We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Henna Hiltunen a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Henna, thanks for joining us today. So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission that drives your brand?
Hennah International Salon opened it’s doors 5 years ago, in the heart of Miami Beach. My mission was and still is to embrace different ethnicities and diversity in this international city. I had a mission to give jobs to people coming from as many different cultures and by that I had a dream to offer our services in many different languages, offering acknowledge in as many different hair textures and styles as possible. This is how we offer something for everyone!
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I have been a hairstylist for about 20 years, and today it is still my great passion. I traveled and worked between different continents and countries since 2010. My carrier started from Finland, continued to Italy and before Miami I even lived in the beautiful Island of Aruba for many years. All this experience in international level encouraged and inspired me to finally open my own Salon in Miami Beach back in 2018. It had always been my dream. Hennah International Salon is a high-end and unisex Hair and Nail salon. Our skilled professionals deliver exceptional results, whether it’s a stunning hair transformation, exquisite nail art, or flawless makeup.
All over the world, my greatest strength has been customized, extremely detail oriented styling which attracts a lovely diverse clientele. I want my customers to leave my salon feeling amazing inside-out. Beauty is clearly not only on the surface. Big part of it comes from within and everyone knows that hair stylist takes care of your soul as well. As mentioned before, the inspiration of my salon was to have a cool multi-cultural team and clientele and that’s what we are today!
Over the years I have also had a chance to work with celebrities as beauty pageants winners, athletes, actors, news anchors and even prime ministers and first ladies of different countries. Still today we attend celebrity customers regularly.
Early 2022, I joined forces with a good friend of mine, Aurore and we created a fashion brand inspired by a Facebook networking group. Aurore was the founder of this group called Social Girls in Miami and so our first brand got called Social Girls Miami. Later on we decided to change the production and design a slow-fashion inspired collection and we launched Voyaaje in 2023. Our Pop-Up store is located inside Hennah International Salon which makes it even more of a one-stop-shop. This is my second company and we are looking forward to grow it!
Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?
After the first year in business working hard and growing the clientele for myself personally and for the rest of the team, I finally felt like I made it and took a deep breath of success. Soon after the whole world shut down in a global pandemic, Covid-19. I thought for some weeks that this is it. I had succeeded and now I will be forced to close and file bankruptcy. I was very disappointed and scared. No one knew what’s going to happen. Luckily the landlords of the salon space at the time were being understanding and once Miami Beach was open again, we managed to come to an agreement of how to get my business back to where it should.
Any advice for managing a team?
As a small business owner, I find it very important that I work behind the chair as everyone else and just as hard as everyone else instead of only stopping by to pick up cash. I think that makes my team respect me.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.hennahsalon.com
- Instagram: www.instagram.com/hennah_international_salon www.instagram.com/voyaaje
- Other: https://www.vagaro.com/hennahinternationalsalon
Image Credits
fghghfg