Ian Fuhr is without doubt South Africa’s king of cosmetology, his unconventional resumé has resulted in over 200 salons, 3500 employees, 180+ franchisees, and half a million loyalty club members who’ve all devoted to the Sorbet brand.
For over 17 years, he’s transformed his salon concept into a national brand across the country, and launched various brand extensions in the process.
Sorbet is now part of Long4Life investment holding company following its acquisition in 2017.
BACKGROUND
In 2004, whilst having a massage, a beauty therapist told Ian there weren’t no multi-unit branded chains of beauty salons in the country besides from a chain of nail bars call Dream Nails. Ian saw a gap in the market, and went about trying to fulfill that gap in the market.
At that point, his career journey had been filled with entrepreneurial startups, entrenched retail savvy, and a deep-rooted reverence for cultural diversity. His approach to business and life in general, had been built on fortitude, humility, and not accepting the status quo.
He then recruited Liz Goldberg, a previous home salon owner, to join him in this venture and also invited his accountant friend, Johnny Marks, to complete the team.
The first objective the 3 made was to buy 2 existing salons(Sensorium in Norwood, and Tracey-Ann’s in Bedfordview) so that they could get the feel of the business with a view to converting them later into the new brand name.
SORBET
For the brand’s name, Ian approached a branding consultancy called Sfere to assist with the selection of the name and the logo. After the initial brainstorming session, the Sfere team came back with a list of names, and the name “Sorbet” appeared about halfway down the list.
The name “Sorbet” conjured up images of tantalising taste, freshness and beautiful pastel colours.
“Ian phoned Liz and said, “I love Sorbet” and Liz said, “Me too”…. and at that moment the name Sorbet was born.”
Before Sorbet was launched, the beauty industry of South Africa was extremely fragmented. On one hand, there were the small salons, mostly owned by qualified beauty therapists lacking business acumen, and on the other hand, were the luxury Spas, often affiliated to resorts & hotels, with some financial backing.
Ian wanted to offer the beauty industry an upmarket chain of beauty salons through a franchise model, which was gonna attract a larger investor pool than just beauty therapists.
He realised earlier on that the only way to stand out in the competitive beauty salon industry was to create a culture that focused on people first. Sorbet’s advantage over competition was to offer a branded, recognised cosmetics retail store with beauty treatments rather than the industry norm of focussing on treatments first, with limited retail sales.
“Other salons could try to copy the look and feel of Sorbet, but they couldn’t copy the culture,” he said. The growth and expansion of the Sorbet brand is “a story of people and customers, culture and the spirit of community.”Ian Fuhr
By 2009, Sorbet had about 22 stores before it began franchising further stores. The company then attracted many franchisees, 95% of which were women, mostly with business experience rather than having worked in the beauty industry.
EXPANSION TO UK
In 2015, Ian expanded the Sorbet brand to the UK but unfortunately, the move failed as the company closed its doors after three years of operation.
Ian blamed a tough trading environment, inferior beauty therapist training, and a lack of work ethic.
LONG4LIFE ACQUISITION
In 2017, after 12 years of heading the Sorbet Group, Ian sold the business to the newly founded Long4Life in a deal worth R116 million.
DON’T GO INTO BUSINESS TO MAKE MONEY…
According to Ian, aspiring entrepreneurs shouldn’t make their business about just making money, as its not customer-centric.
Rather they should go into business to serve needs of the people, and if they do that well, the money will eventually come.
