No. That arrangement constitutes an inappropriate degree of control, as the owner’s revenue is directly tied to the renter’s performance. The owner needs to review the 20 Factors used by the IRS to determine employment classification.

LOL! Not only is that not normal, it’s a ridiculous arrangement. She wants you to serve as a distributor to her, PAY COST, and then pay you just 10% for what you retail?! LOL. Yeah, it would be a no from me. It would be one thing if she were securing the product and stocking it, but to expect you to supply her at cost and then pay you a 10% retail commission is just–it’s absurd. Seriously.

So with the retail….here’s what’s going on….I have an account with a product brand that I use for my services. She wants to now retail them. The only way for her to get those products is through me. So she wants me to order them for her, she then wants to buy them at cost, retail them and then if I sell them, get 10% commission. I’m trying to figure out if this is normal or what I should do.

Your rent should include those fees unless the contract states that they’re charged separately. Generally, you have to agree by the terms you abide by, so if you agreed not to sell retail, you’ll have to stick to that agreement (since most states revert to contract law to enforce commercial landlord/tenant arrangements and don’t have specific laws governing those relationships). Regarding the retail product–no, she cannot require you to buy product and sell it to her and pay you after the sale. That’s insane. At that point, you lose incentive to sell at all. If I were you, I’d be opting out of that whole thing, lol.

Regarding the business cards–no. You cannot be required to use her branding and she cannot exercise control over your marketing materials. For more information, read this post, and this post.

1. Can the salon owner charge a Towel and Cape fee as well as a fee for drinks and etc for clients in addition to our rent? Or is this what rent is supposed to cover? I’ve only worked in a couple of other salons previously and these were always included.

2. Can the salon owner not let us sell our own retail? According to our contract we are not allowed to carry retail, this doesn’t seem right as an independent contractor??

3. Can the salon owner have us purchase retail product, then buy the retail product from us and then just pay us commission when we sell it? She ends up getting 90% of the retail price this way.

4. Can the salon owner make us all have the same business cards? She wants us to all have uniform business cards and gets upset when we use OUR business cards designs versus HERS. This is also in our contract and she says we have to use her design and printer because it’s in the contract. Help!!

Well, you can offer the use of the receptionist as an amenity and include her salary in the overall rent, or as an a la carte amenity as outlined in this article, but I’m confused as to why you think you wouldn’t be able to afford her between the ten of you renting. If we assume she was making $55,000 a year and divide that by 10 renters, that’s $5,500 per year each. Divided by 12 months in the year, that’s $458 per month, or $114.58 per week, per renter–a small price to pay for the convenience of a receptionist, especially one who will most certainly be greeting and directing the clients, serving them beverages, and doing all the other tasks a career coordinator would very likely feel compelled to do after doing those tasks for so long. (I don’t think it’s incredibly likely that she’s going to be content with doing less work, or that the renters won’t expect her to handle all the same responsibilities she handled previously. I think you’re both likely to find that she’s far more valuable than you may have realized when you made the decision to reduce her responsibilities, lol. This shift may cause resentment on both sides.)

I’m in the process of creating a new downloadable that would be super helpful to you right now, but it’s not done yet. It includes a spreadsheet that allows you to work your numbers and generate potential rental rates, and another sheet that allows you to price amenities like those outlined in this article. However, I see no reason why you can’t structure your upcoming venture to allow you to retain her at the rate she’s been paid. The solution may be to find a building large enough, or configure the unit you choose, to accommodate more renters–driving the per-renter cost of the coordinator down. If you were to divide that $55,000 between 12 renters, for example, the cost would be $95 a week. Between 14 renters, it would be $81 a week.

Great coordinators are really hard to find. It would just be such a shame for all of you to lose her. 🙁

So now what…a couple of us are trying to open a salon in the same area with a fresh look and new name (but marketing the legacy of our former salon) and move into booth rent! Our stylist minus only 2-3 have a large business so we feel it’s a win for both.
We will do a booth lease and provide laundry and back bar for our renters. We all work well together and truthfully have had a lot of freedom in our past salon so not a huge change there. Actually a lot of excitement as we feel we are prepared for this next step in our careers. We want to stay together!
Our receptionist and salon phone number are very well established with our clients…..scary to consider it without those 2 ingredients. However, my present owner has paid our receptionist very well as she was more of a salon coordinator in all honesty. We can’t afford what she was being paid. So debating whether she can afford to work for less with less responsibilities and the affect to our long standing clients who know our number by heart and love our receptionist who knows their needs!
Several of us are so busy and don’t want to field calls and appts so want someone to do that for us…hoping it can still be her. But a few want to handle their own books/calls???
Any thoughts for us?

That’s an area that’s way too gray for me to ever advise either rental salon owners or microsalon owners to even consider. I’ve lost count of the number of times a renter contacted me, panicking, because their landlord stole their book and locked them out of the system until they pay some kind of arbitrary fine to get it back. (That’s extortion, btw.) I don’t advise it. Everyone should keep their own books. If the landlord wants to offer reception/appointment setting, it needs to be optional, charged separately, and the person doing it needs to be using the renter’s phone and renter’s books.