Better looks to lock profits

The popular saying ‘Beauty is skin deep’ holds little to no value presently. More and more people have started giving importance to looks and beauty. Also the craze to look beautiful is not just limited to youth but older people are also spending a lot of money on their looks. Moreover, this trend is not gender biased, men and women both spend large amount of time and money in maintaining their skin, hair and beauty. People have become more aware of the fact that ‘feeling beautiful makes a person happier and healthier as well’. Taking this in regard entrepreneurs have come up with innovative idea of specialised centres for hair, skin etc to rectify and enhance beauty.

Ever increasing consciousness among people to look beautiful and take every possible measure to make their looks better, has led to the emergence of large number of specialised treatment centres. Both organised and unorganised brands in health and beauty industry are offering specialised treatments. The orgainsed players in the industry are making every possible effort to increase the reach of their brand far and wide and have opted for franchise route.

Need for specialised treatment centres
Need for specialized treatment centres can be attributed to following factors:

Increasing hair and skin related problems: With increased stress in life, many health problems have emerged. Moreover problems like baldness, dark under eye circles, pimples, pigmentation etc are also on the rise due to tensions and stress. People prefer visiting specialised centres for their cure as there is a proper treatment for it. Furthermore patients with small disfigurements like light burns or marks on face or body also find specialized units better for treatments than going to other hospitals or medical clinics.

Availability of treatments: With passage of time, medical technologies have also developed, evolving new and unique treatments.

Increased consciousness: Dr Apoorva Shah, Founder, Richfeel said: “Initially hair and scalp treatment was availed by the higher strata of the society. However, over the years, we have seen that the middle class people have also become extremely health conscious. This further fuelled our passion towards extending our healthcare services.”

Desire to look good:  There has been a tremendous increase in awareness due to television, movies , computer with internet etc. Young as well as old, women as well as men have become more conscious of their appearances.  They do not mind spending money to make themselves more attractive

Increased disposable income: Trend of working women is not only present in metros but is catching up in smaller cities. Therefore families have some extra money to spend on their appearances.

Specialised centres versus beauty salons

Beauty salons are perfect beauty enhancers but they do not usually have professional doctors for treatments of major beauty problems like baldness, burn marks etc. On the other hand specialised treatment units offer 100 per cent cure on treatments taken by them. Shah explains: “Just as a person with a heart problem would consult a cardiologist, hair problems require specialised knowledge to be effectively treated. Trichology is a super specialisation from dermatology offering effective scientific solutions.” These services may not be offered by experts of  related fields in salons.

Franchising favours

It is generally seen that people usually prefer organised brands to unorganised brands where specialised treatments are concerned. Keeping this in mind brand owners has taken the franchise route for expansion. Regarding adopting the franchise route Shah said: “We started with a single clinic in Mumbai in 1986. Soon, we witnessed a heavy flow of customers from different parts of Mumbai and the numbers started growing rapidly. In no time, the appointments had to be scheduled at least a month or more in advance.”

The concept of specialised treatments is quite recent in franchising but many players have entered this domain and have generated profits as well as success. Let us have a look:

Richfeel: This Trichology chain started in 1986 with an idea. Richfeel is a hair and scalp treatment centre which is not only famous in India but abroad as well.

New Look: New Look a cosmetic skin laser centre has made a name in permanent hair removal and skin treatments through laser.

Evana:  Evana has emerged as a specialist in non surgical – non invasive skin hair and body treatments since 20 years.

Skinnovation Laser Skin Care: Another brand Skinnovation Laser Skin Care is into permanent hair reduction through Light Sheer Diode Laser machine.

Dr Batra: This health clinic franchise is a privately owned and managed chain of homeopathic clinics in India. The homeopathy franchise is one of the largest chain of homeopathic clinics. It offers treatments for severe acne, hair loss and other medical problem as well.

Fit for franchising?

Owning and running a specialised treatment centre is not only a lucrative business opportunity but it can be easily predicted that it has tremendous scope for future as well. However, being specialised in treatments, training and support is a very critical factor. On this Shah informs: “The entire know-how of business is shared along with a rigorous training in trichology, care free hair solution, tricho massage etc. All the standard operating procedures required to run a clinic are shared along with the commercial operating procedures for the business. Moreover, the marketing support in terms of patient education CDs, advertisements as well as other promotional material are also provided.”

Perfect franchisees

Being specialised in nature, this concept needs a medical doctor to handle the centre but if an aspirant has passion for the concept without a medical degree, he can still opt for the franchise. He can employ other doctors to treat but can run the centre himself. Apart from the statutory needs like a medical doctor to handle the centre, minimum space, and basic investment, a positive attitude combined with a winning outlook towards work is also needed by the franchisees. Basic things like genuine care for customers, and giving personalised attention also adds up to the qualities.” Investment may vary from brand to brand and location to location.

To conclude it can be said that if a franchisee looks at the business only as a revenue-generation model it will seldom work. Nevertheless if the franchisee believes that his efforts are going to touch somebody’s life and make a person more confident then that passion will automatically fuel the business and add value and name to the organisation.