We were lucky to catch up with Erin Takiue recently and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Erin, thanks for joining us today. How did you scale up? What were the strategies, tactics, meaningful moments, twists/turns, obstacles, mistakes along the way? The world needs to hear more realistic, actionable stories about this critical part of the business building journey. Tell us your scaling up story – bring us along so we can understand what it was like making the decisions you had, implementing the strategies/tactics etc.

Sanctuary Salon started as a 800 sft salon in Melrose, Nashville. It was a great way and size for Sanctuary Salon to start in a new city as we are originally from the Big Island of Hawaii and have been in Nashville for 3 years. To say we transformed the space, name and branding with a great team and marketing is an understatement! We have had hardships building the brand, backed up sinks, issues with permits and the hardest work I personally have ever encountered would be an understatement of the century! I feel that we would not be here in our brand new salon in West End of Nashville at 1800 sft without the smaller location we started at to build this great business. My mentor says “it’s not the size of the building but the heart behind the brand” and that resonates with me. My goal is to bring a spirit of “Aloha” to Nashville within my business and feel that Sanctuary does just that! Dreams are meant to be lived and I am forever blessed that we are able to see Sanctuary do just that!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Erin is a 22 year hairstylist, 12 year salon owner, originally from Big Island of Hawaii.
I believe that kindness and grit is one of the main factors of success and is often looked over by others as weakness but it creates a longevity in business to withstand the storms than come throughout your brand lifetime: At Sanctuary Salon we want to offer more than just haircare services, we want to offer hair health, scalp health and fantastic haircare brands such as Virtue and Milbon. While we love blonding, lived in color, haircuts and extensions we feel that maintaining the integrity of your hair is priority! I am most proud of building a brand new business within Nashville in just less than 3 years and over doubling the size. We can’t wait to.see what Sanctuary Dalon has to offer!!

Have you ever had to pivot?

The biggest pivot in our industry as hair creatives was Covid and for a salon owner it was the biggest unknown we have ever encountered. It caused my family and I to choose to shut down my previous hair salons in Hawaii and move across country knowing not a single person in Nashville. I bought a salon for sale online with only seeing it two times and seeing the salon revenue. While I don’t recommend buying a salon overnight and never meeting the stylists beforehand as I could write a book about that, it honestly has lead to a great story as with the start of us buying the business it had allowed Sanctuary to double its size

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

Lessons I have worked to believe are that God has a beautiful story of success and breakthroughs over my businesses! It’s hard to imagine when you move tens of thousands of miles to a new state and buy salon overnight but I have seen so much beauty in the humble start and where we currently are right now!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://Sanctuarysalonnashville.com
• Instagram: @sanctuarysalonnashville
• Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/sanctuarysalonnashville/

Image Credits

Amy Allmand photography
Elzbth Marketing