European Wax Center at BofA Conference: Strategic Reset for 2025

On Wednesday, 12 March 2025, European Wax Center (NASDAQ: EWCZ) presented at the BofA Securities Consumer and Retail Conference 2025. CEO Chris Morris, 60 days into his role, outlined a strategic reset for the year, acknowledging past expansion challenges while expressing optimism for future growth. The company plans to focus on marketing, franchisee relationships, and operational improvements, despite expected net closures of 40 to 60 units.

Key Takeaways

• European Wax Center plans a "reset year" in 2025, focusing on core capabilities.
• Expected net closures of 40 to 60 units in 2025, with growth resuming in 2026.
• New partnerships and management hires aim to enhance marketing and operations.
• Cash-on-cash returns are down, but mature centers show strong performance.
• Inflation impacts build-out costs, prompting cost mitigation strategies.

Financial Results

European Wax Center reported system-wide sales of approximately $950 million last year. Mature centers, those over five years old, average $1.1 million in Average Unit Volume (AUV). However, cash-on-cash returns for these centers have decreased to around 40% due to top-line compression.

Key Financial Metrics:

• System-wide sales: $950 million
• Mature centers AUV: $1.1 million
• Cash-on-cash returns: 40%
• Core guest and wax pass sales: 70% of total sales

Inflation is increasing build-out costs for new centers, leading to efforts to mitigate these expenses.

Operational Updates

European Wax Center is addressing underperforming franchises with a hands-on approach, including best practice sharing and focused coaching. A new data analytics platform aims to improve marketing effectiveness by linking impressions to guest behavior.

Operational Developments:

• Projected net closures: 40 to 60 units in 2025
• Data analytics platform showing progress in marketing efficiency
• Increased efficiency in marketing spend

Future Outlook

The company is positioning 2025 as a "reset year" to strengthen core capabilities and lay the foundation for future growth. The focus will be on building a robust marketing engine, improving operational execution, and strengthening franchisee relationships.

Guidance and Strategic Plans:

• Return to consistent growth in 2026
• Focus on core customer base and attract non-core customers
• Potential acquisition of underperforming franchise locations

Q&A Highlights

During the Q&A session, management addressed pricing architecture adjustments and the importance of the Wax Pass program. Promotional strategies are not heavily utilized, as the focus is on targeted marketing.

Key Points:

• Pricing architecture may need adjustments
• Wax Pass program remains fundamental
• Focus on targeted marketing over promotions
• Laser hair removal expansion on pause

For more detailed insights, refer to the full transcript below.

Full transcript - BofA Securities Consumer and Retail Conference 2025:

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Welcome. Thanks, everybody, for coming today. We’re really excited to announce Chris Morris, the new CEO of European Wax and Stacy Surly, the CFO.

Thank you guys both for coming to Miami.

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: Yes. Thank you.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Busy time for you. European Wax reported earnings yesterday. So before we dive into the results of the quarter, I just wanted to start by asking you to give a quick overview of European Wax.

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: Yeah, yeah, sure, absolutely. So we operate in the out of home wax services industry. We are the clear dominant leader. This is arguably a category that we created twenty years ago. There was really no one doing what we’re doing on such a specialized level until we started doing it.

And so as a result, it’s a very fragmented industry. And the reason I said we’re the clear dominant leader is we’re 11 times larger than our next closest competitor. There’s still ample white space for this brand to continue to grow. It’s about a $7,000,000,000 industry. And our system wide sales last year was about $950,000,000.

And so we’re still a relatively small piece of this industry. And we’ve got a very loyal guest base. About 95% of our guests are female, five percent are male. So our core guest, she visits us about seven times a year. It’s a very important component to her daily routine or to her personal care routine rather.

And so as a result, you know, it’s, that that loyalty just results in a very resilient revenue base. So it’s, I’m excited to be here. I’m sixty days on the job and, really happy to be here in front of all of you.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Thanks. And and what does the competitive landscape look like for the industry?

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: So you have again, it’s it’s very fragmented. You have, you you you have a bunch of mom and pops. You know? So our our biggest competitor across the country is, you know, mom and pops for the most part. And then you have some regional players out there that typically have, you know, 30 to 40, the largest, you know, has about, you know, close to 100 locations.

And then you have med spas.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Okay. So, Chris, you’ve been at European Bank sixty days now? Yeah. Any early observations you wanna share? Has anything surprised you since you joined?

