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Organizing your beauty business area is an incredibly important aspect of your business health.
It sets the tone for your customers' experience-- customers come to you to relax and a cluttered messy area might send them running for the hills.
Being organized saves you time and money, and we all know how important those are. If you're wasting time searching for a product in the back room all the time, you might see fewer clients each day. That means less $$ for you and the business. Or say you misplaced a box and end up double ordering some expensive product. Waste! Plus now you have a ton of extra stuff to organize in your already too small space.
So what are you supposed to do?
Being organized is a skill, and like all skills, it takes time and effort to build over time. Don't tear apart your entire supply closet all at once, you'll just be left with a big overwhelming mess that will probably end up being shoved back into the closet anyway. Pick one area to start, and once that area is finished you can move on.
The first step in organizing might seem counterproductive, but throwing away anything outdated, expired, dried up or simply not serving you or your business is HUGE. Clutter disrupts your workflow. You can't get sh*t done if there's sh*t everywhere. I know getting rid of stuff can be difficult. So if you're not quite ready to throw something out, put it in a box and store it away somewhere. If 6 months have gone by and you find you didn't need to go get it, it's safe to throw out.
Think about your daily workflow. What items are you always working with, the ones you grab first or go through the most. Make those items the most easily accessible. The rest can be organized toward the back of the supply closet or shelf.
Then decide how you want to organize your products. Do you want to organize by color, brand or type?
If you run a nail salon maybe you can organize your colors by season- which colors are most popular in the summer or winter. If you run a hair salon maybe you organize your products by hair type- products most used for curly hair, thin hair, color-treated hair, ect. If you run a spa maybe you organize your products by skin type.
For your supply closet choose an organization system that works best for your workflow, and for the showroom choose an organization style that appeals to your customers.
Pretty self-explanatory, but using storage bins with labels is the easiest and most effective way to keep supplies organized. Think about your supplies and how you want to go about organizing them. Group similar products in the same bins, then organize your bins in a way that makes sense to your workflow. Always remember the First In First Out rule when replacing supplies, keep your products rotating so that you're always putting the newest products in the back.
Once you've decluttered, binned and labeled until you're blue in the face, finding space for your bins and products is the next step. Maximize your wall space and keep your floors clean by adding tall shelving. Too short to reach the top shelf? Keep a cute step ladder nearby and you'll never have to ask someone else to reach that item for you.
The hard truth is that no matter how many bins and labels and shelves you have, being organized starts and ends with you.
A mantra that I have always found to be helpful is "Don't put it down, put it away."
If you and your staff put in the hard work of organizing but you don't maintain the system, it's all for nothing. So keep in mind every time you go to put a tool down or have an empty container to put it in its proper place, not just the first place you see. It takes a fraction of the time to put it away as it does to do a full-on clean up when the entire salon is a disaster.
So grab some bins, tape and colorful markers (and maybe a friend or two to help) and get to organizing! Let me know in the comments how you plan to maximize your space and declutter your stash~
XX
~Em
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