Those who have the skills and abilities to organize people and events will be interested in business ideas where they can apply these organizational skills and make money on them. The most striking example is the creation of a wedding agency. This is a company that prepares and holds a holiday “from scratch”, sometimes from an engagement party, more often from pre-holiday celebrations (bachelor party, bachelorette party) and the subsequent full holding of the event.
Barter business
I am an economist by training, so I have nothing to do with the wedding business, art or design. I wanted to be a journalist, but my dad decided that my first education should be economics. Since then, I worked for ten years at different factories, but in the end I decided to devote myself to weddings. “Vpudre” is my first business.
It all started with the first wedding, which a friend helped me do. The ceremony turned out to be beautiful, and we posted it on a thematic blog. People in the city found out about it and began asking for one to be made for them. We refused for a long time, but then we finally decided to try. So we began to organize quite successful weddings and post them on the blog. Then my friend left for America, and the blog ceased to exist. But I decided not to give up the topic of weddings and opened my own agency.
I didn't have any starting capital. Just my ideas. However, no investment was required - I was selling my organizing skills. One of my brides drew a website for me, in return I helped her make her wedding. In the same way, through barter, the photographer took the first photographs.
Development strategy
After you draw up a business plan for a wedding dress salon, you need to develop a competent strategy for developing your business.
Despite the fact that this area of activity opens up broad prospects for beginners, you will have to start small. An ordinary wedding salon, designed for buyers with average incomes, as a rule, offers clients no more than 10–20 different models of dresses and suits. If you rely on solid, wealthy visitors, you will need serious financial investments. Before opening a wedding salon, you need to decide how it will work:
- You buy ready-made dresses in bulk and sell them at a higher price. This is the most convenient, but at the same time, losing option. There is a high level of competition in this business. If you cannot satisfy all customer requests, the salon will become unprofitable;
- The salon offers a minimal assortment (20–30 models). Customers can choose the rest of the outfits from the catalog and place an individual order. You can open a small atelier in a salon and sew dresses yourself, but for this you will need a good craftsman. In addition, you need to have a seamstress on staff who will be responsible for adjusting outfits to fit your figure;
- The problem of business seasonality can be solved by expanding the range. Add evening and cocktail dresses to your wedding dresses. People buy beautiful clothes for various festive and special events that take place at different times of the year. Thanks to this, your salon will work without downtime;
- If you want to increase the profitability of your business, try selling wedding dresses to order. As a rule, such a service is in great demand;
- Think about what you can offer your clients to make your salon unique. Recently, many newlyweds are ordering turnkey wedding planning. This means that you will choose a wedding outfit, as well as shoes, accessories, decorations for the banquet hall, cars for the wedding procession, etc.
Having decided on the development strategy, you can move on to the next stage - choosing a room for the salon.
Team and competitors
When I started my business, I wrote to everyone I could, offering to do a joint project for free, and that’s how I got to know the entire market. In our niche, we are all friends, we meet regularly, discuss trends and new trends. Since everyone knows each other, no one plots intrigues against anyone. In addition, everyone works in their own unique style, designed for different clients.
With the help of competitors, I can track the progress of my agency. I am sure that we have already outgrown the people we tried to emulate last year. Now we are competing with the mastodons of the market - those who have been organizing weddings for 10-15 years. This is encouraging, but it has become harder because they have not only experience behind them, but also an established customer base.
They regularly try to lure my people away: they write to them and offer to move to a new, newly opened agency. But my employees always tell me about this and show me these messages. I get angry every time and ask “market newcomers” not to do this again.
Now seven people work with me: organizers, decorators, designers and printers. There is also a pool of specialists whom we love and with whom we regularly collaborate: photographers, videographers, makeup artists. I have this policy: I have to be friends with the people I work with. I really feel very uncomfortable working with new partners who live by the principle of just a business and do not want to move to other levels of communication. I usually change these partners over time because personal relationships are an important element of my work.
It is always very difficult for me to find new specialists, discover them and train them to suit me. For example, we recently tried to find a designer, it took almost a month, but we believe that we completed the task quite quickly. Good specialists ask for a lot of money. I don’t blame them for the “price tag,” I just think that our market can’t pay that much.