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: Yeah. So great question. We are I’d say first, I knew this coming in, but I think having spent the last sixty days and immersing myself in the business, meeting directly with our franchisees, our management team. I’ve been doing a tremendous amount of field visits over the last sixty days. I’m typically out in the market a couple days a week.

And the first thing I’ll say is that we are starting from such a strong position of strength. This is an incredible brand with so much potential. The fact that we are the leading operator in this industry and there’s such a loyal guest base with so much white space still in front of us. It’s a great place to be. Our franchisees were largely franchise operated, so we have about over 1,000 units.

We own five, the rest are franchise locations. And our franchisees are incredibly passionate about what we do. They they care about the services that we provide, and they believe in the future. And so I think that is you know, the first observation is just how much potential that this brand has. The second observation is, while we have all that potential and we’ve been very successful to date, we do have some work to do in 2025.

So yesterday in our earnings call, we characterized the 2025 year as a reset year. And the the reason for that is, you know, since I’m new on the job, I have the benefit of, you know, looking back, and hindsight’s always 2020. I can tell you that I wouldn’t be here had it not been for my predecessor, David Berg. So I have tremendous respect for David and what he built over over the last several years. When when we look back, it’s it’s very clear that, we were very focused on new unit expansion.

And we didn’t really take the time to put the building blocks in place to support that growth. And so with the benefit of hindsight, it’s clear to us that our growth just simply outpaced our core capabilities around some important blocking and tackling functions, things like marketing analytics. We don’t have a marketing engine today that you would expect a company with 1,000 units to have. We’re in the process of building that. With our approach on real estate and site selection was more of a bottoms up approach, working direct with our franchisees to activate their MUD agreements as opposed to taking more of a strategic overlay and a top down approach and identifying areas of opportunity to grow.

On our ops side of the business, we see a tremendous opportunity to enhance our analytical rigor around how we partner with our operations to drive performance. And that’s both in top line and bottom line. So when I look at this, the observation is a tremendous amount of upside, but a year where we have some work to do. But the good news is when we get through this work this year, we are going to be in a very well positioned to be able to get back to growth and get back to growth in a very consistent and methodical way. So I’m excited about that.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Okay. And then, you know, reset year, where are the most important or most impactful things that you plan to start with during this reset year?

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: So I’d say the first thing is, obviously, working on the marketing engine. So that work was kicked off by David Berg before I started, and we’re continuing that journey. So we just hired a Chief Commercial Officer. We’ve been partnering with a group that we’ve talked about publicly named Delabra Digital. And so that is one of our very top priorities because getting that built out is gonna allow us to be a much better do a much better job of being able to drive traffic into our centers in a very personalized way.

And so that is kind of first and foremost. The second is just building a very strong relationship with our franchisees to drive performance at the center level across all areas of the business. I have the benefit in my career. I’ve been both a franchisor and a franchisee, And it uniquely positions me to partner with our franchisees and build a strong partnership all around execution. So that partnership will be fundamental to our ability to return to growth.

Because as we return to growth, we’ve got a system of franchisees who are very capable operators and are going to work with us to get back to that.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: I think, as an analyst, the thing I always worry about is a reset year turns into reset years. Yeah. So just describe to us so you’ll do the analytics. You’ll drive the customer growth. And then are there specific metrics that your franchisees want to see before they really reinvigorate their store opening engine?

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: Yeah. I mean, we’re really our entire organization is focused on, stimulating traffic growth or or ticket growth at at our locations. And so the work that we’re doing, building out this marketing engine, we’re doing it directly related directly in partnership with the franchisees. So the green shoots that we’re all looking for is around activating transaction growth. And the way where we see that opportunity is it’s a partnership between marketing and operations.

So there’s we we will be doing a much better job of driving traffic into the top of the funnel, but so much of our ability to grow sales depends on the experience that happens in the center. And so there’s at least half of that opportunity is at the center level. And so we are working directly with them to be able to attack both sides of this. We’re attacking the top of the funnel driving transactions and then executing at an approved level. And so as we’re building out all those capabilities, we’re looking for the right KPIs, the right leading indicators that that that’s starting to gain traction.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Okay. You also announced some management changes yesterday. Can you speak a little bit about the new executive you you announced and what you’ve been looking for? And should we expect any additional changes?

