You’re a bonafide beard-grooming guru, a wizard when it comes to fades—but the pathway to operational success for your blossoming barber shop business isn’t built on scissors and clippers alone.

In order to launch and sustain a thriving establishment, you’ll need it to be rooted in a detailed business plan.

Your barber shop business plan is your roadmap—it outlines what your business is and how it may evolve. It anticipates the questions of your potential partners or investors and ensures your goals are specific and measurable.

Consider this article a roadmap of the roadmap as a future business owner. We’ll point you in the direction of essential business plan components to give your barber shop the boost it needs to get off the ground and grow.

Before You Build Your Barbershop Business Plan

Before you organize all of your barbering hopes and dreams into a polished plan, be sure to leave yourself plenty of space for the development phase. Step one for many business ideas, barber shops included, is about building a rough draft and getting all your data in order.

Conduct Thorough Research

Leave the drafting of graphics and templates for later—start laying the foundation for your plan by conducting a competitive analysis and industry analysis. Consider essential questions such as:

• Who are your target customers?
• Which advertising channels might be the most effective way of reaching them?
• Who’s your competition?

Once you’ve done a competitive analysis think about how your barbershop will stand out. Will it fill a particular niche? How can you go about gaining a competitive advantage over your local competitors?

Put together a list of qualities that make your business unique—these may end up being your key selling points down the line. At the very least, doing an industry analysis will help you set the tone for the marketing strategy and content you’ll create when it’s time to attract customers.

Create a Service Menu

Do you plan to be the only barber shop in town offering a classic flat-razor shave? Will you specialize in curly, textured hairstyles?

Knowing exactly which barber services you’ll be offering will help to flesh out your value propositions—and articulate how you’ll fill the niche you discovered in your research. Lean into any product or service offering that aren’t available at competitor shops and play them up in the marketing plan you create to promote your brand.

Determining how much you’ll charge for these services will also help you figure out your projected expenses and gross income, allowing you to calculate a profit margin more accurately. This exercise will be key in proceeding with the next step.

Prioritize Financial Planning

No matter how masterful you are with hair, all businesses rely on revenue—and barbershops are no different. While it can be intimidating to begin creating a financial plan and attaching numbers to the value and costs of your craft—it’ll be a vital task if you want to present a viable business plan for barber shop investors or partners.

Here are a few items you’ll need to research and calculate before putting together your financial plan:¹

• Monthly operational expenses, including rent, marketing, and supplies
• Start-up costs like licenses, equipment, and furniture
• Your personal finances with income, savings, and taxes  
• Realistic projections of how you expect your business to grow

Assemble a Team

Collect the background info like resumes and licenses of all the people who you know will be owning or managing the shop. A team can make or break a business, so make sure to choose wisely and consider what everyone brings to the table. If you’re planning on being a business owner, find out how much do barbers make so you can estimate salaries correctly.

If you’re the sole member, be prepared to sell yourself by detailing your years of barbershop work, awards you’ve received, and any other relevant skills. If you or anyone in your team doesn’t have one yet, find out how to get a barber license to ensure proper documentation.

This component of your business plan lets potential investors know exactly who they’re trusting with their money. If there’s a sizeable roster to introduce, create a chart to show who’s doing what.3

Prepare to Put it All Together

When you’ve gathered all of the essential components of your plan, it’s time to consider how it’s all going to fit together. Look for barber shop business plan examples online to help you visualize the final product. You can also download a template to complement your plan with a sharp, ultra-professional design.

For some, hiring a business advisor to help them with the planning process allows them to approach their new endeavor with confidence. Others might choose to take advantage of free business counseling offered through a local Small Business Association office. Weigh out your mentorship options, and consider bringing someone in to take a closer, more experienced look at your plans.

How to Build a Barbershop Business Plan in 7 Steps

You’ve got all your facts straight—you’ve made clear decisions about your services, staff, and customers, and sorted out the specifics of your projected start-up costs. The next task is to put all this raw data into a presentable business plan.

Step 1: Write a Business Description

Take the research and objectives you’ve outlined and summarize the essentials into a business description. Specificity and brevity will be key here—but be sure to include the basic facts of your shop, like:

• Business name
• Business structure
• Location
• Primary services
• Target customer demographic
• Business goals
• Mission statement

You can elaborate more on each of these elements in a subsequent section but, for now, do your best to wrap it all up in short paragraph.

Step 2: Introduce Your Team and Services

Use these sections to put your team members and services in the spotlight. Explain why your services are desirable to your target customers and why this team (or just you) is right for the job. Don’t be afraid to infuse it with personality—include a few fun facts about yourself and your employees to make it extra memorable.

Step 3: Show Your Market Analysis

Now’s the time to flex your marketing skills. Take all of that raw customer and competitor data and find a digestible, convincing way to present it, like with a graph or chart. Prove you’ve accounted for everything by discussing the latest market trends and untapped customer needs. Present a comprehensive analysis by articulating a few common pitfalls a barbershop might encounter—and explain how you plan to avoid them.

Step 4: Explain Your Marketing Plan

How exactly will you get the word out about your shop? Will you use social media channels? Paid digital ads?

Explain in your marketing strategy how your approach will vary depending on the type of customer you intend to attract. Be specific about how you hope to make the most of the marketing channels you’ve selected. Be prepared to share:

• Where your ideal customers hang out online or in person
• What qualities best represent your brand voice
• What types of content you predict will be most successful on your social channels
• How you can leverage word-of-mouth marketing, either through referral incentives or customer testimonials

Step 5: Detail All The Financial Matters

Lay it all on the table, describing the nitty-gritty details of your projected expenses and estimated revenue in your financial model. Mock up the paperwork, like income statements and cash flow, and include those forms as part of your projection. Try to project a full five years of finances.²

This is also where you’ll describe your funding request. Be sure to answer these questions: 3

• Exactly how much money do you need?
• What will it be spent on?
• How long do you expect the initial capital to last?
• Will you apply for a small business loan?
• If so, what loan terms are you not willing to compromise on?

Step 6: Go Back and Write The Intro

Now that you’ve got your business plan in front of you, go back to the beginning and write your executive summary. This will serve as the first page of your plan, and it should function like a snappy cover letter or an elevator pitch. Creating your executive summary last gives you a better understanding of your finished plan so you can write the most effective opener for the contents inside.1

Look through your plan and figure out the most convincing details to highlight.

It shouldn’t completely re-state all of the information in your business description, but it should present the basic ideas of your new barbershop and what makes it special.³3

Step 7: Consider Adding an Appendix

This section might be optional depending on your preferences or the requests of your prospective investors. If you decide to include it, it’s where you’ll insert any documentation that wasn’t included earlier like:

• Resumes
• Licenses
• References
• Credit history reports

No two barbershops are exactly alike—and neither are any two barbershop business plans. But one thing stays the same: an effective business plan can help you and your investors determine the viability of your pursuit.

Manage Your Barbershop with Ease with SQUIRE

Whether you’ve finally decided to act on a lifelong passion for barbering or want to capitalize on the rising revenues forecasted in the barbershop industry,³ it all starts with a business plan. Then, when it’s time to put your plan into action, there’s SQUIRE.

SQUIRE is the all-in-one barbershop management system that gives you full control of your operations. Use the revenue dashboard for real-time revenue insight, manage bookings and waitlists without the hassle of back-and-forth phone calls. With our fully-integrated point-of-sale system, you can ring up your customers on software designed especially for barbers.

Request a demo today and see for yourself how SQUIRE can enhance your business ideas with simplicity and style.  

Sources:

1. National Association of Barbers. How to Create a Barbershop Business Plan. https://nationalbarbers.org/creating-a-barbershop-business-plan/
2. Yelp for Business. How to write razor-sharp barbershop business plans. https://business.yelp.com/plan/barbershop-business-plan/
3. Statista. Revenue of barber shops (NAICS 812111) in United States from 2008 to 2020.
4. https://www.statista.com/forecasts/409860/united-states-barber-shops-revenue-forecast-naics-812111
5. U.S. Small Business Association. Write your business plan. https://www.sba.gov/business-guide/plan-your-business/write-your-business-plan