"Congratulations on a very successful and enjoyable conference. We all had such a great time, we learnt a lot and the breaks were all buzzing with furious networking activity! Everything a conference needs to be."

Katherine Arbuthnott,

Director, Blue Sand Marketing

The Santi Women in our Business conference is now firmly on the beauty and spa business women’s annual social and business event calendar!

The event was attended by over 300 top level delegates - passionate business women, salon and spa owners, directors of corporate organisations, and managers (and a few brave men!); from the beauty, salon, spa sectors, including product suppliers, consultants and education professionals. It was a high energy, fast track, information gathering networking (and frankly hilarious) day!

The 2008 event theme was "turn your passion into profit." and it offered delegates a chance to listen to advice and top tips from 13 speakers, who are all successful, award-winning business women in our industry.

In the grand and elegant surroundings of the Café Royal, Susie Santiago, the Santi Conference founder and host, had created a varied and exciting programme of business oriented presentation subjects that held interest for everyone in the audience.

In her own incredibly warm, genuine, upbeat and humorous style Susie made sure that everyone felt inspired and included in the days events. As a business mentor and coach Susie in her own right, Susie also added to the day’s advice from the speakers with her own experiences and top business tips for ‘turning passion into profit’.

There were "Master Classes" on subjects such as finance and profit, the science of shopping and retail selling, retaining client loyalty and building profitable repeat client visits. These were coupled with Business Clinics, rapid fire short sharp sessions on business development, and the audience participated in the networking ‘knowledge swap’ sessions.

The delegates were treated to a wide array of fantastic speakers including:

Lesley Everett, international speaker, TV presenter, Personal Branding Coach and author of "Walking Tall", who began the day’s presentations in great style talking about how important it is for us as individuals to reflect our own ‘authentic self’ and espouse our own personal brand values in terms of our ethics, behavior, personal impact, image and presentation.

Next an expert team of four business women, all of whom have started their own successful, ethical product companies, offered superb advice form the heart in their presentations in the Hearts and Mind Business Clinic about how to stay true to core brand values and ethics.

Barbara Scott, Founder Circaroma
Louise Galvin, celebrity colourist and Sacred Locks Brand owner
Margo Marrone, founder of The Organic Pharmacy
Linda Pilkington, Founder Ormond Jayne

All gave passionate speeches telling the audience about their successes and the pitfalls of staying on the ‘ethical track’.

Then Frances Hayter, Operations Director for re-aqua and Dove Spas, gave a humorous but also hard hitting reality check of a presentation to delegates about how to work on their finances, in her Profiting from Financial Success Master Class; including how work on break even points, P & L forecasts, measure their business performance and ultimately increase profits.

Living your Passion! was the theme for the next session, when Susie Santiago interviewed Ruth Rogers, chef owner of the River Café in London. Ruth told her story, the do’s and don’ts of developing a successful restaurant business, her experiences offered many parallels with our industry.

In the Management Business Clinic – Plan the work and work the plan! Three focused operators from the spa and salon industry told us how they plan and deliver their annual business strategy profitably:

Sally Rees Owner, Esque
Cathy Ball, Director
Sarah Endacott, Spa Manager, Calcot Spa

With the industry growing at a rapid rate, many business owners are developing more than one site within a brand, so the presentation given by Jocelyn Maxfield, Creative Director of Tom’s Companies Business clinic on Multi-Site Management – developing your organisational and communications skills. What needs to change deliver consistency of training, team motivation and profit delivery? was of particular interest to the audience

The following Golden Opportunities Master Class was all about building repeat business and loyal clients. Presented by Joanne Berry, medi spa specialist and owner of Spa Remedies was a very popular session, she presented a winning strategy to keep repeat clients and increase client average spend.

Back by popular demand, the favourite speaker from 2006 Santi Conference, Judy Naake, had a wealth of information to share with the 2007 audience. In her own inimitable style, Judy was incredibly funny had the audience in stitches with her amusing stories, anecdotes and top tips in her session on how to effectively sell products in the Science of Shopping Master Class.

The last speaker of the day, Susan Gerrard of The Natural Nail Company and Jessica Nails fame, brought a tear to every ones eyes, when she shared her moving journey to profitable success, the highs - the lows, the do’s and the don’ts and what lies ahead.

All in all it was a fabulous day of great networking with old and new friends alike for our industry’s business owners, managers and suppliers.

And a particularly fantastic day for Lorraine Hart and Lisa Romaine of Living in Harmony salon in Ashtead, Surrey as they were the lucky draw winners of a Beau Visage face imaging system worth £6000!

This Annual Conference will be held again in London on June 17th 2008. For more photographs and further details please contact Susie Santiago on 020 8323 8020 or email susie@santi-santi.com, www.santi-santi.com.

What the delegates said...

"Thanks so much for a wonderful and inspiring conference. It was great for me to learn so much and meet so many new people in one day, especially as I am new to the industry - I felt very lucky to be able to listen to others sharing their vast experience."

Philippa Canty, Thalgo UK Ltd

"I thoroughly enjoyed the day, and am now feeling very inspired!"

Jo Givens, Spa Manager, Simple Spa

"Thank you once again for putting together such a great day, very inspirational and lots of ideas to put into the salon."

Lorraine Hart, Living in Harmony salon owner (and lucky draw winner of the Beau Visage system)

"May I congratulate you on an excellent event. Extremely upbeat, with some really inspiring speakers. I came away feeling very invigorated, which is more than can be said for most other industry conferences that I attend!"

Beverley Law, Marketing Director, Dew Gibbon

"I loved the speakers, all very inspirational women and of course the most inspirational of them all is you. I’m looking forward to next year already."

Lisa Knowles, The Spa Set

"I just wanted to say how much Steve & I enjoyed yesterday. It was a very inspiring day and good fun too. It was also great to receive such positive feedback from so many delegates regarding ethical values."

Barbara Scott, Circaroma and speaker at this year’s event

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What the delegates said...