Renting a chair while I figure out if my own lash studio is worth it

Nina Park· Lash and brow studio idea; renting a chair at someone else's salon for now· Idea stage, Beauty & Personal Care·Jul 16

I've been renting a chair at a salon for about seven months. Flat weekly rate, I keep what I make, and the owner has been decent to me. It was the lowest risk way I could think of to find out whether I could actually fill a book.

Where I've landed is that I can fill a book, and that the chair is now the thing limiting me. I can't do a lash lift and a brow appointment back to back in a shared room with someone else's blow dryers going. Two clients have mentioned the noise. I'm also paying weekly for a space I use four days a week.

The obvious next step is my own small studio, one room, maybe two. Then I price that out and stall. First and last month, a deposit, a bed, ventilation, insurance, a sign.

What I can't figure out is how you tell the difference between being ready and being impatient. I've got about eleven thousand saved and a book that's roughly seventy percent repeat clients. That feels like a lot until I price a room.

Has anyone made this exact jump from a rented chair? What surprised you about the cost?

3 replies

Keisha Brown· Registered·Jul 16

I'm mid build-out on a four chair place right now, so I'm about a year ahead of your question. The thing nobody told me: the room itself was the cheap part. Plumbing and electrical to make it work for what I do was not. My landlord gave me what he called a vanilla box, which sounded generous until I learned it means bare walls and everything else is mine.

Seventy percent repeat is a stronger number than your savings, honestly. If I were you I'd look for a small suite in a building that's already set up for beauty rather than a raw room you have to convert.

Jen Okafor· Open·Jul 17

The impatience question is the right one and I don't think there's a clean answer, but here's the test I used. Work out the month where the new space costs you the most and you're earning the least, then ask whether your current book, exactly as it is today with no new clients at all, covers it. Not your optimistic book. Today's.

Mine didn't, and I opened anyway and ate four frightening months. If yours does cover it, you're not being impatient, you're being slow.

Dana Kowalski· Open·Jul 18

Twenty years in HR before I went out on my own, so this is the part I can't help noticing. Ask the salon owner what your current arrangement actually says on paper. Some chair rentals are genuinely rentals and some are written in a way that looks a lot more like employment, and where that line sits changes your taxes and sometimes what you're allowed to take with you when you go.

Read it for anything about soliciting clients, too. Much better to know that now than the week you hand in your notice, with seventy percent repeat business you'd assumed was yours.

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