How to Prepare Your Nail Salon for the Christmas Holiday Season

The holiday season is quickly approaching, so it’s time to start preparing your nail salon for the rush! According to Phorest’s data, salons make more than 10% of their annual revenue in December alone. That’s crazy, right?

This is a very busy time of year, but if you plan ahead and make a few strategic moves, you can run your nail salon smoothly and attract new clients. 

In this blog post, we will discuss tips on preparing your nail salon for the holiday season. Keep reading for more helpful tips!

How to prepare your nail salon for the Christmas holiday season

Create a pleasant atmosphere 

The atmosphere is everything when it comes to Christmas. Everybody loves that feeling when you hear Christmas music, the smell of cinnamon and orange everywhere, and have a beautiful Christmas tree by your side. No one can resist that!

Creating a pleasant Christmas atmosphere in your nail salon is not expensive, and your clients will surely remember it. Just decorate a tree (and your nail table, why not?), buy a cinnamon & orange home scent, and play those Christmas carols. 

As a plus, there’s a fragrance you can wear that will make everybody go crazy. The Replica By the Fireplace is a unisex fragrance that instantly puts you in that cozy atmosphere and reminds you about the snowy childhood days with your dear ones next to you. Isn’t it special when Christmas is coming? You can make it even more memorable with these little tricks.

Attract clients to your nail salon

This step is crucial and is linked to all the steps you’ll see below. To make December the busiest time of the year, you must let clients know about your schedule, work, prices, discounts (if you provide some), and availability. 

Thus, applying some of these nail salon marketing tips is essential. You can start immediately by looking for some ideas and encouraging your followers to book an appointment with you before Christmas arrives. 

You can publish some photos of your work, show them how you’ve decorated your nail salon for them, or attract them with your special deals (gift cards, discount coupons, etc.).

Being active on social media and engaging with your community by answering to all their questions is crucial for your business. You have to be -very- visible if you want your business to grow. 

Optimize your booking method

Especially during the most crowded time of the year, you need to care about how you spend your time. So if there are tasks that can be automatized, why not do it?

Luckily, there are many ways to keep yourself fully focused on your nail salon activities without interrupting yourself to answer the phone, schedule, reschedule, and so on.

Using an online booking system for nail salons allows clients to book themselves the services they want, depending on your availability. It is easier than you’ve ever imagined, and you’ll be able to save important time in your business and focus on what’s more important: providing high-quality services. 

Schedule in advance

If you don’t want many clients who realise too late that they need a nail appointment before Christmas, you should encourage them to schedule in advance. 

Starting from late October – early November, you can contact your clients and inform them that they can book a Christmas nail appointment in advance to secure their place. This way, they’ll avoid overcrowding, and late or too-early appointments, and why not, they’ll get rewarded. Read the next tip to know how to reward clients for booking in advance.

Offer discounts

People love discounts. That’s crystal clear. And, of course, they’ll be more likely to book a nail appointment with you if they receive a little incentive. 

You can take advantage of Black Friday being almost here and inform clients about the discounts you’ve prepared for them. This is one of the easiest ways to ensure you’ll have a fully booked schedule at the end of the year with zero effort.

The discounts can be something between 10 to 25 percent, depending on how much you are open to offers. And remember, it’s not a loss to offer discounts; you’ll only have the advantage of being fully booked and growing your client base.

Offer clients multiple payment methods

You’ve been postponing moving to digital payment processing, hm? Now it’s the right time to start. During the Christmas holiday season, you might be in a rush and make a mess of your receipts and income. Why don’t you take payments online and manage your finances better?

As a solo nail artist, keeping track of everything in your business may be very difficult. 

By taking deposits and payments online, you’ll ensure that clients attend their appointments and that you don’t have to deal with cash anymore. All you have to do is to download from the App Store or Google Play this appointment software. Plus, Goldie lets you collect payments from clients contactless with just your iPhone, or with the help of these stylish card readers provided by Stripe.

