Create beauty together
A beauty trend to rocket is specialized coworkings, which are what experts envision in shops. On the other hand, we must still wait while ordinary coworkings take off. They have been around for a while, though there are not many stories of success, so their effectiveness is still to be time tested.
“In the past few years Russia has seen a boom of flexible coworking spaces and the forecast for 2020 is 50-55% growth. When speaking of coworking, they often mean an office space, though right now there are already specialized coworkings from art spaces, to workshops to beauty coworkings as well,” comments Evgeniya Safonova, Analyst at Retail Research, Cushman & Wakefield. These coworkings offer a short-term rent of a workstation to freelance beauty professionals to service their own customers. Most beauty coworkings have now been opened in street retail outlets, business centers, and residential compounds, though some of them have moved into shopping centers.
One of the first beauty coworkings in Russia opened in Forum shopping center in Ulan-Ude. The total floor space of 167 sq. m. is given to professionals of beauty industry. The space is split into different zones: nails, makeup and trainings. There is also a VIP area for separate rooms.
Beauty professionals only pay the rent for the time they spend with their clients. In addition, there are no own expenses for the reception, maintenance, community bills and cleaning. The coworking has an area for manicure, makeup, separate rooms for pedicures or massages, a lecture room, a lounge area with a library and a special room to sterilize the tools.
Another example is a beauty coworking in a small shopping center Zeleniy in Krasnoyarsk. They also provide fully equipped working stations, including, for example, spa-rooms with showers, which can be rented for an hour and more. In addition, there is an area for master classes and trainings. The lecture hall can be easily transformed into a dance or an aerial yoga studio (a mirror wall and special hooks in the walls provided). All in all, the owners have prepared the space to diversify their income.
Despite the fact that experts have opposite opinions about the future of beauty operators in shopping centers, it is clear that the trend for growth has been set. The question now is only about the list of services. Everybody understands that it is useless to increase fashion share and malls must offer other things, such as providing a customer with an opportunity to solve all their problems with just one visit to a shopping mall. So beauty operators may bring some novelty into the tenant mix and a new function for customers. Operators should just introduce their concept to customers and explain why the latter should visit their shopping center and not a beauty salon Aphrodite in the basement of the apartment building a customer lives in. Social and demographic changes (grown-up kids of the generation Z), technologies (it is often easier to get an online appointment for a shopping mall business) and design with a cozy ambience and other things are there to help too. And creativity of owners and tenants of shopping centers is what we trust in.
Text by Ekaterina Sakharova