Lumière Nail Bar Business Plan — The Membership Programme

How paid memberships convert walk-in demand into contracted revenue, the retained margin they generate, and the package breakage that follows.

The Membership Programme

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4.1 The unit economics
4.2 The threshold that decides the investment
4.3 What the programme has to do operationally
4.4 Prepaid packages and the liability they create

4.1 The unit economics

Figure 9. The membership unit economics, per member per month.

Element	Value	Note
Monthly fee	R690	Collected by debit order, whether or not the client attends
Consumed in included treatments	74%	A defined bundle. The treatment component is already counted in the treatment revenue line
Retained margin	26%	R179 a member a month, carrying no additional cost
Member benefits	Preferential booking; discount on additional services and retail	What makes the arithmetic worth doing for the client
Annual fee revenue at 780 members	R6 458 400	Of which R1 679 000 is retained margin
Prepaid packages	Cash collected upfront against future treatment	Works similarly; breakage recognised at 11%

	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Year 4	Year 5
Members	90	260	470	640	780
Fee revenue collected, R	745 200	2 152 800	3 891 600	5 299 200	6 458 400
Retained margin at 26%, R	194 000	560 000	1 012 000	1 378 000	1 679 000
Package breakage, R	35 000	86 000	144 000	189 000	221 000
Recurring contribution, R	229 000	646 000	1 156 000	1 567 000	1 900 000
Recurring share of revenue	5.4%	8.5%	12.4%	12.4%	14.0%
Recurring share of contribution	16.3%	19.5%	27.3%	25.2%	28.0%

Figure 10. Membership build and recurring contribution.

4.2 The threshold that decides the investment

Figure 11. Cumulative five-year profit against the membership base.

Membership base at maturity	Cumulative five-year profit after tax (R)	Assessment
0	(1 320 528)	Start-up losses not recovered
150	(553 507)	Start-up losses not recovered
256	(9 085)	Start-up losses not recovered
400	678 156	Start-up losses recovered
550	1 392 864	Start-up losses recovered
650	1 873 779	Start-up losses recovered
780	2 493 677	Start-up losses recovered
900	3 046 954	Start-up losses recovered

4.3 What the programme has to do operationally

▪ Fill the quiet hours, not the busy ones. A membership that only redeems on Saturday afternoons adds cost without adding capacity. Off-peak member pricing and preferential mid-week booking are what convert the programme into utilisation.

▪ Transfer the relationship to the business. The membership contract, the debit order and the client record sit with Lumière. A departing therapist takes a skill; they do not take a contracted member.

▪ Be sold at every visit as a defined process. Membership conversion is a trained conversation with a script and a conversion rate, reported monthly alongside joins and churn. It is not left to enthusiasm.

▪ Be designed to be used. High redemption produces retention, retail attachment and referral. Breakage is what is left over, not what is aimed at, and a programme with low redemption is a churn problem disguised as a margin.

4.4 Prepaid packages and the liability they create

Figure 12. Prepaid packages — liability before income.

	Year 1	Year 2	Year 3	Year 4	Year 5
Prepaid package value sold, R	318 182	781 818	1 309 091	1 718 182	2 009 091
Breakage recognised in income at 11%, R	35 000	86 000	144 000	189 000	221 000
Unredeemed value held as a liability, R	70 000	172 000	288 000	378 000	442 000

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