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Open a Beauty Supply Store

Are you considering starting your own beauty supply business? If your answer is yes, there is no better time than right now.

Online beauty is booming, and it’s not just big brands that are getting in on the $532 billion dollar industry. A beauty supply store may sell a wide range of products, including hair care, cosmetics, nail care, fragrances, skincare, and more.

A growing number of consumers now purchase beauty products online. This has inevitably led to an increased dependence on user-generated content as shoppers seek validation for their purchases.

Knowing your market

The start of a successful online store is research. Then followed by careful planning, budget, and execution.

Are you ready to build in this digital space?

Passion Purpose

Every great business comes from either an interest or a passion for the service(s) or product(s).

Passion and persistence is crucial, as starting a business comes with late nights, fear of failure and multiple obstacles along the way.

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Decide on a Target Audience

With any business, you goal is to find a way to uniquely solve your target audience problem.

First step is to brainstorm how you can contribute to this industry, Identify an opportunity gap, and how your unique viewpoint can impact the consumers in the industry.

You need to determine your target market audience in order to create a sustainable and effective business plan.

What is your customer’s…

• Age
• Gender
• Marital status/family size
• Income level
• Education level
• Location

What is your customer’s…

• Passions
• Needs and wants
• Spending habits

What is your customer’s…

• Hair-type
• Hair color
• Ethnicity

The purchasing power of women in the U.S. ranges from $5 trillion to $15 trillion annually. They are the buying power and and influence of their household.

The beauty industry breaks through generational barriers because everyone, young and old want to look and feel good.

Decide on a Niche

Finding a good niche for your beauty business isn’t easy, but it can be done.

Some of the qualities of a good niche are:

• It appeals to a specific group/solves a specific problem
• It aligns with you, your talents, skills, and values
• It is well planned and thoroughly researched
• It is memorable because it’s unique and distinctive

Type of Beauty Shopper

Identify and monitor competitors

Every business has to compete within its market, and it pays to know against who.

Things to identify

• what they are offering
• how much they are charging
• who their customers are
• how they are marketing their products
• where are they buying their products from
• new products appearing in the market

Don’t limit yourself to only researching direct competitors. Expand your search to other Indirect and Substitute eCommerce competitors. Yes, they are just as important competition.

Get Inspired

Find your inspiration from other beauty supply stores. Sometimes, that inspiration comes from looking at existing businesses and thinking about how they succeeded where others might have failed.

Business inspiration isn’t just about getting fired up inside—it’s also about building an understanding of what it takes to launch and run a successful business.

Business Plan

A business plan is a formal beating heart of your business. A written document that details your business goals, it’s important to have a rock-solid plan.Your plan should include information about your team and company, and an outline of how you plan to accomplish your goals.

Overview

In this part, include:

• What does your business do?
  
• What market need does your business solve?
• What are 4 reasons why your business will be successful?
• What is your desired brand positioning?
• How many employees do you have, need, or plan to have?
• What business milestones will you need to accomplish over the next 1–3 years in order to achieve success?
  

Company Description

In this part, include:

• What is your mission statement?
• Who are your target customers?
• What is your business structure (e.g., sole proprietorship, LLC, and S Corp, etc.)?

Financial

In this part, include:

• How much money do you need to start and/or run your business?
• What are the primary uses of these funds?
• Financial projections for the next year
• Cash flow projections
• Income and expenses

Marketing

In this part, include:

• SWOT analysis
  • SWOT stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats and is a way of recognizing your internal and external issues.
• Who are your competitors?
• What do your competitors do right? And what do they do wrong?
  
• Which channels will you use to market to your target audience?

Operational plan

In this part, include:

• Who will runs your business?
• Technology needs
• Equipment needs

Legalizing your business

There are a lot of steps involved in this process such as choosing a name for your business, obtaining licenses, retail seller permit, getting an employer identification number (EIN), etc. It’s best to check with your state to see what licenses you are required to obtain.

In the beauty supply industry, LLC or a limited liability company is often the most common and best choice for first time business owners or small businesses. That’s because an LLC protects an owner or owners from personal liability.

Decide on a Legal Structure for Your Beauty Business

• Sole Proprietorship – less fees and paperwork, but more personal risk at stake
• Partnership – more resources for capital and decision making, but can delay processes
• Limited Liability Company (LLC) – most flexibility for the structure of the business, but more comprehensive paperwork and fees
• Corporation/S-Corporation – less personal liability, but more government regulation

Business Bank Account

To keep your personal finances separate from the ones of your business, you should set up a business bank account. To create one, you’ll need to submit your tax ID and business formation documents.

