Creating your own recruitment funnel
Sleeping Beauty Salon’s rapid growth has led to seven sites across Scotland but the expansion has come at a cost
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Sleeping Beauty Salon is a family-run business founded in Lerwick, Shetland Islands, in 1999 by Glenys Miller. A year later, her daughter Lilac joined the team, marking the start of their journey together.
After a brief time away at university, Lilac returned in 2006 to lead the opening of a new flagship salon in Inverness. Under her directorship, the business continued to grow, responding to increasing demand across Scotland.
Between 2012 and 2016, Sleeping Beauty Salon expanded rapidly, growing to over seven locations, from Lerwick in the Shetlands down to Edinburgh. However, this growth wasn’t the result of a rigid expansion plan. Instead, Lilac seized opportunities where there were gaps in the market and built strong relationships with property owners. While the business saw a 15% increase in turnover year on year, its expansion brought a significant challenge: staffing.
As a service-based business, Sleeping Beauty Salon relies on having enough skilled therapists to meet customer demand. Without sufficient staff, they risked turning clients away—potentially losing them to competitors. The staffing challenges varied by location. In rural areas like Fort William, the issue was finding qualified therapists due to the small population. In cities like Edinburgh, the challenge wasn’t recruitment, but retention.
To address these issues, Lilac launched the Sleeping Beauty Training Academy in 2020, an SQA-approved centre designed to train apprentices rather than compete for already qualified therapists. Combined with internal progression initiatives, this approach helped boost retention while ensuring new recruits were developed with the company’s culture in mind.
