How often should you raise your prices? (and how to price for profit)

"How often should I raise my prices?" is one of the most common questions beauty business owners ask, and the honest answer is more often than you think. Here is how to get the timing right, and how to make sure your prices are set up to actually make you money in the first place.

Raising your prices is not greed

Let me clear this up first, because the guilt stops so many people before they start. Putting your prices up is how you cover rising product, rent and wage costs, pay yourself and your team fairly, and keep enough profit to grow. A business that never lifts its prices slowly goes backwards.

First, make sure you are priced for profit

Before you think about how often, check that your prices are built on real numbers rather than a figure you plucked from the air or copied off the salon down the road. Pricing for profit comes down to four things:

• Set a service time for every treatment and stick to it. Letting a 60 minute refill quietly run to 90 minutes for the same price is where profit leaks away.
• Know your product and consumable cost for each service.
• Know your overheads (rent, power, booking app, insurance) for the time that service takes.
• Know your wage cost for that time, including paying yourself.

The golden rule: never price for break even. There has to be money left over after every cost is covered. That leftover is what lets you hire, renovate, train, and enjoy a life outside the business.

How often should you raise your prices?

My baseline is twice a year, every year, on 1 January and 1 July, the start of the calendar and financial years. Booking it to fixed dates takes the emotion out of it. If it has been more than twelve months since your last rise, the lead-up to Christmas is a brilliant time to do it, because clients are unlikely to cancel when appointments everywhere are scarce, and you earn more across your busiest stretch.

Skip the flat percentage

A flat percentage across your whole menu tends to fall apart when your prices vary a lot. Five percent on a 30 dollar service is barely a dollar, while five percent on a 200 dollar service is a ten dollar jump that feels steep. I go service by service instead and lift each one by one to four dollars as needed. If a product cost has spiked, that service goes up a little more.

Raise again when you are in demand

Twice a year is the minimum, and you can absolutely do more. If you or your team are booked out one to two months ahead, that is a demand signal, and it is completely fine to raise again even if you only did a few months ago. When people clearly want what you offer, your price can reflect that. Plenty of beauty business owners close their books when they get slammed, when lifting prices keeps them open and better paid.

Then just implement it

Pick a date, update your prices in your booking system and on your website the night before, and let every appointment from that date forward sit at the new price. No warning emails, no social posts, no apologising at the counter. A one or two dollar rise is cents a day to your client, and anyone who leaves over it was likely on their way out anyway. If someone asks, a calm "yes, just a couple of dollars from the first" is all it takes.

If you want help pricing your services properly and the accountability to actually put them up, the Salon Goals Academy is where I'd love to help you do it. Jump on the waitlist and come and join us.