How we source, verify, and cite.

The referenceability rule

Nothing gets asserted on this site unless it can be traced. In practice that means a chain: a claim in a guide links to an entry on the research hub (a /research#id anchor for that exact figure), and that entry links to the primary source in the bibliography (a /research/sources#id anchor), which links out to the original publication. Prose, then internal reference, then the external source at the leaf. If a figure cannot survive that chain, it does not get published.

How the 100 statistics were gathered

The research was run as a parallel, source-audited web sweep across ten dimensions of the beauty business: market and industry, economics and margins, labor and staffing, technology and AI adoption, booking and no-shows, marketing and discovery, retention and rebooking, reviews and reputation, front desk and operations, and local and AI search. For each, we gathered figures from 57 primary and reputable secondary publications, prioritizing:

• Industry bodies and official data: the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Professional Beauty Association, and the International Spa Association.
• Peer-reviewed and academic research, such as the Harvard research on how Yelp ratings move revenue for independent, owner-operated businesses.
• Named survey and market-research firms: BrightLocal, SparkToro, IBISWorld, Fortune Business Insights, and salon compensation surveys, always attributed by publisher and year.
• Vendor data from platforms like Zenoti, GlossGenius, Phorest, and Boulevard, used carefully and labeled as vendor-reported, and triangulated against independent sources rather than presented alone.

How each number was verified

A figure is only included if the source page was actually fetched and the number seen on it, not paraphrased from a secondary blog. Every statistic was then independently re-checked a second time: its source URL was re-opened and compared against the exact claim, and anything that could not be confirmed was dropped. Where a publisher blocks automated access, we cite the accessible press release or reputable secondary reporting of the same figure and say so.

Honesty over hype

We correct popular myths rather than repeat them (a flawless five-star rating is not the goal, and responding to reviews matters more than never receiving a bad one). We publish the uncomfortable numbers too, like the share of clients who still say they are not comfortable with an AI receptionist, because a source you can only half-trust is worse than none. Vendor claims are labeled as such.

Freshness and corrections

Figures carry the year of their source, and we prefer the most recent available. The industry moves fast, so treat pricing and adoption numbers as of their cited date and confirm current specifics with the vendor. If you believe a figure here is wrong or out of date, that is exactly the kind of thing we want to fix.

Data usage terms

The underlying facts and their sources belong to the publishers we cite, and we link to each so you can go to the origin. The curation, categorization, and synthesis on this site, our selection and organization of these statistics into a single referenced index, is Sheen's own work. You are welcome to cite it with attribution and a link back. Please do not scrape or republish the compiled dataset wholesale. These are the terms the research dataset on this site is licensed under.