MOSCOW, March 18. / TASS /. The reduction in the number of beauty salons in large Russian cities over the past year has averaged 10%, according to the results of a study released on Thursday by the 2GIS geoservice and the Sberuslugi platform on how the beauty services market has changed from March 2020 to March 2021 in 37 Russian cities with a population of over 500,000 people.
According to analysts, the number of beauty salons that provide services for face and body care decreased by an average of 10% over the year, to 22,935 organizations. The strongest reduction in the number of businesses was recorded in Omsk (-24.5%), Saratov (-29%) and Tyumen (-27%). The smallest is in Moscow (-3%) and in Yekaterinburg (-0.4%). A year earlier, the number of beauty salons increased by 7%.
Salons had to close after the introduction of restrictive measures in the spring of 2020. According to the service for self-employed specialists Sberuslugi, as the restrictions were lifted, the demand for beauty services was one of the first to recover. At the same time, the category "beauty and health" is among the fastest growing in the service. In addition, over the past year, the number of self-employed in the beauty industry has grown 8 times. This professional area is the second most attractive for self-employment after creating video and audio content.
"The past year had an adverse impact on the beauty salons and many of them did not open after the lockdown. However, we see that a large number of specialists have moved to the category of self-employed and began to provide services on their own. We are confident that more and more beauty specialists in large Russian cities will work for themselves," said Chief Operating Officer of the Sberuslugi service Marina Aleksandrovskaya.