Cash Flow Forecasting will help you selling hair in Atlanta

Jan 5, 2020 | Get Help, Launch Your Web Store, Make Your Business Grow, Prepare for the Launch, USA

Cash Flow Forecasting will help you beating the competition in Atlanta

Cash is the blood if you want to keep selling hair in Atlanta. You can only survive the saturated hair market of the capital of Georgia if you keep control of the cash flow. If you master the art of Cash Flow Forecasting, you will outpace the competition. And get their clients as a reward!

So, time for a dull but business lifesaving post about financials. I will make it as less as dull as possible, because I want you to keep on selling hair in Atlanta!

Sorry my Queen, but Cash is King

Even if you name your business “Queen Virgin Remy”; cash is King. Cash is the most important financial driver to keep your business selling hair in Atlanta. A cash flow forecast will help you to pay the bills in time.

First, we need to agree on what Cash means. Cash is not the profit you make selling hair.
Cash is the money in:

your pocket,
on the bank account or
saving account

you can use to pay bills or to use for household expenditures.

Profit is when you sell hair above the cost price of the hair and after you deduct all expenses. Expenses like:

the rent of your store on Edgewood Ave, Atlanta,
the shipping expenses
the invoice of the accountant and

off course the depreciation of the inventory.

You can make a lot of profit by selling hair, but if your clients pay later or you invest all the money you receive in new inventory to show in your store, you have no cash. You will have no money to pay bills. You might need a loan. So, profit is nice, but cash is better.

Looking to build a successful online business? Get a free comprehensive guide that covers everything you need to know about running a dropshipping business.

The art of Cash Flow Forecasting for a hair store

If you do not have a crystal ball, you need to make some assumptions about what the future will bring. You will notice over time your assumptions will improve. The forecast you make about what the cash will come in and what will leave for your hair business will be more accurate.

Please understand it is all about learning, nobody will ever know exactly how much money she will receive in 25 days’ time. But more important is you start with thinking about the cash you need in the future.

When I was still at the university, there was a boy whose father died, and he left him a business. Of course, very sad news, but rather soon the boy had a fantastic cabriolet. Everybody was jealous. But as he used the cash flow of the business to pay for the car, it was a matter of a couple of months before he ran out of cash. Now he had to walk again to the campus instead of driving.

Take your time to learn how to enhance your forecasting skills and do not give up when you miss the forecast and receive less or spend more money. The only thing you shouldn’t do is to give up forecasting your cash flow.

Tricks to forecast

Let’s start with the reason you started this hair business in Atlanta. You want to sell hair. Based upon the market survey, your ideal client profile and your talks with potential clients at Cumberland Mall you have an idea what people want and approx. when they will buy the hair.

If you sell hair on credit of work with a layaway plan, you must minus the money when you sell on credit form your cash flow. The money you receive because of the layaway plan you can add.

But you can only sell hair when you buy hair first. So, you need to consider the time it will take you between the purchase of hair, assuming you must pay right away, and the average days it takes before you sell hair. The days the hair is on the selves, you do not have cash to pay bills. But you have beautiful hair to attract customers.

Now it also pays of if you have a good wholesale supplier, or more accurate, a good relationship with your hair supplier. If you manage to get some credit on the hair you buy you can free up cash. See if you can agree on the payment of half of the stock when you order and the other half a couple of weeks after you received the hair.

You can even accept a higher price for the hair, if you can sell more hair in the time you have the hair on credit.

Again, this all depends on the relation with your hair supplier, thus take this in consideration when you select the hair supplier.

Hair Cash Flow Forecasting Model

For hair businesses I developed a spreadsheet with a sales forecast and a cash flow forecasting model. These models, together with you learning to understand the cash flow of the business better over time will help you to keep on selling hair in Atlanta.

What to sell in a hair boutique in Kenya

Sep 8, 2019 | Get Help, Kenya, Launch Your Web Store, Make Your Dream Happen

Your dream is to open a hair boutique in Kenya. You want to make the women from Kenya look and feel good. And you want to also earn some nice money. This is possible. All you need to do is to perform a market survey to see what others offer and what you can do better! This post will help you to get some business ideas for what to sell in a hair boutique in Kenya.

Hair Store Names

Be Your Own Boss in Kenya

The easy way to get ideas for what to sell in a hair boutique in Kenyaall-in-one hair package.

In the meantime you talk hair with your potential clients. Why do they want to buy hair, how many times do they buy hair, what are their biggest disappointments buying hair? This information will help you to get an extensive understanding of the need of the women you want to sell hair to.

Now all you need to do is to combine these two surveys. The market survey of the competition and the results of the talks with the ladies and girls who want to buy hair. You will now be able to see exactly what the market, the competition, is not offering, but your potential clients do need. You will see now, what to sell in a hair boutique in Kenya.

Easier said than done?

Let me help you to start with this. I already did a market survey of 10 stores selling hair and beauty products in Kenya. I visited the shop of Dreadlocks Nairobi Kenya and Luxury Hair by Angie for example. All you need to do is to compare the offerings of these stores with the needs of your clients and you can start selling hair!

