Naturals, A 550 Location Salon Chain Propels Growth With Zenoti

Naturals, a chain with over 550 salons, is recognized as much for its fast-paced growth as the brand awareness it garners from the public. In the last 7 years, Naturals has achieved rapid expansion and has achieved 300% growth in the last 5 years.Today, the brand operates 550 company and franchise owned salons, and is on track to open 3,000 salons and employ 50,000 people by 2020.

“We’re laser focused on expansion and are aligning our systems and resources to achieve this goal. Zenoti is a giant leap towards modernizing our systems. Their mobile, online and personalization capabilities are key components that will propel us in to the next phase of our growth.” C K Kumaravel, CEO of Naturals

Franchising Was Key To Naturals’ Big Expansion

Naturals began as a single salon in 2000. By 2005, Kumaravel, CEO of Naturals set his goals on expansion. His first attempt was to introduce a 50:50 partnership model. Naturals invested 50% of setup costs for every new location and provided marketing services, while partners operated the salons.It became apparent this model was not a viable strategy and restricted the pace at which they could grow. By 2009, the company switched to a traditional, revenue share franchise model. The results were immediate. Within a year, the network doubled in size from 54 to 108 salons. As they say, the rest is history, as they successfully accelerated their rate of expansion every year.

The Zenoti Advantage - Growing the Business

Naturals chose Zenoti as their technology backbone for four key reasons.1. With the mobile world being ever-present in our lives, Naturals needed to become accessible through this format. With Zenoti, Naturals is able to provide guests with rich online and mobile experiences. Things like enabling guests to find nearby salons, pre-book appointments, and receive special promotions add a new dimension to guest engagement. Additionally, Zenoti’s mobile solutions also help franchise owners stay on top of their business directly via their mobile phones.2. Naturals has also employed smart marketing that brings in new business and is able to use hyper-personalized communications to get more from existing clientele.3. With a constant influx of new hires and because of their rapid expansion, Naturals identified ease-of-use as a top priority for their software solution. A usable system is easier to learn and minimizes errors that new hires can make in their initial days on the job.4. And finally, for a large, distributed network such as Naturals, reporting is key. Previously, collecting data from individual salons and collating it was a cumbersome process for the corporate office. With Zenoti, Naturals gained real time transparency with reports available whenever they need them, without any manual effort. Now, corporate maintains visibility into each location’s performance and can drill down into the details of the day-to-day operations if required.

Managing the Transition To Zenoti For 7,500+ Employees

Naturals employs more than 7,500 employees, most of whom are not tech-savvy. Naturals was concerned about getting its large, geographically distributed network of managers and receptionists trained and using Zenoti.

“We employ over 7,500 staff, most of whom are not technical. Even though we saw this as a potential risk to managing our daily operations, Zenoti stepped up and trained over 500 franchise owners and salon managers. The good news is that our staff turned into happy Zenoti users in 8 weeks. Since we partnered with Zenoti, 70 new salons have been launched and they were onboarded within a matter of a few hours. The Zenoti team was passionate about ensuring a successful transition and continues to provide great support.”Arvind Kumar, Regional Manager, Naturals 

Growing With Zenoti

Naturals is looking to the future with development underway for international expansion in the Middle-East, Malaysia and Singapore. Zenoti’s presence in these regions is another example of a great fit for a partnership.