A High-Margin Core Offering Has High Upside for Idolize Brows & Beauty Owners

For prospective franchisees looking into the beauty industry, there are a number of different concepts to choose from. Hair spas, nail spas and every other segment each have their own distinct set of offerings, each with dramatically different operating costs and earnings potential. To sort through these options, most prospective franchisees are likely to look first at a brand’s Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD), particularly that document’s Item 19, which details the franchise’s average unit-level earnings, costs and financial projections.

Savvy investors know that the Item 19 alone does not tell the whole story, but it can provide early and crucial insights into a brand’s viability, which is one reason why new franchisees have been flocking to Idolize Brows & Beauty.

By focusing primarily on an inexpensive and easy-to-maintain service, Idolize has crafted a model that offers high financial margins, making their Item 19 one of the most appealing in the industry. That core service is eyebrow and facial threading, something that Idolize’s founder and CEO, Mo Pandoria, said has only grown in popularity since he started the franchise.

Threading service benefits

“When we started Idolize, threading was very popular in Europe and in certain communities in the U.S., but it wasn’t available at many spas and spa,” Pandoria said. “We thought there was a big opportunity there, and we were right. Since then, demand for threading has grown enormously.”

Beyond the growing demand for the service, threading offers a number of operational advantages to Idolize owners. One of the most significant of those advantages is a repeat-business model, which Pandoria said is rare security in the beauty industry.

“The great thing about threading is that it requires customers to come back,” Pandoria said. “A lot of beauty services are reserved for special occasions; customers come in to get their hair done before an event or they are gifted a spa day. With threading, clients come back every three to six weeks, and they want to go to the same spa each time, where they know they’ll get great service.”

Threading is also significantly less costly for operators than other hair-removal options, such as waxing, which requires a number of expensive products, including wax and strips. Because threading requires few materials, all of which are inexpensive to purchase and maintain, margins for the service rival just about any other service in the industry.

Further reducing costs compared to other services, threading is quick and relatively easy for technicians to apply, allowing owners to save on labor costs.

Operational advantages

“One of the ways that Idolize really stands out in the industry from an owner perspective is in staffing,” Pandoria said. “Because we can get customers in and out of the store so quickly, we require very small staffs, which makes our spa easy and inexpensive to manage.”

Because threading is such a quick process, Idolize spa don’t require appointments, a unique advantage in an industry that is dogged by booking requirements that burden both owners and customers. According to Pandoria, Idolize’s walk-in availability is one of the brand’s most valuable features.

“Most spas have to deal with complicated appointment calendars, and now people expect to be able to book online, so you’ve got to buy expensive software and keep someone on staff who knows how to maintain that,” Pandoria said. “Meanwhile, customers get frustrated because they can’t find an appointment that works for their schedule, so they start looking at other spas. We avoid all of that.

The whole threading process takes as little as 5–10 minutes, so a customer can come in at any time, and if a technician isn’t available immediately, they won’t have to wait more than a few minutes for service. That’s one thing that both owners and customers are always telling us they love about Idolize.”

Despite all of the advantages threading offers over other beauty services, it’s still not offered as a standard feature in many spas. As the service’s popularity continues to surge, Pandoria expects that to change, but he’s confident that Idolize owners will see marked benefits from their head start in focusing on threading.

“Threading is still not something you see in many spa. It’s relatively new in the U.S., but you can already see how it’s taking off and we’re excited to be at the forefront of that growth,” Pandoria said. “We’ve been doing this since 2009, so we’ve already made our mistakes and used them to grow. We’ve fine-tuned a system to provide high-quality, reliable threading services for our customers that are also easy and inexpensive to manage for our owners.”