By Neil Johnson njohnson@gazettextra.com February 2, 2022
JANESVILLE
In 10 years as a hair and beauty stylist, Janesville resident Sadie Stewart has taken her clippers, scissors and colors to salons in Janesville, northern Wisconsin and Clovis, New Mexico.
Yet, she’s never had her own domain—her own salon space and her own set of keys that are just hers. As of Tuesday, that changed.
Stewart is one of a handful of local hairdressers, masseuses and estheticians who are filling 30 brand-new salon suites at Sola Salon Studios. The building is the former Fuddruckers hamburger restaurant at 3136 Humes Road that sat empty and idle for three years.
Stewart’s new lease meant a move from another local chain salon she worked at for several years. Under that salon’s business model, Stewart wasn’t allowed to determine her own rates. And in recent months during the customer crush that followed the easing of the COVID-19 lockdown, her former workplace began to mandate what types of hairdressing work she could and couldn’t do out of the styling chair she occupied there.
Soon, Stewart’s own salon name, Purple Phoenix Salon Studio, will be emblazoned on a stylized sign that’ll hang above the glass and brushed metal door that leads into her clean, new, modern space at Sola—one with a brand new styling chair and cabinets, a gleaming shampoo bowl and a window with a view outside.
Stewart is now rebuilding a client base, which at first will consist of walk-in customers she hopes will become repeat customers.
On Wednesday morning, Stewart watched hundreds of passing cars on the busy retail corridor of Humes Road, hopeful for signs of people pulling into the new, salon suites.
“Anything you do like this is of course a leap of faith, but it didn’t take me long at all to take the leap,” Stewart said.
Under Sola’s business model, new salon owners likely will lure other local beauty professionals such as Stewart away from leased space or revenue-sharing arrangements at other local salons. Sola charges rent and provides professional mentoring and business development, but otherwise doesn’t take a cut of the revenue its clients bring in.
Alicia Modjeska, a Milwaukee area resident and former health care executive, decided to open a Sola in Janesville because it’s a market that had yet to embrace a turnkey salon model she describes as “salon within a salon that you actually own.”
“When you close your door, you’re in your own salon, it’s your own space and you’re working under your own steam, running your own business. I think that’s what makes this concept new to the area,” Modjeska said.
Sola, originally a Colorado company, has grown nationwide, and now bills itself as the biggest turnkey salon suites operator in the U.S.
Janesville’s new Sola is the 600th the company has opened, Sola announced in a news release this week.
The salon suites are a stone’s throw from the off-ramps at Interstate 90/39 and Humes Road, putting it in view of hundreds of thousands of drivers who pass by the corridor each week. That’s a major reason Modjeska chose the location to open a Sola franchise, she said.
Modjeska said Sola has cultivated a model of working with professional hairdressers, stylists and others who, like Stewart, have years of experience but for whatever reason haven’t had the wherewithal to operate out of their own commercial space.
“I’m really in the business of working with primarily women, you know, who are professional stylists or nail technicians that want to really start their own business and have their own salons, rather than work for somebody else. So, I want to encourage that. And, you know, I just want to mentor some of these women and teach them how to own their own businesses and be successful. That’s really what this is,” Modjeska said.
For Stewart, it’s taken years to find a local salon space of her own. She said at many area salons, there’s a waiting list for suites and styling chairs.
One of her new neighbors at Sola, a barber from Clinton, spent years before the pandemic hit commuting to salon space he rented in Chicago. That’s where he learned how to use a straight razor for sculpted, exacting men’s haircuts, Modjeska said.
On Tuesday’s soft opening at Sola, the barber and his family celebrated his new salon space with red, white and blue ribbons and banners.
Stewart said she’s looking forward to marketing and capitalizing on skills she wasn’t encouraged to use at her last salon—how to manage specialty perms.
“Others I’ve worked with need to go in a back room and YouTube how to do permanents, because it’s not as common anymore. It’s similar to men’s flat-top haircuts. Not many people know how to do those now either. But everybody has to have a niche,” she said.
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