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: Yeah, sure. So having the right team, so we have obviously, we have a lot of work to do this year. We have a lot of upside and getting the right team in place to be able to execute on these strategies is fundamental. We had some, when I stepped foot in the door sixty days ago, there were some very significant gaps. We did not have a chief operating officer, and we did not have a chief commercial officer.

So those are two fundamental positions. We have a nationwide search going on right now for a chief operating officer that’s well underway. Chief commercial officer, we we brought in an individual extremely capable individual named Katie Mullen. She was spent about ten years with BCG on doing marketing transformations for companies and then was the chief digital officer at Neenah Marcus and the chief customer officer at JCPenney’s. She has been a phenomenal addition to the team.

When I started sixty days ago, Stacy and I had a lot of conversations around, you know, where she is in her career journey and where she wants to go. And, it was clear that, you know, that she was gonna be transitioning out of the organization, and I needed to find a CFO to take, you know, carry the torch forward. And, we’ve done that. So we’ve hired a CFO named Tom Kim. He starts April 7.

Very talented individual, has significant franchise experience, and I believe is gonna do be just a terrific partner to our team as we build out the analytical rigor in those areas that I mentioned. And then last is on technology. So we’re investing heavily in building out a data analytics platform that’s gonna drive so much of our business starting with the marketing engine. I felt it was really important to have a strategic thought partner on the executive team helping us think through that. So we created a position, chief information and digital officer, and we hired a very capable individual named Chris Andrews.

He starts March 31. And he not only has the right technical background, but also has significant experience in franchise. So very excited about

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: that. Great. So I wanted to shift to unit growth, which has always been a really huge part of the European wax story. Your guidance calls for net 28 to 50 closures this year. Can you talk a little bit about what led to that?

And if there’s any commonalities, be it location, type of owner, how long the center has been open that you could point to on these closures?

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: Yeah. Sure. So my very first when I stepped in the door, the very first thing that I did with the rest of our team is just to get our arms around just the health of the business to really dig in, work direct with our franchisees to understand kind of what we were dealing with. And through that exercise is how we arrived at the range of 40 to 60 closures. I want to be clear, we don’t have a list of 40 to 60 I mean, we don’t have, franchisees raising their hand and saying, I’m going to close.

This is a situation where we partner directly with them, and we’ve looked at, you know, the fundamental trends of the business. We looked at lease renewals. We talked to them about their intentions, and we’re very comfortable living within that range of 40 to 60. At the same time, we are actively partnering with them and managing. We want to be on the low end of that range.

We don’t want to be on the high end. And so that’s work that’s well underway that we will be focused on through the remainder of this year. There’s not really a I would love to be able to just say there’s one common link across all of these, and it’s really not that type of situation. It’s a variety of different reasons why this is a year we’re going to have some net closures. So the important thing to us is managing this in the most effective way.

And as I said, when we’re done with all of this work, by the time by we close out 2025, our every step we’re taking is to return the business to growth in 2026 again. And so I believe strongly when we execute on all of our initiatives, we will go into the 2026 year better positioned, better poised and with a team of people who are ready to execute and get back to growth going forward.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Okay. And then, what’s being done to support some of the underperforming franchises or stores to prevent further closures?

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: So the biggest thing that we’re doing, well, there’s it’s back to that strong partnership with franchisees and having to build an analytical rigor to assist. So we have our entire network of, op support focused on these underperforming centers, and we are working directly with them to identify where they have opportunities. So it’s nothing profound. It’s just really blocking and tackling. It’s let’s understand where those opportunities are.

Let’s understand where the gaps are in the execution. Let’s share best practices. Let’s develop the reporting to track the progress we’re making, celebrate the individuals who are making progress, coach the individuals who aren’t. It’s just really bringing that laser focus to that ops side of the business is, where we’re focused first. The second is on this data analytics platform that we’re building.

We’ve already made considerable progress on and we’re in a better position today than we were just three or four months ago. So we’ve improved the pipe. So, basically, we now have, we’re now able to draw a link from the marketing impression to the guest behavior, and that’s something that didn’t exist before. That’s that’s huge for us. We’re out testing a number of different creative approaches so we can go through a test and learn so we know exactly what piece of creative, what type of messaging works with which audience.

That’s work that we weren’t able to do before that we’re now doing. And we’re far more efficient in our media buying than we were before. So we’re getting more bang for our buck, so to speak. So we’re getting our dollars are going towards working media at a greater rate than they were before. So as we’re building all that out, we’re keeping a very sharp focus on where do we have opportunities with our underperforming units to provide some additional assistance.