We recently posted a test task for developing invitations in order to weed out those who, in principle, do not understand our style. There were a lot of low-level jobs and answers in the style of “I’m a professional and won’t do the task for free.” Nevertheless, we found two girls with whom I am very pleased, and even invited several designers to work part-time.
Risks of wedding celebrations
The agency organization has the following risk factors:
- Seasonality. In this area there is an active period, which occurs at the end of spring, summer and beginning of autumn, as well as a period of low income in the remaining time. In order not to be left without revenue, you should come up with promotions, discounts or something else to attract customers.
- Problems with popularity. Make sure you have good advertising.
- Unforeseen circumstances related to the cancellation of an event by the client. Be sure to think it over and draw up an agreement.
How ideas are born
When you start to get involved in the wedding environment, you see beauty everywhere. I subscribe to public pages on the social networks VKontakte and Instagram, I follow famous photographers. Almost my entire team follows Moscow agencies, we learn from them and copy something. We are often inspired by the ideas of the newlyweds themselves.
For example, a couple recently came who love space, Star Wars, Darth Vader, and this theme, let’s say, is not a wedding theme. We began to think about how to play it up, we arrived at the hall that had been chosen for the celebration, and saw that it was decorated in red and gray colors. So we came up with the theme of fire: we came up with a cosmic-mythical creature with an orange-red flame, something like a firebird or a mockingjay.
Of course, there are some wedding trends, but still everyone has their own history and preferences. Two years ago, vintage was fashionable, but I was already tired of it. There is a trend towards an increase in the number of flowers at a wedding. Several years ago, our wedding budget for flowers did not exceed 7,000 rubles, and then this amount seemed quite high. Now it has increased almost 10 times, and clients say: “Yes, it’s expensive, but we are ready to spend the money.”
A wedding can probably be done for 150,000 rubles, but usually I tell couples this: “If I want to maintain a certain level, then for a good wedding of 40 people it is reasonable to spend 600,000 - 700,000 rubles so that it is beautiful and comfortable.” and funny". This is not a wedding with peacocks walking through a French garden. This is a good wedding with the most basic elements.
Profitability
Now you know where to start a wedding business. It's time to talk about its profitability. Its level, due to the large markup on products sold, is quite high. For wedding dresses it ranges from 85–200%, and for accessories – 110–520%.
For renting a premises with an area of 25–50 sq. meters, the entrepreneur will pay approximately 50 thousand rubles. Even if you sell goods with a minimum markup of 100%, monthly revenue in the amount of 100 thousand rubles will cover all these expenses. One wedding dress costs 10–30 thousand rubles or more, so your salon can easily receive revenue of 100 thousand rubles. As you can see, even with such modest sales volumes, the entrepreneur remains in the black. The payback period of a business largely depends on the size of the initial investment. If you invest 300 thousand rubles in a wedding salon, your starting capital will return in 6–8 months.
Keep your finger on the pulse
Many agencies sell their corporate identity as a franchise. This is definitely not for me. There is a certain level that you want to maintain in all cities. Where I am not, I cannot support him.
The biggest problem with the wedding business is that it requires my constant presence. It cannot be left for a second, because it does not develop on its own, but requires a constant infusion of energy, strength and ideas. This is why it is very difficult for me to develop branches in cities where I am not. It’s not going well, not at the level I would like.
It’s easier to work in Yekaterinburg now; word of mouth helps me. At weddings I often meet my own newlyweds whom I married. I don't really believe in advertising in magazines or on the Internet. We only promote our profiles on the VKontakte and Instagram networks, the website Vpudre.ru, but word of mouth is the best way. If you do a good job, people will talk about you.
It is impossible to foresee everything, so crisis situations are common. One day, at a wedding, the carpet caught fire. We lit large sparklers in the room, they began to smoke, guests began to throw them on the floor - and the synthetic carpet caught fire right under our feet. The situation was unexpected and unpleasant, but we reacted calmly to it, so there was no panic or stampede. Another time, the wind blew the registration site into the river. It was a wooden installation that stood on the veranda. We calmly fished her out of the water and brought her back. The main thing is to remain calm and have a healthy sense of humor in any situation.
Components of success
Various areas of the wedding business require the availability of the necessary materials and equipment to realize the idea of the newlyweds. For example, a photographer and videographer must have high-quality equipment. Florists – make constant purchases of flowers.
