Manila- based hair waxing salon opens franchised branch in Cebu

CEBU, Philippines - Capitalizing on the trend of hair waxing for both men and women in the Philippines, a family started a business that caters to this need and has now brought their established brand in Cebu. 

Lay Bare is the first exclusive waxing salon in the country that was started three and a half years ago by the Hilario family. 

Fiona Hilario, the president of Lay Bare said during a press conference that they are eager to open the first branch in Cebu , which is a franchised branch in line with their expansion plans.

Hilario shared that when they opened their first branch in Makati in June 2006, they took a big risk since it was the first shop to offer only waxing services but they were optimistic about it since they saw the attraction that hair waxing was having especially among women.

She explained that they started the business since she and her sister, Monique, are avid customers of hair waxing services but then they needed to spend a lot of money looking for a good place to avail of the service, and existing salons only offer hair waxing as a sideline service.

Hilario said that this encouraged them, including their brother Paolo and the rest of the family, to go into the business which earned good feedback from their customers. This encouraged them to open another branch, after only six months in operation, and they now have a total of 19 branches all over.

At present, they have more than 30,000 clients in all their branches where they have wide range of customers from as young as 9 years old to 75 years old.

But Hilario said that most of their customers are women and only 2 percent are men, but she said that they are in the process of reaching out and introducing waxing to men especially since it has hygienic purposes.

Hilario said that they use cold wax jelly and this attracts more people since it is practically painless compared to hot wax which is commonly used.

She said they have had very good feedback from the public which is why they are aiming to open up more branches in order to reach more people.

According to Hilario, they are also pleased with the turn out of their decision to go into franchising since this has helped them in their goal to expand. 

Franchise fee for Lay Bare is P250,000 but the whole package including trainings and marketing support is pegged at P800,000 to P1M.

Dr. Mitzy Ypil, the franchisee for the Cebu branch found in Banilad Town Center, together with her husband Dodong, said that they are very confident with the investment they made since they also have a relative that made the same investment and attests to the success of the business. — AJ dela Torre