Beleza Natural

What are the key elements of Beleza Natural’s business strategy?

Beleza Natural was born in Brazil, where a large portion of the population is of Afro-Brazilian genetic
inheritance. Historically, 38.3% of the population in Capital city of Brazil estimated to be consisting of
African slaves. In 2010, 80 million out of 190 million total population of Brazil were black or
multiracial. In addition to this ethnic structure income inequality was among the highest in the
World until 2000. With the decrease in Gini index and increase in GDP, the people in Brazil could
spare more money for hair care, making hair care more accessible for the overall population.
Furthermore, in Latin America, going to the hairdresser was more than just personal care. It was
embedded in the everyday culture making the trip to the hairdresser a social and a cultural event.
This social behavior was not abandoned even in times of economic recession. In 2008, worldwide
permanent and relaxant consumption totaled $1.2 billion, where Latin America had the highest per
capita share with the annual consumption of ~$450 million.

Above conditions prepared the perfect market for hair care products in Latin America, and Beleza
Natural has seized this opportunity with the following key elements in their business strategy:

Beleza aimed to provide more affordable hair care services and products thanks to the benefits of
efficiency, high productivity and high scale of business demand. It was possible through:

 Efficiency and uniformity of service (and customer experience) at the Beleza beauty parlors
 Personalization of service by analyzing customer’s hair conditions
 Focusing on repeat business (90% of the clients were repeat customers)
 Selling home care products alongside special treatment and application at the parlor

How does Beleza Natural structure its processes to support its business strategy?

The founders had job experience working for Mc Donald’s, and had the opportunity to observe
streamlined production at the fast food company. This helped them procure a method for efficient
handling of the customers.

The focus of the process is to divide the whole experience of the client into process segments to
increase efficiency. To this end, employees receive two types of special training in order to increase
efficiency and uniformity. First type of special training takes 30 days. In this assistant hairdresser
(auxiliary de cabeleireira) training the employee learns to perform the division process and washing
and styling the hair. The second and more sophisticated training takes 35 days to create Beleza
Natural Consultants. The Beleza Natural Consultants know how to professionally perform the super-
relaxante treatment. Both trainings require a final exam and the successful trainees are also
Beleza Natural

monitored by their supervisors for an additional three months. This way an employee is trained to
focus in a certain area of the treatment in which he/she has the expertise and the service is given
with high quality and to high quantities of customer. Together with the training of the employees for
a uniform and efficient service, the layout of the building is arranged to provide the streamlined
process more effectively. The building is segmented into areas where every process segment is also
physically segmented so that expert employees can serve a single role for the treatment of the
customers. The customer is redirected to different service areas where reception, hair evaluation,
hair division, super-relaxant treatment, hydration and store are placed in the building so that the
customer is following the process steps of her hair treatment and all the separate processes of the
flow are physically separated as well. In every separate section, the professionals perform specific
task(s) that they are trained on, and this increases the number of clients serviced within the day
because of the increased efficiency. Also, by adopting two 6-hours-shifts, they can serve the
customers 12 hours a day, while preventing exhaustion of the employees and providing a consistent
and uniform quality of service at the same time.

To summarize, beside the above-mentioned benefits, the streamlined production help Beleza
Natural to provide a more affordable service without compromising their quality of service.

Consider the Madureira Institute. Ignoring the evaluation steps for new customers, draw the
process flow diagram associated with the operations. The using the spreadsheet to be provided on
LMS, calculate the following quantities for a Saturday:

a. The capacity of each step (process)

(Please see Annex-1 for the process flow diagram)

The bottleneck step of the Madureira Institute is definitely the super-relaxant process where the
capacity is only 27 customers per hour. This is the lowest capacity among all the steps of the process.
Even though other process steps might handle a much greater number of clients, since the super-
relaxant treatment is 40 minutes and the capacity of this (bottleneck) step is 27 cust/hrs, the
capacity for each step at the salon is limited by 27 cust/hrs as well.

For Saturday;

 Cycle time for every process step is the cycle time of the bottleneck step (2,2 min)
 Beleza Natural

 Demand rate is the same for each step. Every customer demands all of the steps
 Flow rate is the capacity of the slowest step in the process = bottleneck (27 cust/hr)
 Utilization is the ratio of (flow rate) / (capacity of each process step)

Mon-Thu Fri Sat

Super
Divisio
Reception Relaxin Hydration Hairstyle
n
g
Activity time [min] 2 12,5 40 8 14
Number of workers 2 8 18 4 9
27,0
Bottleneck
Capacity [customers/hour] 60,0 38,4 30,0 38,6
Cycle time [min] 1,0 1,6 2,2 2,0 1,6
Process capacity [cust/hr] 27,0 27,0 27,0 27,0 27,0
           
Demand rate [Saturday] 42,8 42,8 42,8 42,8 42,8
Flow rate [cust/hr] 27,0 27,0 27,0 27,0 27,0
Utilization 45,0% 70,3% 100,0% 90,0% 70,0%

1h = 60 mins

1 workday = 12 hours

ANNEX – 1 – PROCESS FLOW CHART

Super-Relaxant Hydration
Reception Division
Treatment Shampoo/Condition
(2 min) (10-15 min)
(40 min)
(8 min)
10% 65% 25%

Coloring Haircut
(15+30 min) (10 min)

Hair style
Drying/Styling
35%
EXIT (10 min)

65%
Shop
Beauty Care
Products