Business type: beauty and personal care

Read Core: applies to everyone first. This file adds the rules that apply only to businesses that work on people's bodies.

This covers hairdressing, barbering, nails, beauty therapy, lashes, massage, tattooing and piercing.

You need a municipal licence

These are health establishments under the Businesses Act.

The categories that typically require a municipal trading licence under the Businesses Act include health establishments: businesses providing health, beauty, or body treatment services, including hairdressers, barbers, beauty salons, nail salons, tattoo studios, and similar premises.

No person may carry on certain service-related businesses unless they hold a licence issued by the council, local authority or municipality where the business premises are situated.

You may not begin trading in a business that requires a licence before the licence has been issued. Trading without a valid licence is punishable with a fine.

Apply through your municipal Business Licensing office. An Environmental Health Practitioner will inspect the premises.

What the inspector usually looks at: hand washing facilities, ventilation, surface cleanability, waste disposal, storage of chemicals, and separation from living space if you work from home.

Tattoo and piercing studios

These face the strictest inspection in this category, because they break the skin.

Expect questions about sterilisation equipment, single-use needles, sharps containers, waste removal contracts, and record keeping of clients and batch numbers.

Talk to your Environmental Health Practitioner before you sign a lease. The premises requirements can make a cheap space unusable.

Working from home

This is common and usually legal. But you need zoning approval, and usually a separate treatment room with its own basin.

Ask town planning about your zoning before you spend money on a room. Some residential zonings allow a home occupation with limits on client numbers, parking and signage.

If you make or sell products

Selling retail products someone else manufactures is ordinary retail. See Retail and online shop.

Making your own oils, creams, scrubs or hair products changes things. The Foodstuffs, Cosmetics and Disinfectants Act 54 of 1972 regulates cosmetics, including labelling and ingredient claims.

Do not claim a product treats a medical condition. "Clears eczema" or "cures acne" can reclassify your product as a medicine, which brings SAHPRA into your life. "Soothes dry skin" is a cosmetic claim. "Treats dermatitis" is not.

Insurance you actually need

Professional indemnity or treatment liability cover. One burn from a relaxer, one infected piercing, or one bad reaction to a product can cost you more than a year of profit.

Ask a broker for cover appropriate to the treatments you actually perform, and tell them everything you do. Cover bought for "hairdressing" will not respond to a lash lift claim.

Consumer law applies to services too

A service must be performed with reasonable skill and care. If a treatment goes wrong, the customer has a right to have it put right or refunded.

Protect yourself with a consultation record: what the client asked for, what you advised, any allergy or patch test, and what was agreed. Have them sign it. For colour, chemical and skin treatments, a patch test record is the difference between a defensible position and a settlement.

Bookings, deposits and no-shows

No-shows are the biggest hidden cost in this industry.

A deposit is legal and enforceable if the terms are clear and reasonable before booking. Under the Consumer Protection Act a customer may cancel a booking. You may charge a cancellation fee, but it must be reasonable. Reasonable depends on how much notice they gave, and whether you could fill the slot with someone else.

Put your cancellation terms in writing, send them with the booking confirmation, and apply them consistently. Terms you only mention when someone misses an appointment are hard to enforce.

Branding and marketing notes

Use Branding and marketing. Two things matter more in this industry than in most:

Before-and-after photos are your most effective marketing, but you need permission. Ask every client, in writing, before posting their face. This is a POPIA requirement as well as basic courtesy. Keep the permission on file.

Google Business Profile reviews drive local bookings more than any social post. Ask every happy client. See Marketing prompts.

Your checklist

Your checklist

Confirm zoning for your premises, including home premises Apply for the municipal health establishment licence Prepare the premises for the health inspection Get treatment liability insurance appropriate to your services Build a consultation and patch test record template Write your booking, deposit and cancellation terms Get written photo permission from clients before posting Register your POPIA information officer, since you hold client health information

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