Leave a comment if you are interested in my market survey for Kenya and get all the ideas you need to launch and grow your hair boutique in Kenya.

The competition is selling hair for a lower price in Ghana than I can

Dec 31, 2018 | Ghana

Home 9 Tag: market survey

This week I had a nice chat with Patience, a very nice and inspiring girl from Ghana. She has the plan for some time to start a hair business in Ghana. Her main struggle? The competition is selling hair for a lower price than she can do. She needed hair suppliers in Ghana that would enable her to offer hair in the same price range.

She needed hair to stock her hair business in Ghana

Patience was already testing her marketing skills, because she has Facebook en Instagram. She had posted already some pics of hair, wigs and cosmetic products and the response is encouraging. In her store she will offer one stop shopping, from purchase the hair or wig to install. It’s very nice to see people interact after you posted the products you want to sell. But now she needed the hair to stock her store and to start selling!

Launch your own hair store with the all in one hair business package, complete with hair samples

Understand the market

Patience did her job well, she started to perform a market survey. This was mostly done online. She followed some stores that are selling already hair extensions in Ghana online. She checked their prices and read how the customers responded in the comments they left behind. The latest was important because this gives a certain understanding about the quality and aftersales of the store.

Tip: Always perform a market survey to check what the competition offers and not only check the price, but also the quality of service and hair.

There is no hair police

This study educated Patience a lot, she could build for free a good understanding of what customers like, as they shared in the comments on social media. She also obtained a feeling of the price range she could offer. For example the prices of wigs in Ghana, Now she knew how to price hair bundles to sell online.
The next step was to create a list of all the stores and to pick some offers she wanted to compare. The challenge is to make the right comparison. There is no standard of quality in this Industry. Unless you buy all the hair and test the quality yourself, you need to work with some assumptions about the quality. Here the client feedback could be of help, but is only an indication, not a standard.

“There is no hair police out there to control the quality of the hair and the grades most sellers rank them.

List of hair vendors

We started to create a list of some relevant hair vendors that was selling hair for a lower price. Or at least at first sight. You can also include some vendors with a higher range because this will paint you a complete image of the hair market.

Tip: Compare only a couple of hair types and the most relevant lengths, that is enough for an indication

All you need to do is to make a grid, with the lengths in the rows and the competitors in the columns

This will show you what the price range is, but beware, the quality of the hair is not included in this comparison. To make the difference more visible you can even put it in a graph.

style="display:block" data-ad-format="fluid" data-ad-layout-key="-7b+f0-18-44+c2" data-ad-client="ca-pub-3387013842134385" data-ad-slot="3609111671">

Patience will use this overview to set her price range for the market and to adapt the marketing message. You need to explain to your customers why your price is lower (less quality, non-Remy for example) or above the market (Remy Virgin Hair). Create a mission statement, marketing message and the design of your store in line with the products and services you offer.

Tip: If one part of the product offering is too high measured against the market average, create a bundle deal. For example, add the install and the hair in one bundle.

Would you like to know the market price of your competitors, leave a comment and we work it out, so you can sell at a profitable margin, even if the competition is selling hair for a lower price.

Make a SMART Hair Client Survey

Jun 17, 2017 | Find Clients

Home 9 Tag: market survey

Today I want to help you to find out the kind of hair extensions your target clients are looking for. There is clear evidence that focus is key to be successful. So, do not try to offer everything to everybody. Better to select the extensions your potential clients are looking for. This will keep your stock limited and your expertise and thus earnings high!

The best way to do so is to combine two tools. The information available in your analytical tools and a professional client survey. Do not forget to make an ideal client profile later, this will help you to focus your messages to your always willing to buy customers.

Today I´ll focus, yeah me too, on the Customer Survey. Especially how to get accurate answers from the respondents.

Before I start with the tips. Realize that there will always be a small minority of people who will lie on the questions asked. Especially when the questions pertain to the three B’s that is showing what people are: Behavior, Beliefs or Belonging.

Of course, sometimes people will give inaccurate answers by accident. A lot of publications have noted that predicting future intentions can be quite difficult. Especially when done via survey. So, keep these in mind analyzing the outcome of your survey.

But there are ways to limit the negative impact of these two risks on the quality of the survey.
Here you will find 10 tips to improve the quality of your survey

1. KISS (Keep it short and simple)

First, we live in a time where most people share their messages in less than 140 characters. So, keep your questions short. Not in number of characters, but in wording to avoid losing the intent of your questions.
Example: Where do you buy your extensions?

2. Ask only questions that relating to what you want to learn from your clients

Every single question that you include should have a well-defined purpose. Otherwise, please skip it as it might put in risk the rest of the survey as people might lose their interest.
Example: Do you prefer synthetic or natural hair extensions

3. Construct smart open-ended questions

Multiple choice questions will only give you a selection of answers that you thought were possible. With open-ended questions you´ll get original answers back from your clients. This will give you insight in what your clients are thinking of. But do not overdo this; you will get more insight if you ask less!
Example: What do you like the most in buying through a web shop?

