OPERATOR PERSPECTIVE
Working patterns have changed, of course, but we don’t view things in black and white terms of pre- and post- pandemic. The way everyone thinks about COVID now is totally different from a year ago. People are also back in offices three days a week; the likelihood is that this will be different again a year from now. ‘Post-COVID’ is a constantly evolving state. The landscape may have changed for now, but we can see a world in which it changes back again. For now, our Victoria and West London locations already benefit from a good mix of residential and commercial. Soho and Euston are less residential, City Road similar, while Canary Wharf and St Paul’s are business districts. All studios are performing as you’d expect given current working patterns. However, we still believe in delivering as full a schedule as possible across all studios, ensuring the options are there to work out at a time that’s convenient to you; for every site, there are still people who need each timetable slot. So, we haven’t reduced our schedules. We’ve taken risks
and set ourselves up with growth opportunities. We even opened a new site – Soho – in September 2020, mid-pandemic. Nevertheless, with current market-wide headwinds around staffing and energy costs, for example, we are having to spend more time thinking about how to maintain a premium offering and product without passing costs on to the client or cutting down our offering. We went into COVID with cash reserves and a prudent business model, but we need to remain viable. When we launched 10 years ago with premium bodycare products in our changing rooms, gum and hairbands at front desk, candles and so on, nobody else was doing this. It remains a core part of what we do, but we’ll spend around £30k a year just on gum. So, we’ve had to think about how to work sensibly in the new environment without being too revolutionary. That’s involved decisions like reducing the size of our complimentary sweat towels, for example, so we can fit more in each load of laundry.
We haven’t reduced our schedules. We’ve taken risks and set ourselves up with growth opportunities.
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LONDON BOUTIQUE STUDIO REPORT 2023
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