Forecasting
Her Future
Gail Field
With a strategic eye to the future and her mom as her business partner, a successful stylist opens her San Diego salon.
At 36 years old, Keri Davis is thinking about her retirement. In fact, she’s been thinking about it for many years. Not today, not tomorrow, but someday. She believes her careful business planning from an age when most owners are trying to keep their heads above water will help her step away from the chair well before her golden years.
“Even at my very first assisting job, I looked at some of the hairdressers there who were 50-60 years old and still cutting full-time,” Davis says. “I thought, ‘Is this what my retirement is going to look like?’ I don’t want to have to cut to survive for the rest of my life.”
Davis spent her early career working as a stylist and educator—putting in grueling hours at the salons she worked for and doing hair shows and educational events. “Working so hard, I learned that I really enjoyed the business, but I needed to be an owner and not just an operator,” she says. “But that training time was invaluable—it taught me the recipe for success.”
Perfect Partners
Keri knew she needed to open her own salon and felt she had the perfect
partner—her mother, Carol Davis. “My mom and I are best friends,
and she’s always been really supportive of me,” Keri says.
But both mother and daughter were savvy enough to know that more than
a strong personal relationship was needed for ultimate success.
“We took a business finance class together to see what we were getting ourselves into and if we had the same ideas about running a business,” Keri says.
“As her mother, I always told her I would be her partner when she was ready to open her own salon,” Carol says. “Still, I was surprised when it actually happened—and a little scared. I really followed Keri’s lead. She had a definite plan for opening with all her systems in place, and she knew what she did and didn’t want.”
Starting Out
Opening in 1992 with about seven employees and themselves, the Davis women
named their salon Gila Rut, Keri’s Hebrew name, that roughly translates
to “happiness and freedom.” “It seemed like an appropriate
name based on our goals and aspirations,” Keri says.
With Carol behind the front desk and Keri managing the salon and working full-time as a stylist, success came rapidly—and along with it—almost total burnout. “I had stopped teaching and doing shows, but I had high turnover with managers, and it was difficult just to keep running, much less grow and expand,” says Keri.
When they had been open for about five years, Keri attended her first TSA event and heard the question that changed her entire focus on her salon. “The question that was brought up again and again was, ‘Are you working on your business or in your business?’”she recalls. “Well, that was it for me. I couldn’t develop my business and take care of everything else. Something had to change.”
She decided to hire a full-time salon manager and cut back her chair time to one to two days per week. Now she spends most of her work time on the business side: human resources, administration and marketing. “I’ve really spent the last few years creating and growing systems so that Gila Rut is a self-managed business, and it’s been no easy feat,” Keri says. “A business needs to have success based on the way it runs, not on who is running it.”
With her salon manager, Ken Bradshaw, who is also the salon’s education director, Keri created a formal organization structure so employees know there is a charted career path at Gila Rut. In addition, employees are eligible for a full benefits package, including paid vacation and holidays, a 401(k) plan with matching contribution of up to 3 percent of salary; group medical and up to 50 percent reimbursement of the cost of ongoing education. Weekly in-salon training and commission on retail sales are also provided.
Turnover is very slight right now, Keri says, leaving her the time to focus on redefining the image of Gila Rut. “We’re moving away from the soothing/relaxing concept to a vibe that’s more edgy and upbeat,” she says.
Dot.com
Wanting to emphasize the cutting-edge aura of her salon, Keri launched
her website—www.gilarut.com—in
1998. The site features a virtual tour of the salon, product and service
menus, newsletters and online request booking.
“When we started out, true online booking systems weren’t really plausible, so we just went with the online requests,” Keri says. Clients submit their appointment request by e-mail and a salon coordinator will call or e-mail them back with confirmation or alternate times. “We get around five requests per day, and unless we have to go back and forth a few times to fulfill a request, it’s usually a great timesaver,” she says.
Keri feels the website is a great tool, but requires more maintenance than she is currently able to provide. “It constantly tugs at your brain and becomes overwhelming to keep up-to-date,” she says. She plans to revamp the website later this year with a new design and information that requires less-frequent maintenance.
One unexpected bonus of her website has been recruiting. “We’ve had several calls from people wanting to work for us,” she says. “They were all relocating to the San Diego area and did searches of salons in the area with websites. That’s a great bonus, with the labor shortage that’s hit the industry—to have people coming to you.”
Expand and Renew
Keri feels her biggest challenge is “staying fresh.” “Our
typical customer is a working woman in her forties—a baby boomer
with sophisticated tastes who reinvents herself as styles change,”
she says. “To meet her needs, we’ve really strengthened our
education program and streamlined our services.” (Gila Rut does
not offer manicures and only offers basic skin care services and waxing.)
Although the space is small, Keri prefers to remodel and redecorate rather than move. “This location is a little hummer—we stay really busy and people know where to find us,” Keri says. The salon is located in the Hillcrest area of San Diego, a neighborhood that is home to many art galleries and upscale businesses frequented by her ideal client.
Next on the horizon is adding another location by year’s end, and as many as five in the coming years. “Now that we have this location running so smoothly and profitably, the next step is to duplicate our success in new salons,” Keri says.
Keri hopes that her philosophy of self-contained businesses will enable her to step away down the road and have a proven profit center to sell. “I think the biggest mistake for any owner is to have success based solely on one person,” Keri says. “In the end, you can’t sell a person—you sell a business.”