We caught up with Biggleswade Salon, Maxwells Professional Hairdressing & Beauty, who were announced as winners of the Marketing Award and Salon of the Year Award at the British Hairdressing Business Awards, retaining their ‘Salon of the Year’ title from 2007.
How did you feel about winning salon of the year 1 at the British Hairdressing Business Awards/what does it mean to you as a company?
I think one word describes it – overwhelmed. A member of our team summed it up on the evening within her speech: ‘We are delighted to have received two wonderful awards at the prestigious British Hairdressing and Business Awards. As a team we have worked so hard together and I am so excited and very grateful to everyone in the salon for their dedication to achieving this. Thank you’.
The Publisher/Editor-in-Chief of Hairdressers Journal International, Jayne Lewis-Orr, also commented, ‘Entries were alive with innovation, enthusiasm and entrepreneurial expertise showing amazing skills across the breadth of business management. The judges had an extremely difficult job as standards were so high – to be chosen as a winner at the British Hairdressing Business Awards is a tremendous testimony to Maxwells Professional Hairdressing & Beauty’s business acumen.’
As a company it gives us all, from director to trainee level, the boost we need. For the business side, the accolade confirms that what we do, we do well, and from the salon side the buzz within the salon that winning creates both from the girls and from all of our clients is fantastic.
The company has put hairdressing on the map in Bedfordshire. Hairdressing salons are becoming ten a penny within local areas, such competition can only mean that you have to set yourselves apart from them. Here at Maxwells we aim to do this by implementing top quality policies and procedures, by delivering customer care of the highest standard, by having diversity in our of levels of hairdressing capabilities within our staff from ‘Colour Specialist’, ‘Extension Specialists’ to ‘Hair-up specialists’ and most recently and by far the most importantly, winning the ‘Salon of the Year’ award.
What do you think makes you stand out from other salons?
Our look: Maxwells was designed to have a London feel but in the heart of a Bedfordshire town. A client visiting us for the first time is very often wowed by the size of the salon together with the diversity of services and treatments available.
Our team: We have a team of 32 staff the largest for an independent salon in the Bedfordshire, Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire area. Ages range from 15-41, with such differing ages comes different levels of experience. We have a selection of ‘Specialists’ within Maxwells together with two members of staff who are both Wella and L’Oreal Master Colour Specialists.
Our customer service: This is extremely important to us, we aim for the highest levels at all times. From a welcoming smile as the first greeting, to a bottle of wine if it is the client’s birthday. The Maxwells experience is what our business has grown upon.
Since winning ‘Salon of the Year’ in 2007 we have gone from strength to strength, having just opened a gents grooming salon across the road from our main Maxwells original site called ‘Maxwells For Men’. This gents salon offer a fantastic range of services from wet shaving, colouring, free shiatsus with every wash, sky TV, Playstations… a total gents’ experience, something very different from the barbers that surround us in the Bedfordshire area.
What is planned for this year is to implement our marketing plan to grow the gents market within Maxwells for Men and to build the original Maxwells hairdressing to its full potential, using special incentives for both existing and new clients, together with incentivising our staff to promote the offer within the salon.
We also plan to go ‘back to basics’ and use our awards dossiers to remind us all on what we have done, how could we better the service we provide and plan where to move upwards from here. We realise here at Maxwells that you can never become complacent in business, especially when you have just won an award, as now our clients both new and existing, have expectations of us that have just risen to sky high proportions, it is for us now to deliver the ‘unexpected’.
Interested in working for Maxwells? Training Manager Kate is on hand to answer your questions - email her at kate@maxwellshair.com.