We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Laurie Hannoush. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Laurie below.
Hi Laurie, 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.
I started my wax bar as a solo esthetician, waxing by myself out of my spare bedroom in my apartment 14 years ago before my husband and I had kids. I put an advertisement on kijiji (the Canadian equivalent to Craigslist), and an ad in the local University’s student paper, and waited. I also had a wedding stationery business that was my actual focus, and esthetics was just a side hustle to make ends meet. Within 3 years, I was too busy to chase my wedding business, and only had the energy to service my waxing clientele. Add 2 more years, and I was so busy that I was turning clients away, and my existing clients had to prebook 4 weeks out to be able to find a spot. We made the decision to add an extension onto our house, a purpose built salon space with 3 treatment rooms and a waiting area. We were only there for 8 months before we came across the opportunity to snag a key spot in our uptown area for a great price… We took the plunge and expanded to a space with 6 treatment rooms, and more visibility. All of this seemed to just fall into place on its own, but the biggest bit of serendipity: Our new uptown retail space was directly below the 2 bedroom apartment where it all started. It took us 2 years to save enough for a second location in a nearby university town half an hour away, and now we have a third location in Frisco, TX (also across from a UNT campus). I work every day in my business with clients, I’m not a “hands-off” salon owner. I can basically do every service we offer, and I get involved with my work-family and build relationships with as many of them as I cant to build loyalty and friendship.
Laurie, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My name is Laurie Hannoush, and I’m a Canadian esthetician living in Frisco. My business started as just an express wax bar, but we have expanded into multiple beauty services that help women feel better about themselves on a daily basis. From laser hair removal, to permanent makeup, to facials and other skin reformative treamtents, we pride ourselves on being a salon for everyBODY. Uncomplicated beauty for all is our tagline, and we strive to make everyone feel welcome and beautiful, no matter what. I’m most proud of the team of supportive and creative women I’ve hired on to be a part of this business, and we all try to make an impact on our clients whether it’s a supportive ear during a leg wax, or silent presence during a facial.
Can you talk to us about manufacturing? How’d you figure it all out? We’d love to hear the story.
We have our own line of aftercare products: Sugar scrubs, body lotion, and ingrown hair serum. We initially started by sourcing client favorites and selling massive quantities to our client base, and realized — Why are we making money for someone else? We found a lab that could help us create our own version by incorporating what we loved, what we wanted to adjust, scents we were obsessed with, textures that work with our end goal, and spent almost 2 years fine tuning. Today we have a line of aftercare that have become cult favorites amongst our client base.
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
When i first started my business, I was the only one. If clients needed help, i made sure i did everything i could to assist. If they weren’t 100% happy, i made sure they felt comfortable enough to tell me, and did what i could to fix it. When we added team members, I made sure clients still saw my face around, and was still present. Our response to a complaint was never to blame the client, but to take it as a training point and improve what we were doing to avoid a repeat occurence. Taking responsibility and being accountable for the output from our business has been key to building a reputation.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.waxonomy.us
- Instagram: @waxonomy.frisco
- Facebook: @waxonomy.frisco
- Other: www.tiktok.com/@waxonomy.frisco
Image Credits
Ema Suvajac (for all professional photos — the portfolio shots are PMU shots i’ve taken)