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Meet Heather Mogel of Cré Hair Studio in Surrounding city

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Heather Mogel.

Heather, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
With a one year old, no business experience, almost no clientele and no idea what we were getting ourselves into, my husband and I opened our dream salon almost ten years ago.

I have been doing hair for 17 years now and always knew I wanted to own a salon. I envisioned a space where I could practice my craft and teach new stylists everything I knew in an environment that was creative, inspired, drama and gossip free. I wanted to create an incredible experience for my team so that they, in turn would be inspired to create an incredible experience for every client who walks through our door.

It’s been a lot of work to create this culture together and I’ve messed up more times than I can count, but I truly believe we have finally succeeded. We constantly get comments that our salon is different, that our team is so friendly and real. And we really are! What you see is what you get in the best way possible!

Our team is very unique and I absolutely love it. We are a mix of all different learning abilities, personalities, backgrounds and different levels of education. For example, we have a team member with Down syndrome that has worked with us for over five years now and she lights up our days! We also have two California State Apprentices on our team that are earning their school hours with us and are currently working towards taking their Cosmetology state board tests.

My entire team is employee based, which is rare in our industry but my goal is to empower each of them to create the career and business of their dreams. I am an open book with them and work hard to not only pass along all of the business knowledge and hair skills that I have acquired but to encourage them to surpass my knowledge. And I have achieved that! I learn from my team every day and they constantly inspire me!

These past five months haven’t been the easiest but I have to say that there is no other team that I would want to have by my side during this crazy time! I can’t wait to get back into our space and start creating amazing hair and bringing my team and our guests smile very soon!

Has it been a smooth road?
Oh my gosh, it has been a struggle almost every step of the way!! From the build-out to building our team… I have battled to create the salon and team we have today. Everything that could possibly go wrong with the build out did, from wiring issues, phone issues, flooring issues, issues with the ceiling and finding out our space had no internet. I was taken advantage of by my product rep and ended up ordering way too much product because I didn’t know any better and didn’t say no! I was scared to manage employees so I tried to pass that responsibility on instead of learning to run my own business, which left me struggling financially, having to lay off someone who was my closest friend and starting over to learn everything from the ground up… at year 5!! Two years ago, I had a slow walk out of seven people that lasted over 12 months where I had one team member after another leave for various reasons. Our team is very small so losing that amount of people and having that much turn over left our heads spinning! But throughout all of the hardship, I have been determined to press on, to succeed, to see the good and learn from every experience!

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Cré Hair Studio story. Tell us more about the business.
We are a hair salon that specializes in low maintenance, beautiful, seamless (meaning our haircuts and colors flow beautifully and are not choppy or spotty) natural-looking and lived-in looks. Even when creating a bright or colorful look, or installing 22” extensions, our work always has a soft finish that allows the look to grow out well.

From there, I try to empower each team member to specialize in what they are most passionate about. So I have a curl specialist, I had a color specialist who just left our team to go out on her own, I am cut and color specialist and working on becoming an extension specialist and we are still working on finding out what the apprentices love and want to specialize in. So, because everyone has their own specialty, we pride ourselves in creating an incredible experience for our guests/clientele. We want our clients to feel comfortable and not intimidated when they walk in and our goal is to educate them the entire time. One of our core values is to be a lifelong learner with the heart of a teacher and we really try to create that experience for our clients. We want them to have their dream hair and to be empowered on how to recreate their style at home. So we are always educating. We are also a training salon with our apprentices, so every stylist on our team is a registered educator with the state of California. So they have to know their craft so well that they can teach it on the spot. Our guests love it! They love hearing us formulate hair color and teach about geometry and hair cutting while we work. I think it elevates our craft and our guests are always so amazed at all of the math, science and thought process that goes into creating their look.

In addition to that, our space is beautiful and pristine! We have always gone above and beyond in cleanliness and sanitation… even before COVID 19!! Our customers love it and always comment about how clean our salon is!

How do you think the industry will change over the next decade?
After the pandemic and having our industry closed twice, I do anticipate a lot of people leaving our industry. Many people are incredibly discouraged and do not feel stable in our industry anymore. But for those of us that stay, I think there will be some people that want to open their own salon or suite, but I am anticipating many more stylists will be interested in becoming an employee again. That has not been a trend in our state for many years, but the stylists that were employees had a stable unemployment income during both closures and will go back to a stable income when we reopen. I think that will be more and more appealing in the coming months.

From there, I just see a huge boom in online education and experiences coming from our industry. In my biased opinion, we already have some of the best educators, hands down! But I anticipate their businesses just booming. Especially as new stylists start coming in after the mass exodus that we are experiencing right now!

Lastly, gone are the days of the petty, gossipy, snobby stylists, owners and educators. No one is tolerating that anymore. Our industry in has sometimes been very cut-throat and backstabbing for a lot of years. But this new group coming up is definitely a community over competition mentality and they believe in authenticity, supporting one another and helping each other succeed… and I am SO here for it!!

Pricing:

  • Full Balayage and Haircut starts at $240
  • Full balayage Starts at $180
  • Full color and Haircut Starts at $160
  • Curly Haircut Transformation (with Bretina) Starts at $110
  • Full balayage and curly haircut transformation (with Bretina) starts at $290

Contact Info:

Image Credit:
Daniel Amezcua

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