4. Ask only one question at a time

Of course, you want to know as much as possible. Now you have the rare opportunity to ask your clients questions about what they would like to buy. But limit your ambition and only ask one question per survey questions. The quality of the answers will be higher if people do not feel like they undergo an interrogation.
Example: Do you prefer synthetic or natural hair extensions

Would You Like to Make $ 30.000/month for Only $ 29/month?

Yes

5. Make rating scales consistent

Certain common scales used for surveys can become cumbersome and confusing when the context begins to change. Keep the logic the same for all questions with a ranking. For example, if the response on a question can be between 1 and 5 and 1 is I strongly Disagree and 5 I Strongly agree. Make sure a next question keeps the 5 the most positive response.

6. Avoid leading questions

Questions that lead respondents toward a certain answer due bias in their phrasing are not useful for your surveys. Be neutral in the way you formulate the questions.
Example of leading question: Do you agree natural hair is the best

7. Make use of Yes/No

When you are asking a question that has a simple outcome, try to frame the question as a Yes/No option.
Example: Do you always buy the same brand (y/n) , or do you want free promotion for your hair brand (y/n). The last example was not for your clients, but for you of course ;-).

8. Get specific and avoid assumptions

When you create questions that assume a potential customer is knowledgeable about certain pieces of information, you’re likely going to run into problems.
One of the worst assumptions you can make is to assume people will answer with specific examples or reasoning. It’s better to just ask them to be specific.
Example of: What do you think of my Facebook page?

9. Timing of your client survey is important

Based upon surveys the highest survey open and click-through rates occurred on:
Monday,
Friday and
Sunday respectively.

This can differ for you situation. When for example you distribute your survey using an email tool like Aweber you will be able to see exactly what time and date are the best to contact your target group.

10. Reward your respondents

their time and feedback is valuable
Everybody´s time is scares and you can only spend a minute one tie, so make sure your respondents will be rewarded for the time they invest in your company. Give them something special that will remind them of your shop or brand. Make sure it will not be too expensive because you should keep money to invest in the hair extensions your clients told they are looking for!

Good luck in finding out what kind of hair extensions you should buy, but make sure to repeat this survey every year. This will help you to stay ahead of the competition who is still guessing what their clients want and spending all their money on buying hair nobody wants to buy!

Why you should think of your clients brains when building a webstore

by Stefan Franken | February 22, 2021 | Website Design | 0 Comments

Spoiler alert, it is a lizard who makes you buy the bundle deal!When you face a client instore, you have all the human psychology at your hand to...

How to negotiate the price from hair suppliers?

by Stefan Franken | July 17, 2015 | Buying hair | 0 Comments

Question: . I did some research online for the hair extension supplier and I came up with some few ones. One of them send me their wholesale pricing...

Low self-esteem should not stop you from selling hair extensions

by Stefan Franken | November 27, 2016 | Get Help | 0 Comments

If somebody sign’s up for my newsletter, I always like to know what their biggest struggle is. I really appreciate if somebody takes the effort to sign up. The newsletter is in many cases the start of a new relation between you as a reader and me. If people meet for the first time, it’s a good moment to start the conversation.

Read the mind of people who have never visited your hair store before!

Jun 16, 2017 | Sell Online

To be successful in selling hair extensions and to get people into your hair store, all you need to know is what people want to buy. You create a profile of your ideal client and all the hair you have in your hair store will be sold. All you need is to know do people want to buy my hair.

You can perform a market survey. Unless you already have a lot of followers on Facebook or Instagram, where to find enough people to make it a reliable survey? You can stand at the shopping mall, but what if you do not feel comfortable to talk to strangers. Or if you do not have the time?

For hair stores in the United States there is good news! Now, you can use the data from many, many people who need stuff to buy. From Hair Extensions to fidget spinners and from prom dresses to wigs. Isn’t that great?

Get the all-in-one hair business package, complete with hair samples and launch your own hair store now

How to know what’s in vogue?

You can use the free tool Google has for shop owners, called “Shopping Insights”. This tool gives you per city not only demographic data, like to composition of the people who live in the town. But also, the need for certain products and services. Up to 7,000 different products.

You can even track trends to learn what products are popular in a certain period of the year. Or check if demand is increasing the last months or weeks.

What can you do?

Let’s try to see how popular the demand is for hair extensions and what you can do with this information.

First you go to the special google site

Enter for example Hair Extensions in the search bar, in the middle of the page.

This will give you an overview of all the states with the interest in hair extensions, the darker blue the more interest.
Let’s zoom in on New York,

This view will tell you not only the share of women versus men and the average household income. It will also show you the evolution of interest for hair extensions in New York.

Okay, it will not tell you if these people will buy your hair extensions. BUT it will tell you the demand for hair and some products or services you can organize around it and get into your hair store. I recommend to try a professional Shopify store for your hair business.