Our Blog

Sun, salt, sand and chlorine. These are all important elements to essential summer fun and relaxation. However, these are also four elements which can ravage our carefully coiffed hair. With the proper precautions and tools, though, your hair can stay perfectly moisturized and protected all summer long. Who knows, maybe this year you’ll even achieve those perfect summer beach waves! Stylist Mindy Rodriguez of The Lather Lounge at Sola Salons Brentwood shares some of her summer hair protection tips:

Although she grew up surrounded by an entire family of stylists and barbers, Lisa Scott, owner of LHC Studio in Sola Salons Glen Ellyn, IL, originally had no intention of going into the beauty industry. Instead, Lisa pursued her own interests and career in business. After graduating with a business degree from Dillard University, Lisa went on to work for IBM. Eventually, and perhaps inevitably, an interest in working in the hair industry started to blossom within Lisa.

Whether your clients have curls, waves or teeny-weeny coils, here are 5 styling techniques you can use to keep their texture on trend in summer 2014!

With the height of wedding season upon us, the spring/summer months can be an exceptionally profitable time for stylists. There is nothing a bride-to-be appreciates more than feeling taken care of through the chaotic process of wedding planning, particularly when it comes to how she’ll look on the big day. With the intimate nature of boutique salons at Sola, our stylists are in a fantastic position to gain bridal clientele. A Sola stylist can offer specialized and private services a larger salon may not be able to offer. Here are a few helpful tips to increase your business during wedding season:

The foods you eat at work impact the way you eat at home and this is never truer than for salon professionals. As you know, working in a salon means that scheduled breaks are a luxury that you likely don’t get to enjoy and finding the time to eat can be difficult to say the least. Unfortunately, this busy pace can be super-stressful and when you combine stress and a busy schedule, it’s a recipe for disaster in terms of your diet and your overall health.

Growing up, Vannora Hawkins always knew she was destined to be a hairstylist; but she didn’t know that her styling business would also become a source of strength during a battle with cancer. As a teen, Vannora would help her mother who ran a styling business in their home in Northern Virginia. “I was always her assistant for updos and bridal styles,” Vannora remembers. “I got so much experience with these styles that I even did my own hair for prom!”

With all the social media outlets available, keeping them up-to-date can feel like a full-time job! But when you have a full day of clients in your chair, there’s only so much time to spend online. The good news is that 10 minutes a day is all you really need. In this post, we are going to focus on 3 social media platforms – Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. These three social media outlets are a great combination of photo, information and status sharing.

In February of 2014, stylist Kim Detken of KD Hair Designs in Sola Salons Costa Mesa went on the adventure of a lifetime: a two-week trip throughout Cambodia. Instead of days filled with sightseeing, Kim arrived in Cambodia with a team of ten stylists as part of the Rapha House Freedom Salon education program. Backed by the philanthropic mission of targeting girls who are at risk of being trafficked in the regions’ sex trade, the Freedom Salon program provides these youth with skills in hair styling and salon management as a means of providing them with tangible business skills to ensure their long term health and safety.

One of the many fantastic things about being a salon professional at Sola is having the freedom to customize your own salon space. Each Sola studio comes fully equipped with the amenities and major equipment you might need, including a high-end cabinetry package complete with plenty of storage options. From there, you can customize your studio to your heart’s content with paint, artwork, music and more. As we learned from a visit to Sola Salons in Brentwood, CA, the creative and dynamic salon professionals at Sola are experts at bringing their own unique visions to their space. In walking the halls, we gathered tons of inspiration and are excited to share some tips and tricks for organizing and updating your salon studio this spring:

Social media is a fun and effective marketing tool. It’s a great way to open up dialog with your clients and share what’s going on with your salon. But it’s also easy to fall into bad habits. Here are five common social media mistakes and how to avoid them.

For stylist Alyssa Manning, Sola Salon Studios has provide her with a place to hone in on her niche while carving out her own passion-driven path in the beauty industry. During her first apprenticeship, Alyssa worked at a salon where her boss was a distributor for Balmain hair extensions. As a result, her early career involved direct, one-on-one training with extensions, giving her early exposure to this growing segment of the hair industry. "I got to work with hair extensions every day," Alyssa explains, "they were all around me in the salon and eventually working with extensions became second nature."

Julien Farel–celebrity hairstylist, haircare innovator and entrepreneur–has been perfecting his craft for over 20 years. Hailing from a small village in France, Farel now owns three salons in New York City, Miami and Cabo San Lucas. He is also known as the official hairstylist for the US Open and has created his own line of anti-aging hairstyling products. We recently had the wonderful opportunity to talk to Farel who shared with Sola some of his vast business knowledge and wisdom gleamed from years of hard work and perseverance.