So it’s a combination of the marketing approach and the ops focus.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Great. And then what about the economics as it relates to cost of opening a center, breakeven, maturity? Have those changed? Or are you looking to try to change those?

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: Yes. So I’ll let Stacy.

Stacy Surly, CFO, European Wax: Yes. So as we look at that, the unit economics have certainly become more constrained, but we still feel like that overall, we’re very strong. If you look at our AUV for mature centers, which we define as something over five years, we’re about a $1,100,000 AUV. The cash on cash returns are around 40%, which has come down from prior years, but that’s not surprising, right, as a result of the compression on the top line. And we have seen some inflation on the build out cost.

So that’s something we’re focused on as well to see how can we mitigate that and bring that down. But having said all that, we still feel like we’re compared to other franchise operators, we still feel like we’re in a good position, but work to be done, all of the things that Chris has just walked through to really try to reignite the top line and to get us back to where we have been in the past.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Okay. Moving on to your core customer, what’s the target age, the target income demographic? And can you elaborate on how that consumer is doing in this environment?

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: Yes, sure. I’ll start and then I’ll let Stacy kind of fill in some gaps. So as I mentioned earlier, we’re 95% female, five % male. And as we’re developing this marketing engine, it’s going to allow us to reach various demographic profiles in a more impactful way. And so as opposed to just having one core, but the core guest is, 35 to 45, skews higher income.

And as we said, our core guest is a very loyal guest, visits us seven times a year. They view this experience largely as a nondiscretionary spend because it’s such an important component to their personal care routine. And so our core guest is fairly resilient, and that core guest represents the majority of our sales. And so it puts us in a unique position to as we’re navigating these difficult waters in a complex consumer environment. This is not a situation where we’re losing our core gas at a rapid pace.

Our core gas is hanging in there. And so for us, it’s more about managing the edges of that customer profile. But I’ll let Stacy No.

Stacy Surly, CFO, European Wax: I think you hit on most of it. I think the only thing I would add is, as we’ve talked about in prior quarters, that our opportunity is that non core gas, right, primarily so that we can get them in, drive the traffic so that we can then convert them and make them more of a core guest. And so it’s really around that new guest and getting them to change their behavior. And obviously, in this backdrop of this consumer environment, macro environment, it’s been more challenging. And so that’s something that we’re obviously very, very focused on.

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: So what proportion of sales comes from that core guest? And then how has the behavior looked differently for the noncore? So the combination of our core guests and our wax pass sales, it’s about 70% of our total sales.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: And then the other 30, that’s been a lot more volatile. Maybe talk a little bit about why or what they’re feeling or seeing or what what you’re hearing from them.

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: I I think what they’re feeling is no different than what everybody else is feeling. It’s just been it’s been a very complex consumer environment. It’s been choppy, and there’s been a lot of pressure on spending. And so they’re just feeling that ongoing pressure. And as a result, it it has made it more difficult for us to be able to generate sustainable sales within that 30% growth.

It’s just been more challenging.

Stacy Surly, CFO, European Wax: And Oh, I’m sorry. Sorry.

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: No. No. Go ahead.

Stacy Surly, CFO, European Wax: Yeah. Because if we think about these kind of two buckets of our guests, that that core guest really does view the service as a nondiscretionary part of their overall beauty regimen and then the rest is it’s nondiscretionary. And so again, when you’re counting your pennies, that sort of thing, that is where that becomes a little bit more challenging for that particular consumer and where there has been more volatility. And as you’re building

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: the building blocks for marketing strategies, do you think about trying to reinvigorate that existing 30% guest? Or is it all a new customer acquisition opportunity?

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: No. It’s it’s definitely both. It’s definitely both. And and I think we have the the ability to do that. And so one of the things that, as I mentioned, we’re testing a number of different value propositions in the market today.

And we have the ability to be able to test different offers with different messages with different creative reps to different groups of guests. And so that’s one of the benefits of being able to build out this engine is we’ll be able to be highly personalized. Mhmm. And so we’re we’re we’re trying to attack both sides of that.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Okay. And then increasing the frequency of existing guests, obviously, one of the core tenants. I know you’ve been working with the Labra Digital. Maybe you can expand on the progress that they have made to try to improve guest acquisition and retention?

