Creative HEAD July/August 2019

ANGELO VALLILLO, DNA ARTSPACE
“We opened the salon with a team that
included four self-employed stylists, and for
the first 18 months it was a massive battle
between those stylists and me and Dale
[Hearne, salon co-founder].
“They were friends of ours, we gave them
a good percentage but they wanted us to
pay the VAT on it and put it all through the
system, and that wasn’t going to work.
“So they got their own card machines. But
they were wasting colour, they were coming
and going. We were trying to control and grow
something as a brand, and it just wasn’t going
to work. We found out they were planning to
go to another salon, and we had to pull the
plug. We took a massive hit – we felt like we
had no control, no loyalty. In staff meetings
we would try to talk about wellbeing, our
philosophy, the craft, and it was like they were
not in the room, you could feel it in the air.
“If I was to do it all again, I would go one
way or the other. You look at the US right now
and salon suites… we have 3,000 square feet
so I could have done that if I’d chosen the
self-employed route. But that’s just being a
businessman. If you want to create a brand,
everyone has to be employed. You need to
choose, you can’t mix the two.”
JOANNE ETHERSON, SALON SERVICES
“Our main customer at Salon Services is the freelance and mobile stylist
– we have a name for her, she’s called Hayley, and we’ve done a lot of
work figuring out exactly who she is and everything she needs.
“She’s aged 25 to 35, she has children, and was creative in the industry
but is now on her own and wanting to get back into hairdressing. She
lacks the support of the salon team that she used to lean on. She’s
very frustrated and quite scared, worried about costs, and she’s in the
situation where customers might say ‘this is what I want’ and she doesn’t
have someone to turn to for help.
“Finding education that’s as cheap as possible is very important, and
it’s mainly online because with kids travel can be difficult, so she feels
distant and alone and doesn’t know who or what to trust online. She
wants to lean on big companies, which is why she’s shopping with us,
and she can come in and ask advice from our hairdressers in store.
They often lean on them like they did their salon crew.
“Education is so key – there’s tax and accounting, these are things
she’s never done before. What products should she buy, how can she
transport them? You can feel very isolated as a freelancer, and so it’s
important that Hayley feels part of a community. We don’t want her to
feel alone.
“I think we’re going to see more people going freelance, and more
people working in salon co-operatives renting chairs. With social media,
hairstylists can build up their base of customers and can take them from
a salon they’ve worked at. But I think you’ll also see more people going
mobile and working from home to keep costs down.”
Are you self employed or managing a salon
with self-employed stylists? Then check out
creativeheadmag.com/selfstyled from 4 July
64 CREATIVE HEAD