Whether you’re just starting out at Sola, or you’ve been working for yourself for many years, a Facebook page is an easy way to make your salon visible on the web, help you stay connected with your clients and enable you to share important information about specials or open appointment slots. Chances are, you already have a personal Facebook account, but if you don’t, create an account in order to access all of the features of a Facebook business page. Once you’ve logged into your personal account, it’s time to get started.

Whether she has hair styled in a slicked back bun with pale pink lips, or she’s rocking a fedora and just-got-out-of-bed hair, Jessica Alba always manages to look gorgeous. Favoring glowy skin, penciled-in brows and sexy hair, she manages to incorporate trends (hello neon pink lipstick and icy blue eyshadow) while still retaining her own personal style.

Hairstylist Cheryl Johnson of In Vogue Hair Designs at Sola Salons Victoria Promenade in Rancho Cucamonga, CA is an industry veteran of more than 20 years. Cheryl found her way to the hair industry through her love of fashion. After being accepted at FIDM for fashion design, she ultimately decided it made more sense financially to attend Citrus Community College to study cosmetology. Hairstyling was the ultimate way for her to combine her love of fashion with her creativity into a highly profitable career path.

A lot of people may think that a successful salon has everything to do with image. A successful salon actually has everything to do with customer loyalty. Think about your favorite store or coffee shop. Whether you’re loyal to big corporations like Starbucks and Nordstrom or your neighborhood coffee shops and boutiques, it’s likely they have two things in common – a well-defined identity and a loyal customer base. Consumers have more options now than ever before. The way to make your salon successful is to create client affinity – or a bond between you and your clients. Client affinity equals loyal, long-term customers. At Sola, you have the freedom to create your own identity as a salon professional. Use these three steps to create your identity and capture client affinity.

In today’s fast moving technological market, having a strong online presence is an absolutely essential part of any business. Small business owners in particular can expand their earning potential by engaging in online communities. As stylists, a day in the salon can generate plenty of postable content which if managed wisely, can make great strides in supporting and growing your business. Alison Groves, of Raven Internet Marketing, shares some advice for how to best represent your business online.

Watching the latest celebrities go from a chic angled bob to voluminous long hair within a day can cause serious hair envy. If you’re considering adding hair extensions to your repertoire as a Sola stylist, or are simply an adventurous hair chameleon, here are the fast facts on the different types of hair extensions so you can go from shorn locks to full Rapunzel in a matter of minutes or hours.

During the cold winter months, it’s fun to bundle up in your coziest hats and sweaters and sip some tea in front of a roaring fire. But all the grey skies and cold temps can have an effect on even the most chipper of us all. The winter months are the perfect time to schedule some extra pampering services like a massage or facial. Outside of the salon, there are also many ways you can keep those grey skies at bay...

So, you’re new to Sola, and you want to grow your career? Let’s face it: When it comes to business, learning lessons the hard way stinks. That’s why a few of Sola’s esteemed and seasoned stylists were excited to share their best business tips—benefit from their tribulations and get ready to take your salon business to the next level.  Read More

While many people feel compelled to amp up their fitness routines at the start of the new year, few bother to take stock of their current beauty routines. Forget the days of focusing on fitness exclusively; swap these hair and skin sins for a brighter and more beautiful 2014...

This month, it’s out with the old, and in with the new, which in Indiana-based stylist Kandas Denton-Owen’s case means elevating a standstill career in some pretty unimaginable and exciting ways. “I didn’t know just how big I could get,” admits Kandas before settling in to tell me about her career trajectory...

Start the new year off right with the resolution to give your beauty business a digital makeover! These digital tools will modernize your salon, giving your business a digital presence that is robust and easy to manage as well as making booking and processing payments easier on you and your clients...

We’ve all heard people make the same New Year’s resolutions year after year: “Eat better, lose weight, exercise.” While these are all excellent goals to strive for throughout the year, setting some new goals for your busy salon life is another great way to begin the new year. Here are a few resolutions shared by Sola stylists to help kick your salon business into high gear in 2014...

This Christmas, it doesn’t matter whether clients have been naughty or nice because Santa (Julie Santa, that is), along with partner Nicole Darabi, is giving Alchemy Hair Studio patrons a holiday season full of style — all from the swank Sola Salons Lake Oswego in Portland, OR...