Guest Column
Customer Loyalty? Follow The Lead Of The Service Retail Segment
•Customer Loyalty? Follow The Lead Of The Service Retail Segment
By Eric Olafson, CEO - Tomax Corporation
In 2006, there were over 400,000 hair salons in the United States. This number – and the number of spas (14,600) are on the rise. Now consider: the salon industry employs over 1.7 million professionals and pulls in over $55 billion in annual sales ($1.6 billion for salon products alone!).
This collection of industry statistics reveals the vastness of the service retail sector – and I'm not just referring to hair salons. The service retail sector spans salons, day care centers, dry cleaning operations, quick lube, tire and automotive repair, and well, other "service" retail operations. Over the course of my career, I have driven by hundreds (maybe thousands) of these types of operations
when calling on my traditional retail customers in the supermarket, mass merchandise and specialty arenas.It's surprising that the sheer size of the market has not attracted the attention of traditional retail software vendors. And, in truth, was an epiphany for someone like myself, who has spent a career building software for retailers. In fact, a few years ago we decided to investigate the potential for robust, enterprise retail applications in this important sector.
Our initial observations were surprising. This enormous industry was largely ignored by traditional software vendors and, consequently, exhibited a pattern of ingrown legacy solutions. Although these solutions were highly adapted to the requirements of a single subset of the sector, they completely lacked in chain store capabilities. The important implication: there is a tremendous difference in operational characteristics and customer interaction between say, a hair salon and a quick service auto center.
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