Beauty veteran Arpita Das talks about her venture – Beauness by Arpita and doles out advice on setting up successful salons.
Armed with a rich experience of developing and managing salons and spas, Arpita Das caters to a wide spectrum of responsibilities from sales strategy and marketing to training and education. She has managed and delivered corporate trainings for eminent brands like Lakmé, Kaya Skincare and VLCC. She has also worked with JB Skincare as Director of Marketing and Education to establish Repêchage in India.
Her recent venture, ‘Beauness by Arpita’ encompasses all the aspects of the branding solutions. She tells us all her new endeavours and shares expert tips on how to getting a firm foothold in the beauty industry.
Tell us about ‘Beauness by Arpita’.
‘Beauness By Arpita’ is a premier beauty and wellness consulting company in India. We work on three verticals – Training Academy, Products and Salon/Spa Set-up. It helps to develop unique and unparalleled concepts for spa, hair salon, fitness and wellness facilities. We also run an academy, where we do fast track beauty training for beauty professionals and give placement to them on deserving platforms, both nationally and internationally.
What’s the vision of your brand?
The vision for ‘Beauness By Arpita’ as a brand is to level up the industry standard. By imparting the knowledge about the trending concepts in the industry, we aim to upgrade the beauty and wellness brands in tier II cities. And bring them on par with tier I cities.
Apart from this, there is a different vision for each vertical. We aim to get associated with more brands on training and education platform. We are planning to tie up with CIDESCO, which is a training programme in Beauty Therapy. We look forward to have the best of national and international products, which we can serve to our clients. Also, the experts at Beauness can do the R&D of the best products available. So, the overall vision can be summarised as the upgradation of beauty and wellness industry across the nation.
What would you like to suggest to the new entrants in the salon space, in terms of the salon management and education?
Whenever a person wants to open a salon, they generally do their homework to understand the industry. However, it is not strategically possible to run a completely successful salon business without having any industry experience. For this, the person needs a backup of consultancy services who have relevant experience and can advise you on every aspect of the salon management. The salon owner should not consider themselves as a businessman/woman. This is a service industry and the customers will look up to you as a Health and Beauty expert, and as an advisor. Therefore, you need to stay updated with the technicalities, at least at basic level, of the services that you provide at your salon. Attend seminars and workshops to help yourself with the knowledge. In addition, while setting up the salon, one need to have a futuristic approach, in order to sustain for a longer period of time.
What would like to suggest to them for training the staff? How important it is? And how often should they upgrade their staff skills, etc?
The most important part of the training is education. It is the key factor to keep your business running efficiently. In the modern era, we still lack behind in skill education. Being in this industry for such a long time, it has been very difficult for me to find a fully skilled trainer. Everyday the beauty industry is getting upgraded with a new innovation. Therefore, training and education plays an important role.
It is highly recommended to upgrade the skill of the staff by encouraging them to attend as many seminars and workshops as possible. One can find seminars or workshops organised on a daily basis either by a training institute or a brand. Even the Government is involved in developing the beauty and wellness industry. They have started an initiative of National Skill Development Committee (NSDC). Beauty is one of the many skills on their list. So, salon owners need to invest in the training of their staff as often as required.
What are your plans down the line?
There are many plans! One of them is to take more international projects and establish the ‘Beauness By Arpita’ brand name abroad. Currently, we have our prospects in Dubai, Malaysia and Hong Kong to name a few. We are starting from the Asian continents, especially countries near to India, and will spread the wings slowly in time to come. Simultaneously, we are working to set up our branches in other metro cities like Mumbai and Bengaluru. Along with these, Beauness will be getting into distribution of multiple product lines for skin and hair care for both national and international brands.
