Salon shop owners face a cut in earnings

Drop in customers and increase in operating costs put them in soup

It was a sigh of relief for the low-budget salon shop owners, who are back to business after the government announced relaxations in the lockdown 4.0.

Officials have also given a standard operating procedure (SOP) for the salons to follow, which the shop owners have started to implement. However, most of them feel there has been a drastic drop in the number of customers after lockdown. Simultaneously, there is an increase in maintenance/operating costs.

According to the SOP released by the government, people with symptoms must not be serviced and it is mandatory for the owner/employees to wear disposable gloves. The barbers were asked to disinfect the equipment used for each customer before re-use. A customer is also asked to use masks except while servicing and they were also asked to maintain records.

New experience

“Earlier during weekends, we used to receive at least 40 customers. Now the number is just around 15 due to fear factor despite we are taking a number of precautions,” said Govind, who runs a salon at Seethammadhara. According to him, almost all the customers are coming for just haircut, while most of them are reluctant for shaving and facials, through which they get good revenue. Despite cleaning the aprons in hot water everytime, customers are asking us to use only tissue papers. We have purchased new towels, aprons and other equipment. Our maintenance cost has increased by more than 20%, he said.

Ramu, a salon shop owner from Murali Nagar, said that he had purchased disposable cloth for the use of customers, as such about ₹50 is additionally charged for serving. After servicing, the cloth is being disposed of carefully, he said. “Only those customers who are associated with us since long time have been coming and business is definitely dropped by 50 %,” he said.

adding that the equipment are cleaned after every use and the salon is cleaned with disinfectant daily a couple of times.

A salon shop owner Diwakar said that it will take a long time for them to recover from the losses due to lockdown.