We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jenni Lowe & Jessi Wassgren. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jenni & Jessi below.
Jenni & Jessi, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today How did you come up with the idea for your business?
We had been talking about opening up our own salon for over a year. We wanted to incorporate the Finnish lifestyle somehow since we both have Finnish heritage. We were brainstorming Finnish words/terms for a salon name and then we thought of Sisu. Sisu is a term that stands for determination, tenacity, bravery, and resilience. It was a term we both often heard growing up so it felt meaningful to us, which led to the creation of SISU Beauty & Co. We then toured many buildings to find a space for our salon and came across an old office space with cubicles and carpet. After a few short months and the help of many people we turned the old office space into the hair salon we envisioned.
We knew opening up our own salon was worth it since we have both been in the industry for 15+ years, have a loyal clientele that would follow us to our new location, and a few employees we knew we wanted to work with us.
We wanted to get out of the old school salon mentality that you have to work 7 days a week for someone else. After experiencing this ourselves we knew we didn’t want to follow that approach. That led to us allowing our stylists to rent their own stations allowing them to technically be their own boss while we provide a positive work environment for them to thrive in. We want all our employees to be successful in their careers. We also didn’t want our employees to ever feel burnt out so we decided to have a four day work week. Allowing them to prioritize themselves and their families.
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
We both attended the AVEDA Institute in Minneapolis, but missed each other by 2 years. Then we both worked together at another salon in Duluth for 10 years. After being in a work environment that we both didn’t enjoy we learned the basics of running a salon, the do’s and don’ts of being a business owner in the industry, and most importantly how to take care of our employees and clients.
We offer haircuts, hair colors, and hair extensions. We are also big in the bridal industry and have two travel teams that offer hair and makeup for weddings. We have four clean product lines, AVEDA, Seven, Four Reasons, and K18. We use AVEDA’s vegan hair color. We want to only offer clean and environment friendly products to our clients.
Four Reasons is one of our product lines that is new to the US. We are the only salon in Minnesota that carries it. It is a Finnish line that is fully vegan and cruelty free so it fit in perfectly with the other product lines we carry.
We want our clients to feel and look the best they can when they leave the salon.
Something that sets us apart from others in the industry is that we really take care of our employees. We follow the Finnish work culture by only being open four days a week. It allows our employees to have the time to spend with their loved ones, but also gives them enough time to work hard while we are open. We want our employees to enjoy coming to work and not get burnt out from being over worked, which was common culture in the beginning of our careers.
Stylists at our salon rent their stations, allowing them to “be their own boss” while we provide a positive and safe workspace for them to thrive in.
We are proud of the salon we created. It was formerly an office space that we completely transformed into a hair salon in less than 2 months. We are also proud of the team/family we have here at SISU. We are very supportive of each other and want everyone to enjoy coming to work and to be as successful as they can. We take pride in our profession and trust that all of our stylists are very capable of doing their job.
We are a very inclusive salon and want everyone, clients and employees, to feel welcomed in our space we love so much.
Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?
We all love to have something to look forward to.
We plan many fun events whether it’s a fundraiser for our community, an employee vacation, a collaboration event with other local businesses, or a salon party.
It is important to us to be out in our community and give back however we can. We were apart of Duluth’s Christmas City of the North Parade, we host a fundraiser for First Witness Child Advocacy Center, and we are going to do the Polar Bear Plunge in February.
We all went to Las Vegas for one of our product lines, Seven, hair show and are in the process of planning another trip we can all take together!
We hosted a party with a local dermatology business and look forward to hosting more events in the future.
Apart from all the fun events we participate in, we want our employees to feel taken care of. We always say
“family comes first, you second, and work third.”
We value our employees time off for whatever reason, family emergency, an illness, if they are going on a vacation, or if they just need a day off. We understand that our employees also have families and lives of their own and we want them to feel like they can take time off for themselves.
We are supportive and encouraging to each other. We love to build each other up!
How did you build your audience on social media?
We want our social media to look and sound as “real” as we are. We are very supportive and post all of our stylist’s work on our main salon page, even though all of the stylists have their own personal stylists pages. We are proud of the hair everyone does and we want potential clients to see the work of all of our stylists and so they can make the decision who they think would be the best fit for what their hair goals are. We do most of our marketing solely on our instagram account and most of our clients know that and follow the account.
Best advice is to hire a good marketing company to help with logo, brand, and website. Budget out for things you do not know how to do right away, such as make and manage your own website. Our logo is important to us that people see it and know and recognize the business without our name attached.
Advice we would have for those just starting out would be to be yourself. It sounds cliche, but the realer you are on your account gives your audience a glimpse of what your work space and their experience might be like. We are a fun and outgoing group of people and I think that translates well through our account. If your page is very cut and dry it can be hard to make a connection with your audience and your page can seem dull.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.sisubeautyduluth.com
- Instagram: @sisubeautyco
- Facebook: SISU Beauty & Co.
Image Credits
Emily Theisen @litecreatives