To Our Valued Members,
I hope this message finds you all safe and healthy!
I am sending this communication to notify you that Hair Club will be processing May membership fees in order to allow us to continue to provide all the products and services you expect and deserve. However, after careful consideration in how we can give you added value, I am pleased to present to you the following benefits. First, we will be providing you with a twenty percent reduction in your May membership fees. Second, to ensure that you do not miss out on any of your products or service benefits, we will provide a membership benefits extension guarantee that will include all heads of hair, salon service visits and products that were not delivered during this time when our center service operations have been mandated to be paused. Our members will be able to utilize these benefits at their discretion over the next twelve months. Third, I have also made the decision to defer the membership fee increase that you were previously notified would go into effect on June 1st, 2020 until no earlier than January 1st, 2021. Given the current circumstances and after listening to member concerns over the past forty days, I believe all these additional considerations are appropriate and best reflect the interests of our membership.
I would like to provide you with some history as to how and why I came to these decisions.
In late March when we were required to close our centers, our company was confronted with challenging decisions about how best to support our members without access to our centers, as well as how best to support our employees and business operations so that we can continue to provide crucial services to our members now and in the future.
Many business owners decided to cut all expenses to zero by closing their businesses, furloughing all their staff, halting all operations, and waiting out the pandemic.
I felt this would have been the wrong decision for the Hair Club business and brand because it would not have delivered the support to our members that they so desperately need during this period of quarantine. I also have a personal interest, being a client myself of over forty years, who personally has the same needs and requires the same level of support as the rest of our members.
In order to continue to deliver service and support, as well as keep our product supply chain moving, I felt the need to make further investments. To be honest, my experience and understanding of the need as a client myself, ultimately dominated my thinking and led me down the path to where we are today.
I have invested in the following enhancements because I feel they are essential to your experience in the time we cannot service you in person. These are just some of the investments that were made to provide better support given our circumstances:
- Developing and providing Virtual Technical Consultations with an elite group of stylists specially trained to walk you through your service step by step
- Investing in advanced telecommunication systems allowing us to increase our ability to capture calls and reach out to all clients seven days a week
- Staffing our centers virtually to keep up with all needs and demands for membership assistance
- Establishing logistics and systems in order to access heads of hair to be remotely cut and shipped to members
- Investing in a catalog of approximately twelve professionally produced client care tutorials to add to the support of our members at home
- Expanding and refining our online shopping experience so that our members can access the products they need for all solutions
I also have a deep commitment to the core of the client experience which is our talented styling staff. I have created an internal stimulus package and to date, have covered both company and employee contributions to health care in order to provide some much-needed relief during this time.
I am proud of our company that has committed itself to making these investments without motive to profit but purely to support. I am even more proud of my staff that has unselfishly spent countless hours on the phone providing support, information, technical troubleshooting, virtual service, escorting members through product ordering or just providing comfort for those who needed someone to listen to their concerns.
I have been accused of being an optimist, but I hang on to the belief that there may be an opportunity to see and serve many of you before the month of May is completed. I am happy to report that we have already begun the process to open some locations for curbside retail as we speak. Our centers have all been professionally sanitized by a national third-party specialist that is well above industry standards and expectations.
I hope that all things considered, you will see the logic and the fairness of the thinking that went into our May membership fees processing package. I guess the best way for me to conclude this message is to thank you for helping us help you.
If you have any unique requests or needs that need to be taken into additional consideration, please call your local center and communicate with your Customer Relationship Management team and if you would like to direct any questions to me personally, I will make every attempt to make myself available.
Be well,
Steven Barth
President