Catching up with Nivarna Hair Studio, Springwood's hub for healthy hair

Tanya Evans has been running Nivarna for over 20 years, and she’s kept her hair salon at the forefront of the beauty industry the whole time. Her goal: help every client be their best self, through healthy hair that looks and feels amazing. 

“I wanted to create a hub where you could come for guaranteed amazing hair that really shows who you are. I find that’s missing in a lot of places.”

When she took the reins at the salon, Tanya had to quickly ‘learn how to be a boss’; including running the business, managing the team, and handling the accounts all at once. She overcame those challenges, and built a team of nine talented stylists who are one of the salon’s greatest strengths. Tanya acts as a mentor for each, nurturing their skills and enriching their careers. Her clients feel the warmth the moment they step through the doors – the result of a community built on empowerment.

“I wanted to create a hub where you could come for guaranteed amazing hair that really shows who you are,” she explained. “I find that’s missing in a lot of places.”

From pen and paper to maximum efficiency with Fresha 

For a long time Tanya used pen and paper to run her business, and it was costing her valuable time and effort. She realised she needed a platform that was powerful enough to handle everything she and her team needed, yet easy enough to use so the whole team could be quickly brought on board. 

“I heard about Fresha through one of our clients,” Tanya recalled. “She showed me how easy it was to book, and I knew we needed that at Nivarna.” 

At first, Tanya was concerned about potential downtime – they had so much client data and she was worried moving everything over to Fresha would set them back. She was thrilled when she saw that migrating was so simple it could be done in a day. 

“Fresha lets me take a step back and work on the behind-the-scenes elements of the salon. It lets me focus on growing the business.”

Now Fresha handles all of Tanya’s day-to-day tasks for her, from logging client appointments to setting team rotas and tracking sales. “Fresha lets me take a step back and work on the behind-the-scenes elements of the salon. It lets me focus on growing the business,” Tanya said.

The most game-changing feature for Nivarna is online booking. With clients booking their own appointments, the team can spend less time on the phone and more time making clients’ hair look great. “We don’t have to do anything; clients just go online and book what they want, when they want it. Everything shows up in our calendar, and we’ve never had to move appointments around.”

Creating packages their clients love

With a whole host of hair services on offer – haircuts, restyles, colouring, the works – Tanya uses Fresha’s packages feature to streamline her service list and offer clients plenty of valuable deals. It’s a win-win: clients can buy their favourite treatments in bulk at great value, and the Nivarna team can secure bookings for multiple services at once. It also helps them upsell extras or promote new services by bundling them with bestsellers. 

Smooth payments, easy accounting, and no more no-shows

To make things even easier for herself and her team, Tanya takes payments using Fresha, which makes every financial task a breeze; including checkout after every sale, cashing up at the end of the day, and monthly accounting. Getting daily payouts means she can reinvest revenue from each day’s sales back into the business right away. 

“Recently, we had a power outage due to a storm – but it didn’t slow us down at all, since our clients’ details were saved on Fresha.”

Tanya also uses Fresha to save clients’ cards on file – meaning they can always take payments and keep things flowing, no matter the situation. “Recently, we had a power outage due to a storm – but it didn’t slow us down at all, since our clients’ details were saved on Fresha,” Tanya recounted. “We could just process payments using our mobile phones.”

Plus, Fresha lets Tanya’s team take upfront payments right when clients book, which means they never have to worry about no-shows. “Fresha’s deposits take a weight off the whole team’s shoulders,” she said. “Clients are much more likely to keep their appointments when they pay upfront; and if they don’t, our time is covered by the deposit.”

Next up for Nivarna: more clients, more stylists, more success

Tanya is a big fan of many of our features, but her favourite thing about Fresha is that it’s subscription-free. “I love the fact that I get all this without being locked into a monthly subscription. It’s freeing – I get to invest more of what we earn back into the business,” Tanya said.

Tanya’s had many years of success, and with Fresha on her side she’s set for many more – working with some of Australia’s biggest lifestyle brands to nurturing new talent in the industry, while winning clients and growing her salon as a thriving hub for creativity and beauty.