Decide on a Budget

Start-up costs are truly up to you, as much or as little as you choose. Remember that every beauty supply store started from scratch.

As a small business, you won’t be able to offer the widest range of products from the outset.

It’s important to plan out your budget upfront to ensure you’re able to properly fund your business idea.

All businesses need a detailed overview of expenses and projected income before they launch. Budget plans will guide long-term company strategy and inform all future financial decisions. Your store should begin to turn a profit in 4 to 6 months.

Starting a business can be a costly endeavor with many unforeseen and unknown associated expenses. That’s why doing your research and understanding exactly where you’ll need to spend money can be helpful in creating a realistic budget.

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Brand Identity

You want your logo to communicate your brand’s personality. And in order to do that, you first need to understand what your brand’s core personality is. Once you have a clear idea of what makes you unique and what your brand is all about, it will be much easier for you to make design choices that complement and complete your vision.

• Custom Logo Design
  • A logo is crucial because it’s often the first interaction a potential customer has with a business.
  • An effective logo looks professional and seamlessly fits in with a brand’s identity.
  • Types of logos – Primary Logo, Alternate Logo, Submark Logo, and Black & White Version of Logo
• Color palette
  • The choice of color tones speaks volumes of your business.
  • Colors can have a ton of different meanings. The psychology behind color is complex and have certain emotions and ideas attached to them.

• Tagline

  • Think of a phrase or just one simple word that convey your company’s goal and vision. The best taglines are sweet, short and direct.
  • Even though a tagline or slogan is not a must, adding it to your branding materials and brand identity will set you apart from your competitors.
• Mood Board
  • If you’re a visual person, a mood board may be the perfect tool for you to get inspired and maintain branding consistency. 
  • A mood board is made up of a grid that includes inspiration images consisting of photos, text, and textures in a specific color scheme. This will have develop a strategic visual direction to convey to your audience.

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Decide on Online platform

Research and reviews

Iron out your needs before you even start looking into eCommerce platforms.

Running costs:

This includes the cost of building your eCommerce platform and ongoing development and maintenance costs.

Usability comes first

The most important part of any website is its usability. If a website is easy to use, it provides benefits such as visitor satisfaction, faster loading times, and helps retain users.

A website with poor usability can sink a business, as visitors will be quick to jump towards a competing business’s site for a better online experience.

Scalability

Your platform needs to grow with you. Set yourself up for future success by mapping out what you want your product line and website experience to be in three years.

Adding new features/improvement costs

Consumer behavior changes over time. That’s why you need to ensure your eCommerce site maintains its relevancy by implementing improvements and adding features whenever it is required.

Security

Perhaps the most important thing to consider is security. Since eCommerce is a digital platform that is actively taking financial payments, you want to make sure your eCommerce provider has the necessary security protocols in place.

Mobile-friendliness

A platform that is mobile-friendly is a must. More and more online shopping is done on mobile devices. Make sure your online shop looks good on a phone and loads quickly.

Social Media integration

More and more social media sites allow companies to sell right in the customer’s feed. An integration with your Facebook business account allows you to sync your products to Facebook, Instagram, and Facebook Messenger.

Multiple payment gateways

Having multiple payment options which include PayPal, credit card, and debit card has proven to increase conversion.

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Shopify

Business plans starting at $29/month

Shopify is no doubt the leading online platform when it comes to building your own online store.

This platform provides trusted tools to start, grow, market, and manage a retail business of any size.

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WIX

Business plans starting at $23/month

Wix is one of the most popular all-around website builders. However, because Wix doesn’t specialize exclusively in ecommerce, they lack some of the ecommerce-specific features of Shopify, for example, Wix doesn’t accept Apple Pay or Google Pay.

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WooCommerce

Business plans are free. Must purchase hosting (average $15/month).

There’s a small learning curve to WordPress that requires some time to get used to, but once you do you can use it to create sites with special features and unique designs.

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Website

A confused customer will not complete their purchase on your website. Keep the the website foundation simple, this is not the place to be unique. What works doesn’t need to be altered.

