This piece was first published in Creative HEAD magazine, in their Fxxked up but fixed it series.
It’s about how Anne tried to scale down her wedding hair service but instead doubled it!
I opened my first salon in Oxford back in 1991. I’ve always loved styling and hair up so it wasn’t long before I developed a small on location wedding hair and make-up side hustle. Then a few years’ later, along came the kids! So when the girls were little, I decided I wanted Saturdays off to have more time with them. But this would mean reducing the wedding business which was going well and of course was mainly Saturdays. After much thought and talking it through with my partner Keith, who wasn’t involved much in the business then, I took the decision that quality time with Chloe and Manon was worth more than my wedding sales. After all, the salon was doing well and Keith had a full time career going on.
So I doubled my wedding hair & make-up prices overnight. That’ll sort it, I thought. I’ve overpriced myself out of the market. Weekends off here we come! But that wasn’t what happened at all. Instead demand for Anne Veck wedding hair shot through the roof, literally doubling. Suddenly I had up to 3 wedding appointments on location each Saturday and I needed to train one of my team to support me. (However, I did try and be a good mum, by taking a week day off instead. )
I learnt a very useful lesson about value and pricing. The unintended consequence of raising my prices was to increase business not reduce it. Clearly I had been doing wedding hair on the cheap. Brides look for quality of service and hairdressing on their big day and by increasing my hourly rate, I communicated that my wedding hair was top quality. For the next few years at least I was probably Oxford’s wedding hairdresser of choice and wedding hair and make-up increased to 10% of our total sales. (Then people stopped getting married. But that’s another story!)
Enquire here about Anne’s bridal hair service and for bridal and red carpet hairdressing training with Anne, check this out.