Serial entrepreneur:uniforms, furniture and salons

Dubai; Shirin Shirin Abdul razak started Sisters Beauty Lounge (www.sistersbeautylounge.com) a grooming business for ladies in 2004 with an investment of Dh1 million. The Emirati entrepreneur’s advice for other entrepreneurs is “Look after the staff so that they have no choice but to look after customers.”

How did the business idea emerge?

Many years ago, I looked around and couldn’t find the perfect salon, so I decided to build one.

In 2004 I sensed a need gap in the market. The grooming business was so ‘old school.’ Nothing had changed over time and across generations. A visit to a salon took hours. Busy working mothers needed a place to do grooming as fast as possible.

I think what we did was we ‘streamlined’ it, reduced the time it took to do what is natural grooming. We innovated by creating a work station to reduce by half what took three-four hours. A garage is a good metaphor; once a car is parked many mechanics can service the vehicle. Clients sit comfortably in our work station and are multi-served, providing services like hairworks, manicures, and pedicures.

Just speed?

We made a necessity into a speedy experience with more pampering. We called our business a ‘beauty lounge.’ We brought a host of grooming services in a single location, focused on high quality service staff, and gave the customer a relaxed Spa like experience. Our salon has the ambience of a Feng Shui-compliant luxurious Spa.

Speed and efficiency in an experience industry? Are they dichotomous?

No. Customer experience is key. We are focused on the customer. We had to be good at everything, all services that are required for grooming. We had to excel in all facets of the beauty business under one roof.

Execution from the idea?

We needed highly qualified and talented staff for each grooming service to enable clients’ experience perfect service, and not think of going elsewhere.

This thinking emerged from my experience as a customer. I used to listen to the woes of underpaid and overworked staff. I hate to say something akin to slavery. When we started, staff were working 12 hours per day. They never saw daylight except on their holidays.

I did something different. The mantra was I don’t believe that the customer is king. This was contrary to what everyone was saying. I said that in my business the staff was king. We needed to train the staff. Make them grow as technicians. We need to compensate them with bonuses and incentives, giving them an opportunity to earn more than their salary. We needed to give them health insurance which was not mandatory in the beauty industry. We first paid staff then our self.

We needed to look after them so well that they had no choice but to look after our customers. This became our winning factor in the business.

Competition?

In one sense competition in 2004 was intense but most salons were ‘old’ school. Good salons were difficult to find. We came up with a unique beauty salon positioning. New formats like nail bars were emerging. The industry has since changed. Nail bars have expanded their offerings by adding hair and beauty treatments. Basically, nail bars are no longer nail bars but now look like a copy of our lounges. This was something we predicted would happen 10 years ago.

Where was the first salon located?

We started from the Village on Jumeirah Beach Road. We had plenty of competition along this stretch. We were probably the 1,000 the salon in the neighbourhood. People asked why we were opening here and that too another salon. We replied and asked for their patience. We had ideas that we wanted to implement.

Why Jumeirah?

I thought that Jumeirah was a great catchment. There will be loads of women who will have an easy access to the salon from where they live or work. The Village Mall had basement parking. It was akin to a community centre. This suited us because we wanted to provide a homely atmosphere, where customers would feel invited, come for an hour, be called by their names, and leave.

How did you implement the ‘difference’ that you wanted to create?

I wanted to offer a differentiated tangible experience to customers, something they would not get elsewhere. I had the design of the station in our mind. This has now become our trademark in the business. The Stations have electrical outlets which customers can use for their laptops while being served. They can bring their babies in a pram. They are served coffee and cookies. There were some salons that used to charge a Dirham for a bottle of water. When I started we were not driven by money but a desire to succeed. I just wanted the place to be friendly on the basis of transparency, honesty, and good service. To do this I needed time to get highly qualified staff and train them on our way of working.

In 2004 Dubai didn’t have mega malls. MOE invited us to start there but we told them that we had just set up and were not ready. We really didn’t know what was going to happen. We didn’t know that we would become big. We were thinking of only a salon where we were going to offer what others were not offering.

How did you implement the difference in salon ‘ambience’?

It all had to do with the design of space and nurturing the right employee mindset.

I have a background in fashion and beauty, and I love beautiful things. I can look at a core and shell space that is dark and bounded by concrete blocks and visualise a light and beautiful space that is feminine and women friendly.

I have been a customer so I knew the things I wanted to feel and didn’t want to see. I didn’t want my staff whining away about their employment problems to clients. I wanted to relax and feel happy. I wanted to engage with happy staff in an ambience that was positive and cheerful. We had to design and engineer space to influence the mind of customers and staff.

