Brave enough to venture
There is no shortage of hair and beauty salons in Singapore, so how do you build a successful international business in this sector from nothing?
Director Irene Teo founded ‘Hair Secrets’ in 1981 and through her hard work, perseverance and business acumen it has since evolved into what it is today a distinctively professional service provider of hairstyling and beauty services with two outlets in Singapore and overseas branches in Shanghai and Brunei.
Irene, born in Malaysia to a family of modest means, stated that at the time there were only two ways to learn – “you go to school, or become an apprentice hair stylist”. After being trained at Vidal Sasoon in the UK, Irene not wanting to borrow money saved ear- nestly to open her first salon in Singapore. While the risks were there in setting up her own business, her belief was that whatever the challenges lie ahead passion and hard work will always overcome them.
Hair Secrets’ aim is “to provide premier services to cater to the very needs of clients with dedication and professionalism”. While it is easy to create mission statements like this, Irene reached her goals through apply- ing her core skill as a talented hair stylist with quite sophisticated management and marketing approaches that included a very subtle form of market research at its centre.
Over thirty years Irene has had a captive audience of respondents, her customers, who apart from helping her to learn English over the years have also provided her feedback, opinion, and advice in many aspects of her business. Irene comments, “The customer – they gave me a lot of information, so today I succeed”. This has ranged from where would be good locations for her salon outlets, to how she should internationalise her business including which markets to go into and how to succeed in these overseas markets. Customers also advised her on the naming of her business, meaning that through her direct contact with customers she has been able to cut out both the market research and creative agency!
While Irene did not have any higher education, she implemented a series of management initiatives to enhance her business, the think- ing behind this you would associate with someone coming out of a business school. Firstly, Irene recognised the importance of total quality management. While her personal relationships with custom- ers are important, the business had to deliver on its mission state-ment of ‘dedication and professionalism’ consistently across all their staff. This was delivered not only through an extensive training scheme and Irene sharing her ideas and dreams with her staff, but she also implemented formalised quality control measures – Hair Secrets was the first hair and beauty salon in Singapore with an ISO accreditation.
Secondly, Hair Secrets recognised the importance of sponsorship in raising their profile in a crowded market. Since 2004, they have sponsored beauty competitions and are currently sponsoring Miss Universe Singapore 2012.
And in recent years, Hair Secrets has introduced a range of prod- ucts under the ‘Beaufond’ brand including firming, slimming, eye, and sunblock creams. While the Beaufond products are a small part of their revenue, they take product and branding very seriously as a means to pro- mote the core hair and beauty business, and they have plans to distribute the Beaufond products more widely through retailers.
While Hair Secrets has been using sophisti- cated marketing techniques, the owner Irene is still quite maverick in her business deci- sions. She admits that she “does not believe too much in numbers” that could include market research reports! Based on her intui- tion, if she feels she can do it, she will go for it and sums it up by saying “If somebody tells me I can’t do it (e.g. entering a competitive market), I will do it, and I will succeed”.
Across all the SME series from Novema, a common theme we have identified with each company is how the success of the busi- ness is a focus on the vision, the staff, and in putting back into the community. The Hair Secret supports regularly charity work. Among different activities the company organised a Children’s Charity Show where 20% of sales were donated to the Children Cancer Foundation. These companies are motivated less by profit, but this happens as a result of getting everything else right.
While doing this interview with Irene, a thought crossed my mind – with a captive audience in hair and beauty salons, would it not be a good idea to ask customers to fill out questionnaires through touch- screens for 30 minutes for a discount on their salon bill – a random sample of people who have their hair cut, and even cheaper than online research? Perhaps this will be the next enterprise idea from Irene.
