The standard for professional waxing
Can I raise my prices?
The scariest math in an esthetician’s year, done in about nine seconds. Tell it what you charge now, what you want to charge, and how many you do a week.
Preset prices and volumes are illustrative examples — placeholders to start from, not survey data. Type over any of them.
Email me my price increase scripts
Three things to say, already written, with your numbers in them: the blurb for your booking page, the sentence you say in the chair, and the post.
How much should I charge for waxing?
Say you charge $65 and you want to charge $75. The question is how many clients you can lose before that raise stops being worth it.
Divide 65 by 75. That gives you 87%. Take it off 100% and you are left with 13%. That is your number. Thirteen out of every hundred clients could leave and you would still take home the same money. At 15 clients a week, that is about two people.
Most raises look frightening until you see that number. Losing two regulars sounds bad. Losing two and earning the same amount is a different sentence.
Do the sum for one service at a time, not your whole price list. Five dollars on a brow wax is a much bigger jump than five dollars on full legs. The number of clients you can lose is different every time.
Then look at what people around you can pay. A price that works in one town can be too high forty minutes down the road. The tool above uses US Census income for the ZIP your clients come from as a rough guide.
How to tell your clients about a price increase
Tell people before they see it, not at the card reader. Four to six weeks is the usual amount of notice. It gives your regulars time to book once more at the old price. Most of them will. Nobody gets a surprise.
Say it in three places. Put a line on your booking page so new clients meet the new price first. Say it out loud in the room, once, while you set up. Post it where your clients already follow you.
Keep it short. Give the date, the service and the new price. Then say what is not changing: the room, the time you hold for them, your hands.
You do not owe anyone a list of your bills. Your rent is not your client’s problem, and raising it invites her to have an opinion about it.
Honor what is already booked. Anything on the books before the date stays at the old price. It costs you very little and it is the part people remember.
Then stop talking. The common mistake is to keep explaining. Say the sentence, let it sit, and ask if she wants to book her next one.
How to raise prices without losing clients
Most clients will say nothing at all. A few will ask. One will tell you the place down the road is cheaper. She is right. There is always somewhere cheaper.
That is not the question she is really asking. She wants to know she is not being taken advantage of by someone she trusts.
Answer with what she gets, not with what it costs you. You know her skin. You know the two spots she flinches at and you slow down for them. She is not booking a stranger and hoping. Say that, warmly, once.
Do not apologize, and do not offer her a discount in the same breath. A discount tells her the new price was never real. If you want to soften the landing, hold the old price for anything already booked. Or set a price for booking three appointments at once.
Some clients will leave. Work out how many you can afford to lose before you announce anything. Write the number down. Then watch what actually happens over the next two months. Almost everyone loses fewer than they feared.
If you go past your number, you can still move. Prices are not a tattoo. Give it a full booking cycle first. The month right after a raise is the worst month you will see.