This is a great time for going mobile! Clients appreciate the flexibility and convenience offered by mobile beauty salons now that more and more are returning to the workplace. They don’t skimp when it comes to their personal care, either. For example, American women spend an average of $80 and 11 hours per month on their hair, with most of that time and money spent at salons. Plus, personal care services (the category that includes beauty salons, nail salons, and barbershops) employment is forecast to grow at a rate nearly 5 times that of total employment between 2020 and 2030 by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Most importantly, the U.S. mobile salon market is forecast to grow 11.2% between 2021 and 2030, from $1.39 to 3.60 billion, as reported by Stratagem Market Insights. This compares favorably to the overall salon market, which has actually dropped 0.3% over the last five years. McKinsey predicts that the U.S. beauty services market won’t recover to pre-pandemic levels until 2027, making that 11.2% mobile market look even better.

Stratagem further explains that the Northeast region has the largest revenue share of 28.3% for a value of $430 million in 2022, with a CAGR of 10.2% to reach $940 million in 2030. Projected growth in the other regions is Southwest: from $150 to 330 million; West: $390-940 million; Southeast: $260-640 million; and Midwest: $310-740 million.

OPPORTUNITY FOR YOU — Mobile hair stylists have been around for decades, but now you can have a whole salon on wheels! You’ll enjoy greater convenience by skipping the daily trip to someone else’s brick-and-mortar salon. You also make the rules, because it’s your own business, where you set your own hours and own locations. In addition, a mobile beauty salon requires a lower startup cost, especially if you work solo without the need to pay any staff. You get full control over building your own brand, while concentrating on one client at a time, for better relationships and greater customer loyalty. Your business will have a greater reach than a static location. After all, mobile means you can move as far as you like. This is a great opportunity for women who strive to run their own business, as 60% of salon business owners are female.

Fortune Business Insights cites the emergence of mobile salons as a top trend and major factor responsible for driving the adoption of salon services. According to Zip Recruiter, a successful mobile barbershop earns the owner around $75,000 per year as compared to $36-47,000 per year at a traditional shop, due to the greater expenses associated with a permanent location. Mobile styling is more profitable since you don’t pay for a booth or seat or a percentage fee to a salon. Commission payments will only cost you around 10-20% vs. 40-60% on average in a regular beauty salon.

BENEFITS  FOR YOUR CLIENTS — This is the perfect time to bring greater convenience and better service to clients. Not only do they save time and avoid traffic by skipping trips to the salon, but it also encourages more appointments for more services. They can easily fit you into their schedule, especially nice for those working from home or multitasking around the house. Grateful customers can relax and feel secure at home, and never have to worry about bringing bored kids to sit at the salon for an hour or more every visit. They’ll be glad to say goodbye to public foil walks, too. A mobile service will be especially helpful for those who don’t have much free time on their hands and senior citizens or others who find travel burdensome.

Better yet, you’ll have a price advantage for them, since you can favorably compete against standard salons with a lower price because you’re not paying a chair rental fee every week.

Services are wide open, with the top mobile offerings including hair care, manicure, pedicure, facials, makeup, skin care, and massage. You have choices as to how you approach the business. The three common types of practices are the combined model (to have 2 kinds of clients — mobile hair salon and mobile salon store); home-visiting mobile stylists (those who work some days at a standard salon and others in a mobile salon); and completely mobile (who don’t need to incur rent expenses at all). You can also offer bulk operations, serving many clients in one appointment at one place such as wedding venues and nursing homes/long-term care facilities.

Solar panels for the mobile beauty salon industry are almost all flexible, thin, lightweight, and capable of being affixed to the roof of a mobile van. 

The main use of solar on mobile salon vans is to support battery HVAC systems and equipment loads without batteries. Solar panels can extend the runtime of battery HVAC systems, not only to help the HVAC system make it through the workday without draining the van’s batteries, but also to reduce the load on the alternator the next morning, resulting in fuel savings. Solar panels can augment the energy coming from the van batteries and maintain the batteries at a higher state of charge extending the battery life and increasing owner convenience by allowing equipment loads to operate for longer periods of time.

Solar technology for mobile hair care and beauty salon vans has progressed to the point where the panels on the market are flexible, thin, easily installed, and reliable. Some uses represent an excellent application of the technology and should be strongly considered for future purchases, while for other applications the cost vs. benefits should be evaluated to see if it makes sense in the specific application.

Mobile hair stylists and mobile beauticians can enjoy many benefits from a backup power system consisting of solar panels and on-board mobile battery storage:

• fuel economy (keeps batteries charged when the engine is turned off)
• extended battery life
• idle reduction
• jump-start decrease
• owner convenience
• silent operation
• no emissions

Let’s face it: diesel generators are noisy (clients don’t like that), smelly (homeowners don’t like that when you’re parked in their driveway), and costly (you don’t like that). Get rid of gas-guzzling generators and replace them with EnerGenie off-the-grid battery backup systems to run your mobile beauty salon business on all the power delivered by the van’s own power supply augmented by a solar-generated on-board rechargeable battery system. Lithium-ion batteries are the most commonly used low-cost, renewable, clean mobile energy systems available, while EnerGenie’s superior, condensed design of fewer than fifty 100%-new prismatic cells outperform ordinary lithium systems with thousands of stacked cylindrical cells and their many more points of potential failure. A lithium system will let you be fully efficient and electrically independent for the entire workday.

Hair stylists and beauticians can optimize ROI and their customer base through greater efficiencies and more services. Since EnerGenie is smaller and lighter, featuring increased energy density in more compact units, you have more space for work apparatus. 

Mobile personal care providers can power items such as hair dryers, trimmers, flat irons, perm rods, and diffusers, plus light strips and bars, thermostat, fan, TV/monitor, music, refrigerator, and charging for laptop and mobile devices. You get the flexibility to get away from the static salon or leave traditional brick and mortar behind entirely.

RECHARGE WHILE VEHICLE IS IDLE

For mobile applications like hair stylists and beauticians, your off-the-grid battery backup storage unit may be recharged from the running vehicle. Additionally, a secondary alternator can be added, depending on how fast they want to charge the EnerGenie, allowing you to charge while your vehicle is either idle or driving.

SOLAR ON YOUR ROOFTOP

Installing a rooftop solar panel or panels dramatically enhances your stored power capability with the appropriate charge controller. It’s easy, too! During days when there is some sunshine, rooftop solar on the vehicle can harvest energy, while driving or idling will also charge the battery. When the vehicle engine is turned off and plugged to hook-ups, the solar panels will harvest power. 

SMALLER AND LIGHTER

Compared with a diesel generator of comparable output, the EnerGenie stored power battery would usually weigh less. Of course, this depends on factors such as brand and fuel tank capacity. For instance, a generator with fuel consumption from 1 gallon/hr. to 1.5 gallon/hr. (depending on the vehicle size), the gas-guzzling diesel generator will be much heavier with worse run-time-per-gallon compared to the EnerGenie mobile van lithium battery backup.

EnerGenie will also take up a smaller footprint vs. a diesel generator with a similar power output. In fact, a 12V-10.2 diesel could be three to four times the size of the EnerGenie and at least twice the weight.