What the personal services market is worth
Companies in CAEM division 96 — hairdressing, cosmetics, body maintenance, dry cleaning — reported a turnover of 796.5 million lei for 2024, close to 40 million euro. In 2023 it was 637.2 million, and in 2022 — 479.3 million. Three years, one direction.
The number of companies climbed on the same curve: 793 in 2022, 817 in 2023, 932 in 2024. This is not a market divided between a few large players but one that dozens of new firms enter every year and where the average firm stays small — precisely the profile of a business that opens with a single location and grows out of its own takings.
Those figures cover the companies that report statistically. Alongside them works the single-chair salon held on an entrepreneur’s patent, which appears in no statistic at all — and which is, usually, the first form of the business.
Why now is a good time to open a beauty salon
Because this is one of the few fields where the state has removed requirements rather than added them. On 30 December 2025 the list of activities subject to sanitary operating authorisation was rewritten, and washing and dry-cleaning of textiles — on that list since 2017 — came off it. Anyone opening a dry cleaner today files one notification with the town hall and starts.
For salons the rule was clarified in the other direction: hairdressing, body maintenance and tattoo and piercing studios are named by CAEM code on the list, so you know exactly what is expected of you before you sign a lease. And since 21 March 2026 the law states outright that the sanitary operating authorisation is issued free of charge; only the assessment is paid for.
And because the barrier to entry is the craft, not the paperwork. There is no hairdresser’s licence, no state examination, no minimum share capital. There is a space, a chair, an authorisation tied to the address, and clients who come back every four weeks. The company that holds all of it together — an SRL — is registered with no share capital and in a few working days.
What it costs to open a beauty salon
The paperwork is the predictable part of the budget. The trade notification costs 100 lei — around 5 euro — and is filed with the town hall of the locality where the salon will operate, separately for each unit if you open more than one. The local council may reduce or waive that payment, particularly where the notification is filed online.
The sanitary operating authorisation itself costs nothing. You pay only for the assessment of the premises’ sanitary condition, 875 lei — around 44 euro — settled when the application is filed, through MPay or at a bank. The file asks for a copy of the ownership deed or the lease for the space you will work in, and the list of services you will provide; the issuing deadline is ten working days.
Registering the SRL has no minimum share capital and takes a few working days at the Public Services Agency — we file the papers, pick the CAEM codes and hand you a company ready for the town hall notification. The rest of the budget — rent, fit-out, chairs, mirrors, the steriliser, the first stock of products — is where your choices matter, and the only part no piece of paper can help with.
What to know before you open
The authorisation attaches to the address, not to the company
The sanitary operating authorisation is issued for each address where you carry out the activity. If you move the salon, open a second location or change premises within the same building, the procedure starts again for the new address.
This is where the lease comes in: the authorisation runs for five years if you own the premises or hold a lease longer than five years, and if the lease is shorter, the authorisation expires with it. For premises with seasonal activity it is granted for one year. The lease, in other words, is negotiated before the file — not after.
Your team needs hygiene training, not a state diploma
Staff providing beauty and body maintenance services — barbering, hairdressing, manicure, pedicure, tattoo and piercing, massage, solarium, cosmetic procedures — take four hours of hygiene training on hiring and then once every five years. Specialists with medical qualifications are exempt. Periodic hygiene training is provided free of charge.
At a dry cleaner the requirement is narrower: the training falls on the person responsible for organising and supervising cleaning and disinfection, not on every employee.
The products you sell have a regime of their own
If you place cosmetic products on the market — importing them, or selling them under your own brand — they are notified to the National Agency for Public Health, and the sanitary expertise for that notification costs 339 lei per product. If you merely use and resell products supplied by an authorised distributor, the notification is their obligation, not yours.
Worth settling before the first order, because the question comes up at the first inspection and the answer sits in a single clause of the supply contract.
The line between beauty and medicine is drawn on paper
Services authorised as beauty and body maintenance are intended to care for the body by non-invasive methods and do not fall within the medical field. Invasive treatment is delivered under medical activity codes, with a permissive act obtained for medical activity and with staff holding medical qualifications.
It is the most expensive mistake available in this field, because it surfaces at an inspection or, worse, at an incident. If you intend to offer invasive procedures too, the structure is set from the start: separate CAEM codes, a separate room, a doctor on the payroll. We prepare the file so the two regimes never blur into each other.
An SRL — Moldova’s limited liability company — is the form a beauty salon opens in, and the main reason is not prestige but liability: it stays limited to the share capital, and your personal assets sit outside the business. In a field where you work on people’s skin, with equipment, chemicals and procedures, that is exactly the line you want drawn from day one.
There is no entry threshold. An SRL has no minimum share capital, is registered at the Public Services Agency within a few working days, and from that same day opens everything that follows: you can hire stylists, open a second and a third location, sign contracts with hotels, clinics and gyms, sell products at reception and take payment by transfer. The sanitary operating authorisation is granted to legal and natural persons alike, so the form you choose does not complicate the file at the public health agency at all.
The entrepreneur’s patent remains a genuine option for a single chair, and we will say so plainly. Barbering and cosmetic services are on the list of permitted activities, at a monthly fee of 200 lei in Chișinău, Bălți, Bender and Tiraspol, 80 lei in other municipalities and towns and 30 lei in rural localities — roughly 10, 4 and 1.5 euro. Laundry has its own entry, at 90, 45 and 30 lei.
It carries two hard limits, though, and you reach them quickly if things go well: sales income may not exceed 300,000 lei — around 15,000 euro — over 12 consecutive months, and the holder of a patent has no right to employ workers. That caps the salon at roughly 25,000 lei of takings a month and at one pair of hands: yours. A second stylist, a receptionist or the first colleague you share the rent with means a company, automatically.
The sole trader — întreprindere individuală — looks like a shortcut between the two, but it is not. The law says outright that it is not a legal person and that the owner is liable without limit, with their entire personal estate. You pay the same taxes as a company and keep the same records, while carrying the personal risk of a patent — the combination with no advantage in it.
Moving from a patent to an SRL is not a restart: the same clients, the same premises, the same sanitary authorisation obtained for the address. Only the signature changes. We register the SRL, choose your CAEM codes and prepare the sanitary authorisation file alongside your existing work, so the salon does not close for a single day — and if you are opening now, we start it directly in the shape you will want it to have in two years.