To influence the staff mindset we have to engage with staff at a human level understand their needs and motivations of coming to work and live alone in the UAE leaving their families. I have to help them fulfil their needs e.g. help them build a home in their village that may just cost AED 30K.

How long did it take to open — from idea to start?

90 days. I had an interesting fit out company managed by a talented Iranian who is more of a poet than an architect who was able to understand the brief.

Was staff recruitment an issue? Training them, changing their mindset?

We just didn’t know where to start. I wasn’t going to go out and head hunt. We started advertising a little bit by word of mouth. Some people came to us and we did a little bit of test, a trial. We were keen to identify if they were good, had potential and were capable to reaching the benchmark I had set. We were not in New York or Thailand or Paris. I had to create something for the Dubai mindset, for which there was no real ‘standard.’ The Dubai customer needed to be told what was the highest standard. So instead of just giving customers what they want, we invent procedures and policies that the customer really should want.

We developed our own etiquette of starting the procedure, doing the procedure, and ending the procedure. We asked the staff to visualise themselves as a hostess. They were to greet the clients as guests. After completing the procedure you have to escort the guests to the threshold of the house. Attention to minor details was important.

Did you visualise the details of the customer journey by trial and error?

This was the easy part. I was a customer myself and knew all the things I didn’t want to see. Sisters Beauty Lounge was not only for me but, for my sisters, daughters, their friends, my 93 year old mother, my 6 year old granddaughter. Thus four generations of women in my family use the services of SBL. They are the perfect representation of the collective intelligence of SBL. They all knew what they wanted from the business. And I had experienced in the past that nothing had changed from the time I went with my mother for a haircut to the time I was taking my own child for a haircut. I just needed to provide honest to goodness service and nothing would go wrong.

Did you discuss the positive and negative customer experience within the family?

We knew we were going to have teething troubles during start-up. A few days before the formal opening I called the family to test run the salon give us a report on their experience. I can’t tell you how bad the report was. They identified all the issues; something wasn’t done, something took too long, etc. They even benchmarked me against other salons. This test helped us correct the areas where we were bad. It was all about trying to get the staff understand our point of view. They had legacy issues from the businesses where they were coming from. The staff had to trust and believe us. The new staff had to get used to electrical equipment / gadgets they had never used before. We had to understand the staff mindset and learn how to change that.

How was your pricing?

Honestly there wasn’t a plan. I had a gut feeling. I just knew that it was a salon for the rest of my family, hence named ‘Sisters,’ and if it is good for them then everyone else would come. We did some rough numbers based on the number of stations and number of therapists. We had designed the stations for multitasking, simultaneous hair, manicure, and pedicure; we believed that we could triple the performance of the salons. This wasn’t a plan which was going to work. It was an expectation. We just said that it looks like it is going to triple. And it did.

How did you create an awareness of the lounge?

I did a lot of the PR work at that time so I created awareness with the editors of the magazine. I invited them for free treatment. I invited them to a lunch and took them to the lounge and have a run of the place. I also used some unconventional methods. If somebody in the family was getting married I invited them to hold the bridal shower in the salon in the mornings between 10am and 12 noon. I knew that if the bride invited 30 friends word would spread. We advertised a bit but gave up on that quickly. You could say I was driven more by intuition than reason.

Did you have adequate number of customers in the first year itself?

No. The first year was scary and very challenging. Today I understand that the first year of every business is a big challenge no matter how well-known the brand.

In the beginning customers would walk in, experience us and were more or less hooked. But it took nearly six months of steady growth for the numbers to reach a sustainable number. For a new branch we need a year to reach a stage where a customer has to wait for 2 weeks for an appointment.

Customer acquisition and loyalty are important measures for a start-up. Do you track loyalty?

We track walk in, new, and returns. If the percentage of new and returning customers is within estimates then we are doing something right.

How do you manage operations?

We invested very early in software to manage salon operations. We track productivity measures like — customer visits, ticket size per customer, percentage of product sales, and service sales, etc — of each staff member daily, weekly, and monthly.

How much time do you spend managing the business?

There is a funny story. Once I went to school to pick up my youngest daughter. Her teacher told me that my daughter had told her that her mother ‘never’ works. Truth was I would go to work after dropping them in school and return home by picking them from school. I have made a promise to myself that I would never let my work interfere in normal family life. I was always there for my children. Even though I was not formally working 9am to 6pm I have always been hands-on everything. I didn’t have an office in the first year and would sit in the salon or in a coffee shop.

