"Where have all the customers gone?" In her neighborhood hairdressing salon, a stone's throw from the Gare de l'Est in Paris, Chantal Haddad is worried that "neither the young women nor the old women are coming anymore. It's unimaginable how much the profession has changed: We used to work all the time, and from the first month I opened here, in 1991, I was earning a living," said the owner of Chantal B. Coiffure, aged 55. "Maybe people will soon get fed up with depriving themselves and come back to the way things used to be," said Siham Ouchaanoun, a 45-year-old entrepreneur and owner of five outlets of the Body Minute hair removal and nail care franchise in northern France.
In many hairdressing salons and beauty salons, it's the same story: The French no longer – or less often – go to the salon. This is a major blow, as charges and costs have soared with inflation, and the time has come to pay off the debts owed to Covid-19. This explosive cocktail is at the root of a historic wave of bankruptcies: A peak of 1,800 insolvencies was recorded in these two sectors in 2023. "And in the hairdressing sector alone, 2,000 facilities remain in a complicated situation to date, with a severe or very severe short-term risk profile," said Thierry Millon, director of research at Altares D & B, the world leader in business data.
This worrying record confirms the pessimistic forecasts by Institut Xerfi, which has anticipated a downturn in sales in beauty care (-3%) and a slowdown in hairdressing (+3%) for 2023. Rising prices in these two sectors (+3.7% on average over one year, according to the French National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies) have not enabled margins to be rebuilt, and competitive pressure remains strong, as the sector includes many small businesses. Régine Ferrère, president of the National Confederation of Esthetics and Perfumery, said, "It's been a rude awakening. Everyone has realized that we won't find the same level or the same consumption patterns in beauty as in 2019. It's now up to us to ask ourselves: How can we make people want to come to our establishments?"
Even before the inflationary period that sent food, transport and heating costs soaring, hairdressers and beauty salons were deemed expensive by 92% of French people, surveyed on the subject by Harris Interactive in 2018. These services therefore don't benefit from the "dopamine" effect lent to cosmetics, an affordable luxury sought after in times of economic slump, if the "lipstick index" theory is to be believed. The surge in lipstick sales during the 2001 recession inspired Leonard Lauder, head of the American Estée Lauder group, to make this controversial claim.
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