From high street to high style: VK Hair Styling builds on grand design

We are delighted that Julie has given us the opportunity to share her story, and we hope you enjoy it as much as we have.

About a year ago, my nieces and I decided we wanted to set up our own hair salon. They are stylists with over 20 years’ experience between them, and I’ve been a PA for large global companies for the past 30 years – it was time for a change!

We looked at various locations, and after about 6 months of searching, we came across 4 High Street, in Barkway, England. It was totally different to anything else we had looked at, in fact the complete opposite – it was not in a town, not that big, and definitely not a commercial feel. It looked very much like a white-washed shed, but with a little imagination, it had the potential to shine in a village location and capture a niche market.

We had some great training on Timely a few months before we opened so the girls could practice using all the functions of the system, from booking a customer to tracking the expenditure, running reports, and looking at trends. It proved invaluable to have the system set up and running from day one – it allows us to manage the daily columns, rescheduling, and adding customer notes where needed, and also provide the paper trail for product sales.

We took on two new stylists the day before we opened! They joined us a couple of weeks later, but we provided them with tablets so they were able to access Timely remotely and therefore add in their mobile clients ahead of their start date so they could hit the ground running. All the stylists have said how intuitive Timely is. They love getting an email in the morning telling them their appointments for the day and they love the ability to book in their own appointments when the salon is closed. It provides an excellent service for our customers and gives us an edge over other salons.

Timely has been a great asset to us in our opening few weeks, simplifying processes and keeping track of expenditure and we would recommend it to new and existing businesses.

Here was our vision for the new salon…

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And the reality!

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Our imagination had to kick in, but slowly everything started to fit together.

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Then we got to the really interesting stuff, laying out the shop and designing all our branding.

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And here is the finished salon – we are really pleased with how it turned out and the feedback has been amazing from customers. Everyone says it looks really elegant and has a great atmosphere. Our customers find it both professional and friendly.

Here’s our first Christmas in Barkway… and here’s to many more working with Timely!

Timely helps us manage the business from the top down. We can get a very quick overview of how the business is performing and drill down to analyse performance at a very granular level.

Without Timely, we could not manage our columns as efficiently as we do and this allows us to concentrate on the important things like our customers. Even when we are away from the salon we can still access Timely online to book customers in or make changes to appointments and notes.

At the end of the day Timely gives us the ability to reconcile our takings and examine any anomalies that we may find providing us with the tools to make a swift conclusion. This allows us to go home happy in the knowledge that we have closed off the day properly and are ready for the next.