Beauty and personal care businesses occupy a significant position within the market sector with their confidence-boosting solutions and services. Today, these businesses offer customer-oriented products and provide unique franchising opportunities.
A prime example of a company doing this well is European Wax Center (EWC). EWC offers a full suite of waxing services and products with a team of dedicated professional experts. The company’s certified wax experts have helped clients embrace confidence by catering to their hair removal needs.
Empowered by Profound Inception
Established in 2004, EWC is the brainchild of the Coba brothers, who identified an opportunity in the personal care market for out-of-home (OOH) waxing. With its founding, the company created a category for professionalized hair removal. Waxing was the star of their show, elevated to an aspirational, comfortable experience in a beautiful setting with highly trained wax specialists in a clean and inviting environment.
Today, EWC CEO David Berg stands firm on continuing the special culture that began with its founders and is now ingrained in every aspect of EWC’s unique experience. He ensures the executive team’s words match their actions while elevating the brand’s impressive growth story as the ‘Undisputed Category Leader.’
Unique Services with an Elevated Experience
The company puts its values into action to delight guests with an exceptional waxing experience. EWC offers a plethora of elevated body and facial waxing services using their Comfort Wax formulation. Their exclusive wax features a proprietary blend of the highest quality natural beeswax and other skin-soothing ingredients for the most comfortable waxing experience.
EWC’s solution is specifically designed to attach only to hair (and not the skin) to provide an outstanding experience compared to other wax formulations. Wax specialists at EWC follow its signature ‘4-Steps to Smooth’ process. In addition, the company offers EWC-branded skincare products to help customers maintain healthy skin in-between visits.
Revolutionizing the Wax Market
The company is a trusted national brand that inspires confidence. EWC revolutionized the market for OOH waxing by creating the first professionalized model, providing customers with a consistent, high-quality, and elevated waxing experience. It believes that revealing beautiful skin is the first step to revealing one’s best self, and its brand stands for delivering unapologetic confidence to its guests.
It’s proprietary training, standard operating procedures, field support, and exclusive products have built competitive advantages. EWC’s expertise is reinforced by its marketing efforts driving national brand awareness and consideration.
Expert Estheticians at the Core
Its exclusive focus on wax-based hair removal performed by highly trained wax specialists enables EWC to provide a consistent waxing experience across its centers. In partnership with its franchisees, EWC ensures that every wax specialist is licensed and completes its proprietary training program to ensure consistency and quality of service for every guest.
European Wax Center also developed its proprietary retail products based on insights from its talented wax specialists who perform waxing services every day. Based on this unique collaboration, the company designed a groundbreaking pre- and post-wax product system specially formulated to treat ingrown hairs and slow hair growth. Its exceptional services and solutions have earned EWC numerous accolades and recognitions, including ELLE Magazine’s 2021 Future of Beauty Winner.
Fostering a Values Focused Culture
In 2020, EWC launched its first-ever corporate Diversity and Inclusion Council based on associate feedback. The council spawned various initiatives that sparked innovative thinking and has encouraged greater cultural awareness and understanding. Moreover, this work was instrumental in launching and naming EWC’s Brazilian (P) service, which focuses on gender inclusion for one of the brand’s most common services.
EWC has built a seasoned management team with extensive experience across retail, hospitality, and franchising to execute its growth strategies and vision based on these core values:
- We care about each other
- We do the right thing
- We delight our guests
- We have fun while being awesome
EWC lives and abides by its values— taking pride in having built a culture that unleashes the power of its associates to be their authentic selves and build trust amongst guests.
Evaluating Strengths Amid Challenges
Strong growth stories begin from strong foundations. EWC’s unique value proposition has contributed to its strong historical financial performance and ongoing success with its guests and franchisees. EWC’s asset-light franchise platform delivers capital-efficient growth, significant cash flow generation, and resilience through economic cycles.
The company has a resilient business model that persevered through COVID-19. Putting its franchisees first, EWC implemented a comprehensive response to the pandemic. Its management team developed and executed an operational and digital support plan for franchisees. With the company actively supporting the health of its most valued partners during the pandemic, not a single franchise center permanently closed due to the crisis.
Striving for Future Expansion
The company strives to continue generating recurring and predictable growth in the future. It plans to grow new centers nationwide and believes in sustaining its growth through ambitious multi-unit operators. Simultaneously, EWC aims to expand its same-store sales and accelerate guest acquisition by investing in its brand to increase awareness.
Long term, EWC envisions incremental expansion opportunities through various means. These include category expansion, new channels, alternative center formats, strategic partnerships, and international expansion.
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