Salon benchmarks, explained by an award-winning salon coach

If you've been following The Check-In, you've already seen the hard numbers behind this year's growth story: resilient revenue, a shrinking pool of new clients, and a widening gap between the businesses at the top of the industry and everyone else. This pattern is showing up on both sides of the Atlantic.

Our coverage of the salon-specific trends in the 2026 North American and European benchmark reports has tracked this across regions. A quick recap of what those pieces found:

In North America:

• New guest visits fell 5–7% across salon segments in 2025, yet specialty salons still grew revenue 5% on the strength of existing clients.
• Salons with membership programs grew revenue at 4x the rate of those without, 8% versus 2%.
• Top-performing salons run utilization as high as 76–79%, versus 47–49% at the median.

In Europe:

• The industry grew 7% in 2025, but like-for-like revenue from existing locations was just 2%.
• New guest visits fell up to 9% for salons specifically.
• Top-earning salons run 83% utilization versus 53% at the median, and generate roughly 23x the revenue of a median salon.

This piece is about something adjacent: how this same benchmark data plays out in the day-to-day coaching practice of someone who's spent decades in salon chairs and boardrooms alike. 

Anthony Whittaker is the host of the Grow My Salon Business podcast. With more than 30 years in the hairdressing industry, he's an internationally acclaimed, multi-award-winning stylist-turned-educator, motivator, business coach, and best-selling author. On a podcast recent episode ' The Numbers Don't Lie', he used Zenoti's 2026 benchmark data to answer a question he hears every single week from the salon owners he coaches: is that good?

His answer never changes: compared to what?

“Numbers only become meaningful when you compare them to something else.— Anthony Whittaker, Grow my Salon Business Podcast ”

Why benchmarking, not just numbers

Whittaker traces his own conversion to a specific night, early in his career, at an industry event where a successful salon owner stood up and started talking about the numbers every salon owner should be tracking, and what to measure them against. Up to that point, he says he'd been proud of his craft but had no real handle on the business side of running one. "I genuinely felt like somebody had just switched the lights on," he says. "For the first time, I wasn't just looking at numbers. I was looking at benchmarks."

That distinction is the spine of the whole episode: a number by itself — a 10% profit margin, a $110 average ticket, a 58% utilization rate — tells you almost nothing. It only becomes useful once you have something to measure it against, whether that's last month, last year, your own goals, or what other successful businesses are achieving. And Whittaker is blunt about why so many owners get this wrong in the first place: they run their business on instinct instead of evidence.

“The numbers are the facts, not the feelings.
— Anthony Whittaker, Grow my Salon Business Podcast”

We all have feelings about our business, he says. We think we're busy. We think our prices are too low. We think our team is productive. But as he puts it, "business isn't built on what you think, it's built on what you know."

Reading the market, not blaming yourself

That same discipline is what lets Whittaker reframe one of the report's harder findings. New client counts fell across every segment measured, in Europe and North America alike, and he thinks too many owners take that personally when they shouldn't.

"Sometimes the market changes, consumer confidence changes, buying habits change, competition changes," he says. "That's not a business problem. That's a market condition."

Market conditions, in his view, call for adaptation rather than self-blame.

What the retention numbers confirm

Whittaker's read on why industry revenue kept climbing even as new-client visits fell isn't complicated. The businesses pulling ahead got better at keeping the clients they already had, not at finding new ones. He's been making that argument for years, well before this report existed, so for him the retention numbers are confirmation rather than a surprise. "The most profitable client you'll ever have is the one who's already sitting in your chair," he says. You've already spent the money to attract them and already earned their trust.

“They've already decided that they like you. The challenge isn't finding another couple of hundred new clients every single year. The challenge is giving the clients you've already got every reason to keep coming back.
— Anthony Whittaker, Grow my Salon Business Podcast”

Salon benchmarking: Where he tells owners to look first

Rather than working through every figure in the report, Whittaker zeroes in on one: the wide utilization gap between median and top-performing businesses — the same lever Zenoti's data points to across regions, just with different numbers behind it depending on the market. 

His caution to owners is consistent with what we see across regions: a low utilization number doesn't automatically mean you need more clients. Often the bigger opportunity is getting more out of the clients, team, and time you already have.

The takeaway, in his words

Whittaker closes the episode where he started it, and he's careful to draw a line between benchmarking and comparison. He thinks the two get confused constantly, to the detriment of owners' morale. "Benchmarking isn't about comparing yourself with another salon," he says. "Comparison often makes people feel inadequate."

“Benchmarking helps you become aware. It helps you ask better questions, and better questions nearly always lead to better decisions.
— Anthony Whittaker, Grow my Salon Business Podcast”

His closing challenge to listeners applies just as well to anyone who's already read our benchmark coverage: set aside 30 minutes, open your own numbers, and look. Not to judge yourself, but to understand your business a little better than you did yesterday.

Is that good? Compared to what?

“Business owners don't usually fail because they don't care. They fail because they don't know. They don't know which numbers matter. They don't know what good looks like. They don't know where the opportunities are hiding.
— Anthony Whittaker, Grow my Salon Business Podcast ”

Hear Anthony Whittaker's full breakdown on the Grow My Salon Business podcast. For the full data behind this conversation, download the 2026 Beauty and Wellness Benchmark Report, or read the full salon breakdowns for North America and Europe.

Grow My Salon Business partners with Zenoti to help salons combine expert business guidance with technology that supports better performance and sustainable growth. See what Zenoti could do for your salon.