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: Yeah. So, I mean, the progress that’s been made is the three areas that I mentioned. So we’ve we now have a link from the impression to the guest behavior, which that’s absolutely huge because that really enhances our ability to understand what’s happening. We’ve dramatically improved the efficacy of our spend, and so we are getting more we’re we’re able to be more efficient with our dollars, meaning that we’re able to buy, we’ve been able to to drive more working media and reduce nonworking media for the same amount of money. So we’re getting more usage out of the dollars we’re allocating to marketing.

And then just being in this position to where we can run these creative tests and gather data and insights, that’s really important. But these things are you know, this is it’s a two year project, and so they’re a few months in, you know, just a month ahead of me. And so we this is going to take time to build, but the good news is we’ve already been able to accomplish a lot. And as we move forward, we’re just going to be able to layer add layers on top of that. The focus that we’re bringing to partnering with our operation our ops team to execute and to build awareness on just the role that that execution plays in driving overall sales, I think, is also gonna be a very important component to get the most out of this investment.

So I’m very, very enthusiastic about what we’re gonna be able to do there.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: And will this require increased marketing spending, or are you just reimagining the way you spend the dollars?

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: Right now, it’s more reimagining how we’re spending the dollars is the approach that we’re taking.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Okay. And then maybe an update on pricing. What pricing actions have you taken over the past year? And then what do you expect for the coming year?

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: Yes, sure. And again, I’ll start with that. I’ll let Stacy fill in the gaps since she has the history. I’ll tell you, as a franchisor, we can’t dictate prices that’s done by the franchisee. But I was remiss in not mentioning this in my observations.

One observation is we do not have a sophisticated pricing tool available to our franchisees. And so I see that as a huge opportunity, and we are working directly with our franchisees right now evaluating different tools and fully expect to land on the right recommendation and move forward. There’s a big upside in getting pricing right along with the right marketing. And so when at that intersection, we think that there’s huge upside there. So the pricing that’s in the system today is fairly nominal.

So very, very minimal pricing, and our ability to have effective pricing is just gonna get better as we partner with the franchisees this year. But do you wanna what would you like to do?

Stacy Surly, CFO, European Wax: Yes. We have not made a kind of a broad based recommendation across the enterprise for a couple of years now. Our franchisees take price all the time, though, as we’ve talked about that that’s been a driver of our comp. But we, as a franchisor, haven’t made that recommendation. But like Chris said, doing a lot of work to figure out a better way and more sophisticated way to implement this you know, with our franchisees and give them the tools that they need because, again, we can only recommend, but to give them the tools that they need to make sure that we are, you know, very competitive.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Okay. And then right now, the recommendation is regional regionally based?

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: Correct.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Okay. So it would be up to them to manage

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: to

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: take that and maybe up or down depending on their success rate. Okay.

Stacy Surly, CFO, European Wax: And even looking at the service by service versus, you know, broadly. Yeah. Okay.

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: And then our role as a franchisor is to report to the system on, you know, what’s working, what’s not based on what we hear from the franchisee. So it’s sharing the ideas. It’s creating a mechanism for them to share ideas and Mhmm. And to develop best practices.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Okay. And then shifting gear for future growth opportunities, you’ve tested laser in a few centers, but then recently just pressed pause, to focus on wax. What’s the rationale behind potentially going back into laser? And do you still see this as an opportunity?

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: So again, sixty days on the job, my impression the first sixty days on the job is I do. I think the short answer is yes. I do see this as an opportunity, but it’s kind of first things first. I fully support putting this on pause. So and when we put it on pause, that simply means we’re not expanding the task.

So we still have the task out in 20 centers. We’re still gathering information. But the fact of the matter is we’ve got a lot of work to do in the priorities that I outlined with you earlier today and on the call yesterday, and that’s our focus. Our focus is on our core business. Our focus is on working with our franchisees to manage through these closures, and then starting to build out the analytical rigor in these other areas and to get the business back to growth, new year and expansion growth.

And so where laser fits into that, at this point in time, I don’t know exactly where that fits in. I I just know that we’ve got work to do on the core first, and then we’ll get get to laser. But, we’ll continue to learn on these 20 centers where we’re testing it.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Okay. And before we open it up to questions, I just wanted to follow-up on one thing that you’d spoken about a little bit on the call yesterday, which was, you own five stores. You know, maybe is there a consideration to, instead of closing some of these underperforming ones, buy them back to to increase your ability to test some of these new processes?