E-commerce Website Checklist

• Create a custom domain
• Select eCommerce Platform
• Create a Business Email
• Obtain High Quality Product
• Choose Colors and Fonts for Your Brand
• Payments, Checkout, & Shipping Logistics
• Research Keywords & Content Ideas to Reach Your Target Audience
• Set up email marketing
• Setup Business Social Media
• Create Automation
• Promote your site

The Content

The following checklist will help you figure out the key things you need to get ready when launching your online store.

Standard pages 

All the pages of your ecommerce website need to work together to attract users and move them down your sales funnel.

• Home page
• About page
• Contact page
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page
• Terms of service
• Privacy
• Policies including Order, Shipping, return and refund

product page

Product pages are where the buy buttons show up.

Tip:

• Write a solid product description. Focus on the benefits of your products, not just features.
• Use high-quality, professionally crafted pictures from different angles.

shopping cart page

The shopping cart is where shoppers review their selected items and make the purchasing decision. The goal of this page is to lead shoppers to the checkout page.

Tip:

• Display product details, including product names, images, sizes, colors, and prices, clearly. This helps shoppers remember their selected products and why they want to have them.
• Use a clear, attention-grabbing call-to-action (CTA) button, for example, “Proceed to Checkout” or “Go to Checkout.”

checkout page

The checkout page is where cart abandonment often happens. So ensure you review it carefully as much as possible. 

Tip:

• Offer various popular payment options like credit cards, master cards, PayPal, Sezzle, Square, and etc.
• Keep it simple. Don’t include too many steps or fields—the goal should be to help customers finish the payment process faster. 

Install essential apps for your store

Here are some app types you should consider: 

• Apps for marketing and promotion.
• App for increasing sales and conversions.
• Apps for SEO and site optimization.
• Apps for finding products and managing inventory.

Setup a Merchant Account

You’ll need to set up a payment gateway to accept online payments through your website or eCommerce site.

Each gateway has different policies, transaction processing fees, and integration features that make choosing the right one for you a bit of a challenge.

Transaction fees: Small businesses in particular will want to consider the number of fees that are incurred by different payment gateways.

Security: Customers want to be sure their personal data will be protected from fraud and theft when making an online purchase.

 

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PayPal

PayPal is a trusted and familiar merchant Leading in innovation for your small business and the world’s leading retailers.

The company has a reputation that speaks for itself when it comes to ease of use, reliability, and security.

2.9% + $0.30 per transaction

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Square

Square is a great choice for those of you who have physical retail locations and plan to start selling online.

• Wix and WooCommerce accept Square merchant but, unfortunately Shopify doesn’t.

2.9% + $0.30 per transaction

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Stripe

Stripe is one of the top payment methods on the market today because it’s so versatile.

It’s a great choice for ecommerce shops, subscription services, or on-demand services.

2.9% + $0.30 per transaction

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• Upselling
  • Upselling is a sales technique that involves getting a customer to spend more money by purchasing a more expensive version of a product when they add it to their cart or reach the checkout page. 

• Cross Selling
  • Cross Selling is the technique of offering customers products that are complementary to the one they have in their cart. During checkout can generate up to 3% more revenue.

buy now, pay later option

Let your customers get what they need and want. And pay over 6 weeks—no surprises, no fees when paid on time.

eCommerce stores are seeing 20% increase in cart conversion on average, and more repeat customers.

sezzle https://szzl.io/5bqmqh

afterpay https://get.afterpay.com/app/

klarna https://www.klarna.com/us/business/

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Marketing

Earn > Rent > Owning > Returning Client.

Marketing is essential to running a successful beauty supply online store

Marketing is deeping the relationship between a brand and a customer.

Earn: Social Media

Social media plays a massive role in all marketing efforts.

Customers like consistency online, meaning businesses should post quality content frequently that demonstrates their brand and establishes themselves as a resource to their target audience.

Rent: Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing involves a brand collaborating with an online influencer to market one of its products or services.

Influencers have played an integral role in their beauty tutorials on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. This is not just a trend this is here to stay.

Rent: Facebook Marketing

Facebook and Instagram are great platforms to get started with social media advertising. With the detailed targeting options when creating ads.

Facebook advertising will help you achieve brand awareness, increase website traffic, brand consideration, and lastly conversion. 

Retarget website visitors. If you install the Facebook pixel on your website, you can target people who have recently visited your site.