Limit your availability 

Not everybody does it (because all beauty professionals try to take advantage to the fullest of the holiday season), but it’s highly recommended to limit your availability. For example, when your schedule is fully booked, and you’ve reached a certain number of appointments in a day, you should avoid accepting bookings after working hours. 

Believe it or not, this can easily lead to burnout, and it’s not worth going through that. Take some “me time” block time in your calendar for yourself, and don’t forget: sometimes you have to pamper yourself. 

Avoid stockouts

Yeah, this is serious. It happens every year in December to run out of colors or nail decorations. 

Well, ladies, think about the colors you use the most near the Christmas holiday, and make stocks with those colors!!! Generally, white and red are the most popular nail colors for the holiday season, but there are also nail decorations and some accessories that might give you a headache if they run out of stock.

So, what are you waiting for? Call your retailer and fill out your shopping cart right now, just to make sure you’ll have everything prepared in advance. Oh, and when you invite your clients to book an appointment with you, you can inform them that you’ve got red nail polish for the whole year, just to make sure there’s plenty for everybody! 🙂

Sterilize more tools

By having more clients in your nail salon during the Christmas season, you will need more sterilized tools. 

The sterilization process requires time, as it has more steps you must follow. And since you can’t do that between your nail sessions, it’s highly recommended to have more sterilized tools prepared. 

Remind clients about their nail appointment

It’s the most wonderful time of the year, but it’s also the most hectic time of the year. And that means clients are more likely to forget about their appointment with you. 

With apps like Appointfix, you can send your clients instant notifications when the appointment is booked, message reminders when the appointment is coming up, and follow-ups. What better way to ensure they will never forget their nail appointments? You’ll get rid of your no-shows, and they’ll surely have the prettiest nails this Christmas. 

Grow your staff before you get too crowded

If you’re working as a solo nail professional in December, you might need some help. Even though you don’t want someone to work with you permanently, asking a beginner nail artist for help could be a great idea. She might like to gain experience.

Taking an assistant during the Christmas holiday season will help you save time (she can remove the gel and prepare your future client’s nails while you’re working). Not to mention that taking a beginner nail artist as an assistant is way cheaper and easier to find. 

So, ready to grow your nail salon staff during this busy time? 

Provide Christmas gift cards 

If you didn’t try this in the past, now it’s the right time. Around the Christmas holiday season, people are looking for presents for their dear ones. And if they run out of ideas, you might come up with a solution: selling nail appointment gift cards in your salon.

Here are some nail salon gift cards free to download, just ready to be printed. 

Keep track of your revenue

If you’d like to know exactly how much money you’ve made in a certain period, how many clients you had or who’s your most loyal client, then here’s something for you. 

With this app, you can easily check out your total sales for any day, week, month or year. 

Gift your clients 

You don’t have to offer them something sophisticated or expensive, but the simple fact that you thought about them will make them feel really good. 

Offering to your clients as a Christmas gift a cuticle oil, chocolate, or some nail files in a pretty package is more than enough to thank them for their loyalty over the year and, why not, to brighten their day. 

Here’s a $2,49 cuticle oil from Amazon, that could be just perfect to offer to your clients. Also, this set of 50 nail files at only $10 can be a great Christmas gift for your clients.

Prepare yourself for the low months

The holiday season can be very tiring, but it is the best time to prepare for the low months, like January. 

How to make sure you’ll have a fully booked schedule at the beginning of the new year when everybody seems to be gone? Well, offer all your December clients some discount coupons and freebies that they can use only for the month of January. There’s no better way to make them schedule an appointment right away than mentioning a freebie! 

As a nail artist, you can offer for each nail appointment a free paraffin treatment or a hands spa massage. No one can resist to that! 

So, ladies, ready to rock this winter and to grow your salon business? Don’t forget that with the help of an all-in-one booking software, you can manage your appointments, take payments, send reminders and track your income, so you’d better start with that. 

Oh, and don’t forget, marketing your nail salon is important, and I bet your client’s can’t wait to hear what goodies you’ve prepared for the Christmas season!