the hairdressing market | Italy

1.1 Definition and scope of study

Being a hairdresser consists of performing various hygienic and aesthetic care operations on the hair in a hair salon, or directly at the customer’s place. Hairdressing services include haircuts, coloring, perms and many others. The salons have developed different ancillary activities, including the sale of beauty products and accessories that are used by specialists to take care of customers’ hair, in order to give them the opportunity to realize enhanced professional treatments even at home. The hairdressing market can be segmented according to customer type (mainly defined by age range), brand (referring to the brand of the products used or sold in a salon), type of service (in a salon or at home), and geographical region.

The global hairdressing market was valued at $77.15 billion in 2021, and it is expected to reach a value of $112.97 billion by 2028, growing at a CAGR of 5.6% during the period 2021-2028.

In Italy, the development of the hairdressing market is due to the high number of individuals, mainly small and medium-sized entrepreneurs, specialized in the sector. In fact, the density of hairdressing salons per inhabitant is very high in Italy, where it is equal to one salon for every 650 inhabitants. Italians love the hairdressing profession as it is highly creative, fascinating, and allows them to set up their business with little initial investment.

The optimism in the growth of the sector has brought salons’ owners to invest in staff training, aiming at providing better and quality services to both male and female customers. Indeed, over the current year, 46.3% of hairstyles have attended a specialization course on technical work, such as coloring. In particular, this sector offers the greatest opportunities for young people. In fact, around 190 thousand of them are employed in the 90 thousand salons distributed throughout the country, the equal of 2.2% of small and medium-sized Italian companies.