Benefits of winning a Professional Beauty Award
With the Professional Beauty Awards 2017 now open for entries, we talk to two of the winners of the 2016 awards to find out how the accolade has helped them to grow their businesses and increase their client base since February.
Natalie Vo, White Nails, winner of Nail Salon of the Year 2016:
"We’ve been featured in the local paper and its website. Just from that our website had two and a half thousand views, which was amazing. It’s definitely brought us new clients. I had people calling and saying “I’ve seen you in the paper and I want to come and try you out”. And they’re not from Finchley; they’ve come from Mill Hill and Barnet, which are quite a distance. We’ve even had some clients who’ve come from South London, so it’s definitely helping us become a destination salon. When we relaunch later this year I’m really going to maximse on the win and tell everyone we’re an award-winning salon.
"We were really surprised to win. We thought we’d just enter and give it a go so even becoming a finalist was amazing for us. Then to actually win against salons that I aspire to was amazing. Coco Nail Bar in London was one of the other finalists and its a really innovative salon. Polish in Aberdeen is amazing too and is owned by a really master nail tech, so it was such an honour to be in the same category as them."
Janine Corciulo, Lidos, winner of Beauty Salon of the Year: Four Rooms or More 2016:
"I didn’t expect to see as big a rise in business as we did following the win. We were up about 7% year on year in March and for April we were way ahead – about 10% up. Usually we’re quieter in April because it’s school holidays, so we definitely bucked the trend and we put that down to the awards. We also noticed clients who hadn’t been in for a while suddenly started booking back in for all the latest treatments.
"We’ve also had a steady trail of CVs from prospective therapists, which has been wonderful because we’ve not advertised. A lot of the covering letters said they’d seen we’d won the award and wondered if we had availability for full-time staff. The owners of other shops on our street have popped in to say well done; it’s good for the area. And it’s been great for the girls; their clients have congratulated them. We held a cocktail party for clients then took the team out for dinner afterwards. Local press have taken an interest too. The Altrincham Messenger and Cheshire Life are both going to run features on us."
Entries for the 2017 Professional Beauty Awards close on July 5, 2016. Enter for free to put your business on the map and boost your bookings next year.