EdwardsAndCo is an outstanding example of success in the Australian hair industry. With nine locations across the country, EdwardsAndCo has seen incredible growth in the 10 years they’ve been operating, even during the pandemic.
Watch the video below and keep reading to learn how National Operations Manager and 2IC, Jacob Faour, oversees nine salons across Australia. He talks about how he uses Kitomba Salon and Spa Software to his advantage, and his top tips for salon owners and managers with multiple sites.
Tell us about your journey at EdwardsAndCo
I started as a receptionist about five-and-a-half years ago and then moved my way up to the Operations Manager position at the Crown St location in Sydney. About a year and a half ago, I moved into the National Operations Manager role.
To ensure consistency across all of our locations, we have an operations manager and a salon coordinator at each location. They’ve got a direct line to me, and as the National Operations Manager, I help mentor them, which kind of filters down to keep consistency across all locations, especially because they’re all in different states.
The thing that I like most about my role is that every day is different because we’ve got so many locations. Each day changes depending on where I’m needed, so it’s always changing and it keeps things exciting.
I would say the biggest challenge for me with the business is moulding my way around different personality types within the business; you can’t manage every staff member the exact same way because everybody has their own personality. Taking time to get to know each staff member and manager makes things just a little bit easier.
What makes EdwardsAndCo special?
We want to spread the joy of hair. The target market for EdwardsAndCo is really anybody that wants to look and feel their best; it’s as simple as that.
We’re probably most famous for our lived-in beautiful colour that lasts. Those colours that we’re so famous for had reached other sides of the globe, and we wanted to bring that feeling across the world to Australia.
We’ve got nine locations at the moment: three in Sydney, two down in Victoria, and then up north we’ve got Byron, Brisbane, and the Gold Coast, and we recently just opened one in Noosa
Tell us about EdwardAndCo’s marketing: how do you market the group so successfully?
At EdwardsAndCo we have a dedicated social media manager who looks after our social media presence. We’ve also got a PR manager that looks after public relations as well. Those two roles working together have helped EdwardsAndCo a lot.
We utilise social media and our influencers quite extensively. We’ve grown so rapidly on social media due to our use of our influencers, and because we have that social media manager and that PR manager that creates those relationships, it really helps build our social profile.
What importance does software have at EdwardsAndCo?
Kitomba for EdwardsAndCo is super important. It’s the day-in and day-out of pretty much everything across the business, from the managers inside the salon to myself in head office, right through to Jaye, the owner. We’ve been open for about 10 years now, and we’ve been using Kitomba for pretty much that whole time.
We chose Kitomba for a multitude of reasons; but mainly because we’ve got so many locations. The visibility in Kitomba 1 to jump between locations at the touch of a button makes things easy for me, and our accounting team loves it because we’ve got full visibility of all locations.
I would 100% recommend Kitomba to any other salon. It’s our bread and butter here at EdwardsAndCo.
Tell us about how EdwardsAndCo uses Kitomba Online Booking?
We use Kitomba’s Online Booking system here at EdwardsAndCo and it’s something that we only brought in over the last couple of years. When I was working on the floor, I was a little bit concerned about it, but it’s been a godsend.
It reduces how often the staff need to be on emails, how often they need to be on the phones and with locations of up to 30 staff, the managers can be on the phones quite a bit. Any time it can free up for them to spend time with their team is a massive help.
Which Kitomba features you couldn’t live without?
Targets
We use Kitomba Targets for all of our staff to track KPIs. The staff all have their own logins on Kitomba 1 so they can see how they’re tracking for their individual targets for services, rebooking and retail.
Then, for myself, I track each salon’s performance with Targets. It’s a really good gauge for us to push where we’re going at each location, so I can assist the managers in hitting their KPIs.
Reporting
I love the simplicity of the reports in Kitomba. It’s super easy to pull any report around anything that you need within the business.
My favourite report is in Kitomba 1, the Business Summary report. It’s such an easy snapshot of all locations, it’s super easy to customise as well depending on what I need to view at that time.
So if we’re running an incentive for a particular brand, I can pull the Business Summary report and add those metrics in; it’s a quick and easy way I can give my team an update on how we’re going for that week.
Learn more about Kitomba Reports.
The support
The other thing we can’t live without is the support from Kitomba. Whether that be a phone call or a web chat, it’s quick and available when we need it, and it makes things super easy for us.
What does success look like for EdwardsAndCo?
I guess to define success for EdwardsAndCo is with the growth of the company. We have grown quite rapidly over the last 10 years and it’s continuing to grow, which is great. So obviously more locations are the next thing in our pipeline, but outside of that, creating a good culture is super important for us all.
What is your top tip for other salon owners and managers with multiple sites?
My top tip for other salon managers or owners that have multiple sites is definitely to spend time on the floor with your team. It’s easy to sit back and spend time at the office, but I put a lot of effort into spending time in our salons to break that gap between office and in-salon life.
Want to find out if Kitomba can help your business thrive like it has for EdwardsAndCo? Book your free demo where we’ll discuss your business’s unique needs, goals and vision, and what features will help you to achieve your business success.
Read next:
