Face to face
There are three most common beauty formats offered at a Russian shopping center. Actually, not even formats but rather areas operators focus on. First of all, it is face and everything about it, from brow architecture to face lifting Then comes hair, from making braids in 20 minutes, to barbershops or hairdresser’s for children. And finally, nails: nail bars from separate salons to floor islands are not a trend any more but a must-have concept. All of these are a part of the general trend in the market of beauty parlours or the demand for operators of monoservices.
More and more customers do not really want to get it all and to get it now, but aim at getting quality over quantity, be it only brow services, or only a manicure, or only hair removal. Those operators who focus on one particular category of customers also fall into the same group: special beauty salons for children, barbershops (men’s caves in a way). Based on RBC Market Research, these monosalons are guilty for reducing the flow to ordinary beauty salons.
When picking your own beauty operators for a shopping center, it is important to do research into how people use these services and what they expect. Not everything goes and not everything would work. “Any beauty service, in my opinion, is rather intimate, so separate rooms are preferred for both customers and shopping center owners. Not many people would enjoy getting a manicure or a shampoo and seeing a crowd rushing by and making a lot of noise. Most ladies would rather go for a quieter ambience for their beauty times, unless we are talking about express services, which are urgent,” says Anastasia Egorova.
A lot also depends on the country and mindset too. In many Asian shopping centers, for example, they offer all but esthetic microsurgery and nobody bats an eyelid at this touchy manipulation being provided in a mall. Russian customers are most probably not yet ready for this, though some interesting concepts pushing the boundaries of express manicures do already exist.
One of them is a chain of face lifting studios. We must mention Face Fit, which is not after an immediate service and result, but rather after regular visits and a teamwork. One treatment is 40 minutes long and to get the maximum effect it is vital to keep regular visits, so the chain has its own patrons for its four locations in Moscow. One of them is in Afimall.