Archive for 17 June, 2009
A cut below the competition
My hairdresser tells me that business is booming for him and I’m not surprised. Apart from the fact that he is some kind of hair genius who manages to turn my uncooperative mane into a series of non-stop good hair days, as a village operation he charges about half of what city centre salons do.
He tells me that the industry is reporting clients increasingly trading down from paying over £100 for a cut and colour in a high profile, prime location salon to more affordable rates nearer to home.
However it seems that the problem comes for the suburban salons that five or ten years ago were flying, with more business than they knew what to do with and were advised to steeply increase their prices.
The expectation was that although some customers might leave, they would still be doing less work for the same amount of money and could start behaving more like the branded urban businesses who were charging the same money. A brilliant plan until their recessionista clients started tightening their belts.
Now apparently some of these upwardly mobile salons are £4k down a week, whereas on a wet Wednesday morning at my local salon you can hardly swing a hairdryer for clients.
surfing from dry land
In the unlikely event that my Dad ever had to fill in a TGI lifestyle survey he would tick the box marked yes next to ‘do you use email’. But this is how he actually emails:
- I check for new email on the home computer and print out anything intended for him
- he reads the print out and drafts a reply longhand
- which I then type up and send
His version of shopping online involves sitting next to me at the computer while I find what he wants and then passing his credit card over.
There must be a fair few 60-something captains of industry and retired 70-somethings that have the world convinced that they have cracked this internet malarkey, when in fact they just have very accommodating secretaries or daughters.
Yet again, the data only tells half the story.
