Success story
Sun Centre have been a customer of Salon Tracker’s for nearly 15 years. Director Kevin Conway discusses how he has built a successful salon business, whilst dedicating a lot of time to Charity work:
When did you start out in the Salon Industry?
We first opened on the 9th March 2002 at our location on Ormesby Bank, Middlesbrough. We then opened a second location on 28th October 2019, which may have been one of the worst times to open with the beginning of COVID in 2020. Luckily for us, Salon Tracker froze our payments for the duration of all lockdowns so we weren’t paying for software in such a difficult time, whilst still allowing us to use the software.
What inspired you to open your Salon?
I set up the business when I was 16 with my Dad, he had been in the home hire tanning business since 1981 and I was keen to open a shop. After a lot of searching, I found an ex-NHS clinic which was to be auctioned. My dad was happy to ‘have a go’ at setting up a tanning salon, so we went to the auction and the bids kept going higher and higher – the winning bid was our last bid and I was over the moon! It took a lot of work to set up, as I was at college and had to juggle my studies with setting up pricing structures, finding equipment, a lot of internal demolition and re-building. The business grew from strength to strength over the years and with these strengths I invested in the newest and finest equipment I could find. We started to get a reputation as the best, cleanest salon in town and we work hard to maintain that reputation to this day.
Tell us about your Charity work.
Over the years, we have been involved in many charity fundraisers. We have jumped off of the transporter bridge, jumped out of a plane and completed in sports activity days to raise money for a local charity called Zoe’s Place. As well as this, we regularly raise money for Children in Need and run Christmas Jumper Day, which raises money for the Save The Children Charity. Salon Tracker have helped by generously donating text messages to notify our customers of upcoming charity events!
Why is the charity Zoe’s place close to your heart?
Our charity work started after a visit to Zoe’s Place Baby Hospice, a local charity that provides palliative, respite and end of life care for infants 0-5 years living with life limiting or life-threatening conditions. We have worked with them many times over the years. We have a great sense of community in our business, we have become like an unofficial hub. Charity work such as this means our customers and the community can be a part of helping those who need it most.
How long have you been working with Salon Tracker?
We’ve operated with Salon Tracker since 2008, back when it was Studio Tracker. We originally moved to a software-based system to try and speed up our customer service time. It helped massively with this. We’re not only able to serve customers faster but we also had a large amount of information instantly about each individual customer, such as their preferred service package; allowing us to provide a more personal service to the client.
What can you tell us about your experience with Salon Tracker?
We’ve watched Studio Tracker’s functionality grow and eventually rebrand to Salon Tracker. We have taken advantage of Salon Tracker’s increasingly updated and additional features over the years. Features include the customer signature pad, which means we can store a legal digitally signed document for every customer who signs up. This way we don’t have to store endless amounts of paper documents and customer information is available at the touch of a button.
What are your favourite features of Salon Tracker?
Other features we have taken advantage of are the addition of the HQ. The HQ provides an office-based point of access to each of my salon locations. This means I can monitor, amend and manage my locations without having to be physically on site. My staff also have the comfort of knowing if they have an issue, they can call me and I can help resolve over the phone.
Any other general thoughts you’d like to share?
When I first decided to switch to a salon management system my main concern was, what if I had an issue with the system and weren’t able to serve my customers? My mind was instantly eased with Salon Tracker because their customer service team are always just a phone call away. With the addition of the cloud-based database, I have comfort in the knowledge that should any of my operational PC’s have a physical issue, my database is intact and can be moved to another PC. In summary Salon Tracker has helped streamline my business and allowed us to serve more customers quickly, which results in more sales overall!
Salon Tracker offer a FREE 2-week trial of their software, head to www.salontracker.co.uk to sign up for your free fortnight.
