hesitant about taking deposits, I would say that introducing a little bit of friction in that process will completely eliminate time wasters from your business, and really solidify the people who are serious about your time in the salon.
Getting a full-scale understanding of your business with the Business Summary report
If I didn’t have access to the numbers that Kitomba provides for me, I would be completely lost at sea when it comes to the performance of the business.
I would recommend Kitomba to any salon owner who is looking to really deep dive into the numbers in their business and get a full-scale understanding of what’s going on behind the scenes.
I think it can be quite overwhelming for some business owners because there are a lot of moving parts when it comes to running a successful business, particularly when it comes to the numbers. Having a great understanding of your top-line numbers like overall turnover, your average client dollar and your rebooking services is a great way to start and all of that is available on the Kitomba Business Summary.
What’s the secret to Oscar Oscar’s success?
The secret to the success of Oscar Oscar Salons is honestly a lot of different layers. It starts small with the incredible details of our client experience, but on a broader scale, I believe it is the partnership model that Oscar has introduced. It’s incredibly successful and it sets everybody up for success by giving you complete ownership of your business, whilst also having amazing support from an incredible head office team.
As a salon partner at Oscar Oscar, I define success by the success of my team. I take the responsibility of building people’s careers really seriously and I don’t think you can put too much time into your people. If I could offer one piece of advice to other salon owners, it is to pay attention to your people and pay attention to your numbers. Both are an excellent predictor of what’s going to happen to your salon in the future.
