A friend of mine, Alice, was running a Best Spa in Chennai beauty parlour in Clydebank, a residential suburb of Glasgow, Scotland.
She was ambitious and had great hopes for her business involving opening more parlours in the Glasgow area, but there was a problem.
Her main competitors were the parlours franchised to the large department stores in the city centre. If her customers had any other shopping to do they would always head for the city centre and, when there, make use of the department store beauty parlours.
What Alice was looking for was the competitive edge that would allow her customers to make her parlour their first choice. Her husband got in touch to see if we could help.
We met at her store where she started to explain her plans and the ideas that she had for expansion.
Alice told me that she had six girls who worked for her, two full time and the others part time to fit around their family commitments.
We talked for some time and most of the conversation was around what she wanted to do, and her search for the thing that was going to give her the edge that would allow her to do it. |