The Facebook pixel is code that you place on your website. It collects data that helps you track conversions from Facebook ads, optimize ads, build targeted audiences for future ads, and remarket to people who have already taken some kind of action on your website.

Goal #1 – Own the customer by collecting email

Goal #2 – Generate repeat customer Focus on backend profit, not front in puchase

$20 FB AD > Make $20 > Cost $20 > Make $0 but Collect Email = Repeat Customer gain profit

Meet you clients where they’re are.

Owning: Email

Creating an email marketing list can benefit your business by keeping your customer in the loop. A list consist of your current customers, prospective customers and people who may be interested in your services but aren’t yet a customer.

Use the email list to your advantage, and regularly communicate with those on the list so they can be the first to know of new products, promotions and other company updates that will draw traffic to your website.

Owning: Email Automation

Welcome Flow Email

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Enable abandoned cart emails

One of the most common types of retargeting is abandoned cart emails, which remind shoppers about products they left in their shopping cart.

Merchants can create automations that are set into motion when customers complete certain actions on your website.

Research shows that across all eCommerce stores, $260 billion of lost revenue is recoverable with cart recovery emails.

Email Flow

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Owning: SMS

An SMS Campaign is a means of business marketing that enables you to interact with your customers via text. SMS campaigns have a lot in common with email campaigns.

Like email marketing, in SMS marketing you can send different messages to your audience. Automated text messages that confirm transactions, inform about shipping, remind about abandoned carts are automated, and advertise a new sale or new arrivals. They are being sent only when triggered and only to customers who trigger them.

Additional:

Promote Product Reviews

Reviews are a great way for customers to get a feel for your products without seeing them in person.

Because customers can’t physically observe e-commerce products prior to purchase, they rely on the opinion of previous customers.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is the process by which an affiliate earns a commission for marketing a company’s products.

The sales are tracked via affiliate links from your website.

Affiliate marketing is a popular tactic to drive sales and generate significant online revenue.

Market Material

Consumers should identify your brand with a specific tagline that summarizes your business goals, whether that focus is one facial feature or the manner in which your products are acquired and created.

• Business Card
• Thank you Card
• Polymailer
• Shipping Box
• Branded Tapes

beauty brands to carry.

You’ll want to diversify you product offerings because this will help expand your customer reach.

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Types of Beauty Brands

• Value brand
• Mass-market brand
• Luxury brand

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Value brands: 

• Compete on price
• Are for customers who want something cheap and accessible
• Are sold in drug stores and grocery stores

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Mass-market brands:

• Are middle of the road when it comes to price 
• Are for customers who want good products but don’t want to pay a premium
• Are sold in department stores

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Luxury brands:

• Are pricier than other brands
• Are for customers who want the best of the best
• Are sold in stand-alone shops 

 

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Vendors

Wholesaling

You need to be confident in the quality of your products and trust the reliability of your suppliers.

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Hair & Beauty Products

• https://www.jinny.com/
• https://www.saloncentric.com/
• https://www.marlobeauty.com/
• https://www.pinkprobeauty.com/

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Hair Wholesale

• https://wholesalebraidinghair.com/
• https://www.mihairdistribution.com/
• https://www.aabeautyinc.com/
• https://braidbeauty.com/
• https://www.queenhairwholesales.com/
• https://4uhair.com/

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Private

Manufacture the products yourself and be fully aware of all their ingredients, costs, distribution practices and any other relevant factors. This requires the largest upfront expense, but provides the greatest long-term return.

• https://www.plmcosmetics.com/
• https://www.enviilabs.com/
• https://boldbeautyhair.com/wholesale/
• https://www.diamondposhlabeling.com/
• https://texaswholesalenaturalbeautysupplies.com/
• https://wholesalenaturalbodycare.com/

These items should be stored in a controlled environment free of smoke or fluctuating temperatures.

Additional Resource

Find Suppliers, Insights, Tools and More – www.thomasnet.com

4 Common Brand Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

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Part 2

• Subscribe & save10%
• How to Properly Price Your Products
• Create Sale Goals
• Content Creation
• 4 Ways to Find Your Audience
• Helpful Apps/Tools
• How to calculate the price at which you will sell your product
• Subscription membership
• Price factor
  • sale price
  • 2. everyday price
  • 3. Coupons
  • 4. Free sample with full size purchase
  • 5. Bonus packs
  • 6. store advertisements or circulars

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