BLOOMING BEAUTY

BRAZILIAN Beauty is embarking on an ambitious expansion plan this year, planning to set up shop in Sydney and Melbourne as soon as possible.

And for founder Francesca Webster - who is inundated with franchisee enquiries on a weekly basis - possible is solely based on the "right person, at the right place".

The beauty and brains behind the franchise, Webster is busy planning the brand's east coast expedition which will see her business grow beyond its current 20-salon strong base.

After hitting this milestone last month with Brazilian Beauty's Albany Creek salon opening, Webster expressed her goal of reaching 50 salons nationally in the next five years, with five salons already booked to open in 2015 located in Sydney and Melbourne city centres.

Webster is a strategy maven, moulded by systems-wizzes and her former workplaces in the United Kingdom, BBC and Morgan Stanley.

She started Brazilian Beauty ten years ago hinged on connecting culture, system and process.

"I suppose we go above and beyond in comparison to other franchise systems," says Webster.

"We definitely don't just give the brand to anyone, and it works both ways as we maximise our ability of attracting the right people by having the right culture in place." 

With the majority of salons - 17 out of 20 - located in a single city, this may indicate an aggressive expansion strategy has taken place. However, occurring over the course of ten years, this may instead indicate a calculated, risk-balancing entrepreneur is at the helm.

Case in point, Brazilian Beauty's 20 salons are involved in a Google cost-per-click campaign of close to one million unique keywords.

"We hold franchisees hands every step of the way, and I guess that's what benefits us in the long term as we haven't had any salon closures to date," says Webster.

"As much as I want Brazilian Beauty to grow as quickly as possible, we sometimes have to say no to growth to safeguard this."

Webster runs a tight ship where every new team member spends five days at the Brazilian Beauty head office, salon health checks occur quarterly, franchisee and mystery shopping dates are held monthly, and the golden measure of KPIs are checked daily, weekly and monthly.

"My background in the UK was in IT, and I love the technology space," says Webster, who thinks of her business as operating equally on this dimension as any other.

"Brazilian Beauty isn't going to invent the next iPhone; but we can still be innovative by leveraging the business based on market forces, which is what we did with the taboo of Brazilian waxing back in 2004 through radio advertising our services.

"To me, IT is about the improvement of systems or processes that results in greater productivity or profitability."