Lorenzo colangelo – diary of a top salon owner

In the second part of a new series, owner of award winning salon The Gallery in Southborough, Kent, Lorenzo Colangelo offers an insight into his working life. Did you all have a good Christmas, doesn’t it seem a long time ago now!  December is always a mad, fun month that can slip by before you realise it.  Traditionally January is a quieter month on the client front, but certainly not from a business point of view and this month we seem to really hit the ground running. Expansion Planning I told you about our expansion plans last time. This is an ongoing plan that I really need to keep on top of and keep moving forward in order to meet out deadlines.  This month I have met with my bank manager to discuss affordability and options for borrowing. I have also met with architects and a salon designer to understand all the implications of the works and the potential closure of the salon.  Scary stuff! Setting new Targets and budgets I use January to re-cap on last year’s figures and look and see where we are, what we spent and whether we hit our targets.  I am pleased to say that in the middle of December we actually reached my big 2015 target of a £1m turnover – which was a real milestone for us and we spent about a week feeling amazing, then of course we realised that we needed to set and work towards a new target. So we have been creating road maps for the year that help me to list our objectives for the next 12 months and to put some strategy and time frames to the goals. My salon manager, Becki, had to have a day at home. She took a list of all of our service providers and phoned them to re-negotiate any contracts or deals. She saved us a staggering £4,500 for 2016. Team Activity -The L'Oréal Colour Trophy and The Fellowship I find that the team can feel a bit flat in January, so the opening of the L’Oréal Colour Trophy falls at the right time for us.  We spend some time pulling together our looks for our entries and this year we are entering both women’s and Men’s Image categories, and possibly this year the new category Star award!  It gives the team the chance to flex their creative muscles and also come together as a team, which I love and they do too. An in-salon photoshoot took place on Sunday 31 January and all the entries will be posted off in time to meet the deadline. It’s also a great opportunity to refresh our in-salon imagery and headshots for the web site. Other exciting news, our artistic director, Mario has also been asked to present models at the finale of The fellowship show at Excel in February. Really proud. Back to School Just before Christmas I was asked to go and speak at my old school – a motivational talk about how I got to where I am now.  It was a real honour for me, and actually I think I was more nervous of doing that than I ever am on a hairdressing stage!  But once I got going, I really enjoyed it and got some great feedback, which is always nice.   Lorenzo Colangelo is director, The Gallery – Winners of The British Hairdressing Business Awards - Salon of the Year 2014 & 2015