A profile of Gary Grace, whose 20 hair salons are the top performers in the Supercuts franchise chain.
My question, asked of 120 of America's best-known franchisors, was simple: tell me about the superstars in your system. Who are the hot performers, the operations that dramatically outperformed the system average? What is it that makes them so special?
To my surprise, the answers were simple, too, and almost always the same, whether the business was fast food or maid service or hair care. Forget location or the ability to follow the franchisor's program or mere hard work, although all of those are necessary. The best franchises succeed the same way the best independent businesses succeed: management makes people care.
Starting with my choice for the top franchisee, here are the best I found. Profiles of the four runners-up to Gary Grace can be found in [Article link].
SUPERCUTS
San Francisco
Operator: Gary Grace, 47
Number of units: 20
Projected 1989 sales: $7.5 million
Unit sales exceed avg. by: 30%
Profit margin: 18%
Ask Gary Grace why his 20 Supercuts haircutting salons are consistently the top performers of the franchise chain's 540-odd outlets, and he'll send you to spend a day riding the freeways east of Los Angeles with 31-year-old Becky Malie. With corporate headquarters in San Francisco, 14 shops around L.A., and the other 6 in Hawaii, Grace can't be everywhere at once, no matter how much airline time he logs, so he depends on managers like Malie to create the uniform working environment that keeps his return on investment high.
Malie is the finest fruit of Grace's management-development system, a nine-year veteran who started as a stylist in Grace's third salon and rose through the ranks. Today, as southern California general manager, she shuttles the company van from shop to shop, from the wealthy beachside condos of Marina Del Ray in the west to the tract houses in San Bernadino far to the east, making sure that about 50 receptionists, 135 stylists, 14 shop managers, and 3 senior managers are all working toward the same goals.
By 11:00, when Malie pulls into the parking lot in front of the Riverside shop, the asphalt is shimmering under the gray sky of a California summer. She breezes into the shop, a familiar henna-haired whirlwind of cheerleading and chat, admiring the earrings studded in a row on the new receptionist's left lobe or complimenting a stylist on a flattop cut to textbook precision. Everyone is "hon." She knows when they started, what they're good at, and whether they've got a boyfriend, husband, or kittens at home. She teaches them focus, to see the shop as she does, the way a customer would. Is everything clean? Is the wait too long? If there are magazines scattered in the lobby waiting area, she'll pick them up; if there's a spot on the receptionist's glass counter, she'll point it out, then wipe it up herself.
At most shops Malie is more friend than supervisor, cutting a few heads to help with a morning rush or providing names of licensed applicants from the beauty schools. But Riverside is different. With the manager out on maternity leave, the daily operational responsibility has fallen to two shift managers, both novices in their early twenties, just a few years out of beauty school. They'll need extra help. So she teaches them the way Grace taught her -- the way they, in turn, will be expected to teach the 14 or so stylists in their shop. You never tell someone what to do; you show her and explain why. Did a complimentary tote bag just arrive from one of their shampoo suppliers? Why not give it away in a contest for the person who sells the most product for the rest of the month? Malie makes the poster herself. A problem with stylists who "forget" to clock out for lunch breaks? "I'll coach you on that, hon," Malie promises, pulling out a management-supports form, which they work through together, identifying the problem, its impact, the appropriate response, and the final result.
"It's a simple system," Malie says. "Repeat things over and over, constant feedback, and constant follow-up. Make it happen; be the best damn cheerleader anybody's ever seen."
Feedback and follow-up -- detail, detail, detail. They're the key to success in any Supercuts or in any other kind of franchise. Every service business is the same; each depends first and foremost on management's ability to develop and motivate the employees who have actual customer contact. At Grace's Supercuts that's done one-on-one -- by shop managers, by Malie, and by Grace himself, who calls daily and visits each shop every month or two, and still knows all 320 employees in both California and Hawaii by name. But it is not the personal touch alone that makes Grace the Supercuts leader. More important is how he's taken the basic Supercuts formula and improved it, refining and expanding the systems and incentives over nine years of operation.
As ubiquitous as franchised haircutting salons seem today, the original Supercuts Inc. combined several new ideas when Grace bought his first unit in 1980. Unlike traditional beauty salons, which usually sell shampoo, haircut, and blow-dry together as an expensive bundled package, Supercuts stressed one basic service, a quality haircut at an affordable $6 price. Stores were open 78 hours each week, sited in strip malls, and advertised heavily on TV. Unlike conventional stylists, expected to earn through commissions after developing a clientele, Supercuts' stylists were paid an hourly wage, with benefits, vacations, and holidays. After a week's training, they were taught to cut a few styles with a precision method, then put on the floor and given wage incentives based on volume.
It was the classic franchise formula -- standardize for high volume to give customers quality, value, convenience, and consistency. But Grace went several steps further:
* He deepened and broadened the performance incentives, rewarding stylists through a management-evaluation program that measured not just the number of heads they cut per hour, but how well they performed over a full range of responsibilities -- from showing up on time and smiling to communicating new services to customers or keeping the number of "adjustments," unhappy customers, to less than 0.5%. In addition, by changing or expanding the categories in the evaluation form, he developed an effective way of making sure the company's overall focus was clear to each employee.
