For The Intelligent Beauty Professional
A data magazine built for the humans behind professional beauty. Real research, real people, and the numbers behind the decisions running salons, spas, medspas, and brands today.
Cover story: Megan Jasper, Gadabout & VerVe SalonSpas
photography by David Raccuglia
Megan Jasper
Meet Our First Covergirl
Twenty-five years into her career at Gadabout SalonSpas and VerVe Salons in Tucson, Megan Jasper helps lead a 6-location, 230-teammate business on one rule: good decisions need good data. Inside Issue 1, she walks through four ways her team puts it to work.
“Data doesn't replace intuition.
It gives me supporting evidence.”
Megan Jasper | VP,
Gadabout & VerVe SalonSpas
Trusted Data, Curated For You
For years, the Qnity Institute has studied the economics of professional beauty, drawing on more than 30,000 W-2s and over $1 billion in salon and spa revenue, and sharing what it learned with government leaders, brands, salon, spa, and medspa owners, and schools.
iQ turns that research into a magazine built for a visual, human-centered industry: real data translated into real stories, for the salons, spas, medspas, brands, and schools that make professional beauty run. Data you can trust, and actually do something with.
Featured Articles
The Profitability Gap
What separates the industry's most profitable salons?
P&L Study
The Modern Finance Function
How modern businesses are turning financial data into better decisions.
by Tom Kuhn
A look inside how Megan Jasper, VP of Gadabout and VerVe Salons, turns insight into action.
Data In Action
Cover Story
Retail: Hero or Villain?
The industry's biggest retail debate, examined through data.
Industry Debate
Compensation: Perception vs. Reality
The numbers behind one of professional beauty's most misunderstood conversations.
Compensation Study
Data on the Road
Highlights from the conferences, conversations, and collaborations bringing data to life.
Field Notes
A Note From
The Publishers
And Editor
“Professional beauty has always had a complicated relationship with data: we have plenty, yet it still feels scarce, with real deficits in some areas, surplus in others, and, in some cases, data shaped to serve an agenda. Sorting out which is which has become an important, and at times contentious, conversation.”
As our industry navigates one of the most significant periods of change in its history, data matters more than ever. Thank you to everyone who shaped this first issue. We hope it sparks a few lightbulb moments of your own.”
Tom Kuhn / Founder & Co-Publisher
For 4 years, we’ve been working to bring better data to the professional beauty industry. Along the way we’ve shared what we’ve learned with government leaders, brands, owners, and schools. One pattern keeps surfacing: a lack of unity. Beauty is booming, yet many of the salons, spas, and schools that make it run are struggling.
Our hope is that IQ becomes a trusted source, creating unity and greater economic empowerment industry-wide. Unity doesn’t happen from a podium; it happens in conversation.
My inbox is open.
Erin Kuhn Bhansali / Co-Publisher
Data can give us answers, but I’m often more interested in the questions it creates.
You’ll find numbers here, but you’ll also find people, perspective, contradictions, and questions without easy answers. We’ve intentionally brought them together because context changes how we see the data, and sometimes, how we see what we thought we already knew.
My hope is that you don’t just read iQ. I hope something in these pages makes you curious.
Michelle Shuster / Editor
WHO BUILT THIS ISSUE
The Team
iQ is a small team drawing on a much larger network of operators, researchers, and industry voices.
Tom Kuhn
Co-Publisher
Erin Kuhn Bhansali
Co-Publisher
Michelle Shuster
Editor
Corinne Murray
Project Manager
Linda Henneman
Design
Rebecca Ezolt
Data
Candice Gliatto
Qnity Director & Owner,
Citrus Salons
FEATURED VOICES IN ISSUE 1
Megan Jasper
VP, Gadabout
& VerVe SalonSpas
Mary Beth Berns
Succession Advisor, Qnity
Sudheer Koneru
CEO, Zenoti
Leslie Perry
VP, Gadabout
& VerVe SalonSpas
VP Sales & Marketing,
KIM Report
Alain Audet
WHO MADE IT HAPPEN
A special
thank you to
our sponsors
iQ is made possible by our sponsors, who believe in the mission of elevating professional beauty. But unlike many publications, you won't find ads in these pages. Every piece of content is curated and controlled by our team. We take our readers' trust seriously. Our sponsors help make the work possible, and we're just as committed to protecting its integrity.
A special thanks to our contributors
sharing their own insight and data.
Interested in sponsoring a future issue?
Email erin.kuhn@qnityinc.com
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