To organize your own salon for newlyweds, you will need to initially spend at least 1 million rubles. This amount will include the rental of premises (about 50 thousand), the purchase of dresses (at least half a million rubles). You should also purchase various equipment for work: a cash register, a laptop, a table, a sofa for seating clients, fitting room equipment, the purchase of hangers, a table, chairs and more. Such little things will cost about 400 thousand more.
But with the opening of a wedding planning agency, everything is much simpler. Primary costs will go to renting premises, purchasing computers and phones for work, equipping a work area for the director and other assistants. It is also worth thinking about creating a corner for clients. In general, it comes out to no more than 300 thousand rubles.
The organizer takes care of everything
The wedding business is characterized by very high seasonality: in the winter-autumn season there are also weddings, but there are fewer of them - one or two per month, and in the summer we hold ceremonies every weekend. The working season usually starts in February, the wedding season from March to September.
It all starts with an obligatory meeting with the bride and groom: at it we tell what we are doing and how it will happen. We show the list of services that will be included in the full organization of the wedding, announce the prices for the organization, calculate the initial budget, show what the wedding idea is and in what form they will receive it.
If a person comes with a budget of 300,000 rubles, I explain how best to spend this money. And the couple decides whether it suits them or not. We sign an agreement, they pay an advance, after which the search for a location, photographers, hosts, development of a wedding idea, and selection of a dress begins. Usually the whole process lasts from three months to six months. We take on absolutely everything, work closely with the guys, constantly discussing something, right down to where you can buy woolen white tights. We communicate with the bride every day. When the wedding takes place, after a week the brides usually say: “I come to work and feel sad, there are no letters from you on social networks or in the mail, which I have become so accustomed to in six months.”
Organizing a ceremony in an unusual place
Organizing off-site ceremonies in an exotic and beautiful location is beginning to become especially popular. Organizing such a celebration is much more difficult, but the profit is much greater. Agencies mainly offer the following options for such destination weddings:
- Outdoors with a tent or in a country house. The most common places to go. This requires payment of rent for the place where the wedding will take place, and additional interest for travel staff. Usually all the furniture is on the territory of country houses. The average price per person for an outdoor banquet is 5,000 thousand.
- In the clouds (skydiving). Some newlyweds are interested in such extreme options for organizing a celebration. All costs should be discussed with parachute clubs.
- On the roof of the building. The option is in great demand in the summer because it is creative, romantic and beautiful. The only downside is the rather high cost of renting a roof for weddings, especially in big years.
- On the ship. The popularity of such a wedding is starting to fade a little, but people still order it. On average, renting a new ship can cost 70 – 100,000 thousand rubles.
- Pier. The place is especially popular in the summer among young couples in the coastal regions. Cost from 3,000 thousand rubles per guest.
Staff
Of course, organizing a successfully developing business requires a strong team of professionals. A wedding agency is a women's business, so involve talented, creative girls you know if you can't handle it alone. Services such as music, photography and videography are provided additionally. Do a good job building your professional base. Remember – you and your partners, together, create the overall impression of the agency’s image, so you carefully choose your partners.
Conclusion
Before opening a wedding salon, take care of detailed business planning. If you approach the matter seriously and responsibly, gradually increase prices, expand the range of services, the store will generate a stable high income.
We hope that the question of opening a wedding salon is now clear. Perhaps you have already had or will choose a wedding dress. Share your impressions of visiting specialized stores in the comments and don’t forget to rate the article :)
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Author of the article Victoria Pchelinova Freelancer, creative and business
Catering services
The essence of the business is to provide food, dishes, equipment, tent structures, furniture, textiles, and service personnel for outdoor weddings. The trend for outdoor ceremonies is forcing couples to increasingly resort to the services of catering companies. During a crisis, this business is especially relevant. By showing price flexibility and having a wide range of dishes, catering companies are becoming a worthy replacement for restaurant services.
The initial stage is the purchase of utensils and equipment (refrigerators, insulated containers, compact grills, trolleys for waiters, fondue pots, cutlery). Then you should take the time to carefully select your service personnel. The success of a catering company will depend on the work of the client manager, cooks, waiters and bartenders. Start-up investment for a business costs 18 thousand dollars. Payback is established in 1 year.