When did the business get systemised that Shirin could go on a holiday?

I went on a holiday for a month after the first year and nothing fell into pieces. This meant that that processes were in place from year one. I had key people in place, established and institutionalised all the procedures through handbooks and manuals that people could go to when they had doubts about what they should do.

How did you go about doing this?

It started with a three page manual. Pages got added. I used to put up bulletins in the staff room identifying issues and solutions. We started with a Staff Handbook ready on day one. This has taken a shape of a formal document when we started franchising.

When did you open a second location?

We signed up with the Dubai mall in 2005 after seeing the Emaar show model. The mall opened three years later just as the economic crisis began. Imagine my mental state. Here I was in a mall with 4000 sq ft. of space and a million Dirham rent commitment, a Dh4 million fit out fee and having graduated from the Village Mall. I reflected that million Dirhams is often a budget for a PR campaign of who you are and what you want to become. I want the business to become an advertisement by being in everyone’s face in the most iconic mall in the world.

Dubai mall has been the basis of our business growth, the absolute jewel in the crown. Dubai Mall made Abu Dhabi happen. It made Kazakistan franchise happen and so much more.

Uncertainty about expansion?

It was a new business. I appear as an entrepreneur and my background is beauty that was inborn. I don’t have professional training in beauty. We also never knew that what we had planned was going to work. And now a new location was being thrust upon us. We just needed time to get ourselves into the new business. And then go into expansion with the confidence. We had just started the Dubai Mall location. The fact that my daughters joined the business meant there was an amazing growth. The branches that have emerged from the original salon ten years ago are a direct result of this fresh young blood! With every addition of locations, ideas and changes influenced by them, makes our portfolio even more stunning.

Where was the seed of business in Shirin?

I became an entrepreneurship out of necessity, a sort of an accidental entrepreneur. The seed of business was in a little rebelliousness that I had towards what I consider constraints of ‘old’ school; I considered going to school and traditional university. Starting a business was a way of getting out of it. I knew what I wanted to create. I also knew what I wanted to become. Working for others was not an option. It would keep me out of the house. And it would also not give me an opportunity to do things that I wanted to be free to do. I wanted financial independence that would not interfere with my family and children. I come from a family of strong women personalities. My mother is well known, has been a civil servant and diplomat, and has written books. My sister is a well-known TV journalist. I was to be able to conform to all the cultural requirements and not be like my highflying mother and sister who were always jetting off to different places. I wanted to always be in the background.

Where did you get the idea for your first uniform business?

This happened by chance. My children were always considered best dressed children in their school. The Principal motivated me to develop similar uniforms for all the other children. Some parents had queried the Principal about the source of the uniforms, keen to get similar uniforms. I used to design the uniforms, copying them from somewhere, and have them stitched. Working through the night I created a business plan for a uniform factory. I started from a derelict place in Rashidiya belonging to my husband. The business became pretty big. We were doing uniforms for schools and institutions all over the GCC.

How did you learn how to manage the business? Pricing and cash flows?

The hard way.

Did you exit the business?

I sold the business profitably. Two things had happened. My children had grown up and I decided to take some time off. The lack of creativity in the uniform business began to hit me. I began wanting change. The business had 35 employees and sales of over 4m some 20 years ago.

Then?

I didn’t wait long to dabble in a new business. I came across The Bombay Company on a trip to Boston. I decided to take a franchise. The furniture business was different but I had the confidence to manage it, execute it. I had to buy the franchise from a Kuwaiti company. The business started well but the parent company went bankrupt. I ran the business with sheer grit for five years.

How do you manage a large (250+ employees) HR based service business?

I think it has to do with the ethos of this company, and ethos that has been understood and absorbed by all the staff. Retention is a good measure. I don’t think the ethos today is what it was when we started. Then we were just an extended family. We knew all the people by their first names. I knew about their families, their motivations.

I have followed a practice, since the days of the uniform business, of employing people better than myself. I have never recruit people who needed teaching by me.

I have also learnt to nudge, show happiness and displeasure, through more subtle signals, not raising my voice.

The biggest fact is here is no way I would have managed so many women under one roof without my youngest daughter Sara who plays a very active role in the day to day management.

Challenges in the immediate future?

Our latest children’s concept Caboodle Pamper and Play (18 months old with 2 branches in prime locations) that has so much demand for franchising all over the GCC that we don’t know what to do with it

Setting up a salon Academy

Manoj Nakra is currently with the Apparel Group and is a mentor to Dubai SME members.