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: Yeah. Absolutely. My my answer is gonna be very similar to what I just said in laser is, I fundamentally believe we should not only be a best in class franchisor, we should be a best in class operator. And I think the path towards being a best in class franchisor is to be a world class operator. So I it it at some point in time, we will, capitalize on that opportunity, but now is not the right time.

Mhmm. What our, you know, our team is completely focused on the initiatives that I watch you through, and that is crystal clear to the entire team. We we have to earn our way into these other strategic opportunities. So let’s manage through these closures and make the most out of it, partner with our franchisees to, develop the the necessary school skills to drive top line and to manage bottom line, bring a more sophisticated approach to real estate and site selection and to get back to growth. And, along the way, I believe when we focus on those those right foundation building blocks, there will be an opportunity for us to buy.

But when we buy, we need to make sure that we have the operating capabilities to be able to execute. And so today, I don’t have a chief operating officer. You know? So we’re out searching for a chief operating officer. And so we’ve just gotta be really smart and methodical about how we approach the sequencing of all these opportunities.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Okay. It looks like we have one question over there.

Unidentified speaker, Analyst: Thanks, guys. Just a follow-up on the pricing part of our conversation. So how do you think your current pricing architecture across services will fare if consumer spend does start to slow a bit? And then maybe just remind us how your core consumer fared over the last several years during this inflationary environment and what gives you confidence that it will be okay?

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: Yes. Stacy, you want to take that with do you have the history?

Stacy Surly, CFO, European Wax: Sure. So from a I’ll start with the second part of the question. As far as how the consumer has fared the past couple of years, that is what we have been talking about as far as this kind of non core guest, right? That that is where the challenge has been because as we look at our core guest, which is a routine and a wax pass guest, it’s been very steady, right, from a standpoint of their the amount of spend and their visits. That hasn’t really changed over the past couple of years.

It’s the other piece that is the opportunity. And as we’ve grown, right, over 200 centers over the past few years, we haven’t kept up from a new guest and bringing more guests into top of the funnel to get them to a place where then we’re converting. So that’s kind of where we are there. From a pricing perspective, I think that we’ll see as far as the consumer, but we feel like right now we’re very competitively priced, but we’re doing the work to figure out making sure we’re understanding the price elasticity. Is there more opportunity either to go up or potentially we need to go down to ensure that we are competitive?

And as we’re putting together this marketing muscle, making sure that that all kind of is working together so that when we attract the guests, we’re not we’re making sure we’re doing that at the right price point. And something we’ll have to continue to be mindful as it relates to the projections that we put out. We’ve basically assumed that there’s not a change necessarily in the macro. Obviously, if that gets worse, then we’re going to be that will impact us potentially at the bottom end of our range. But right now, we’re just assuming that it’s a little bit more of the same of what we’ve been dealing with.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Any other audience questions? Maybe before we wrap it up, no good European wax fireside chat is complete without a discussion of wax pass, which I don’t feel like we’ve really touched on too much. Can you talk a little bit about, what that looks like, some of the promotional levers you’ve tried, what’s worked, what hasn’t, and where you see the future of the Wax Pass?

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: So, yeah, Wax Pass is a fundamental part of our brand. And so don’t I definitely don’t see us making any changes anytime soon. I also don’t see us moving into heavy promotional, as as we’re working to navigate, driving more demand for our business. At this point in time, we don’t see a need to get heavy to move forward with a heavy discounting approach. So I think the wax pass is fundamental.

We’re going to continue to do it. I think the real opportunity is on the work that we’re doing on the marketing engine and getting the right impression to the right person at the right time. So that’s to us is the greatest path. And when you combine the top of the funnel with the in center execution, that leads to wax pass sales. The most common wax pass is buy and then you get three.

So, you know, you’re buying nine visits and you get three free. And, you know, I think we’re very pleased with that type of approach. There’s always room for additional testing, and we’re working with our franchisees on, you know, trying you know, is there an opportunity to restructure things? But at this point in time, that’s very minimal. But if if we were to make changes, it would be something we would test.

We would vet, make sure we felt comfortable with it before we executed it because it is so fundamental. Mhmm.

Unidentified speaker, Interviewer: Great. Well, thank you both for joining us today. Good luck with all the new strategies.

Chris Morris, CEO, European Wax: Thank you. Yeah. Appreciate it. Thank you very much, everybody.

This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.