9 minute read
Touched By An Angel By Clare Lamberth
> SALON FEATURE TOUCHED BYAn Angel B y C l a r e L a m b e r t h
From a chance manicure in the Hunter Valley and a small “start out” space in a Makeup School to a 20 year legacy of excellence in Sydney’s southerns suburbs, Rebecca Daniels from Angel Touch Skin Boutique has a heart of gold and a passion to make our industry a better breeding ground for raw talent.
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Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you came into the industry and started your career.
20 Years ago I booked myself in to my local Day Spa in the Hunter Valley to have my nails done for a special occasion, I was an avid Netball player so having my nails done was completely foreign to me and I really did not know what I had booked in for, it was a new type of manicure with a Gel coating called “Bio Sculpture Gel Nails”. I did not know that, that nail appointment was about to change the direction of my life. I connected with my nail girl Michelle who is still a friend to this day and currently owns her own successful salon in Newcastle. It was by divine luck that a few appointments later the owner of the Day Spa overheard part of our conversation of me asking Michelle about becoming a Beauty Therapist and what college she would recommend, she popped her head in and asked if I was a Therapist. I said, “I will be” and she offered me a job on the spot, “come see me when you start your training”. I love having a laugh with our clients and I love the smile on their faces when we finished their treatment, whether it be a first time brow tidy or our regular clients for their facial.
Tell us about Angel Touch. How did it start, when, how has it evolved over the years what do you specialise in.
In 2003 I moved to Sydney and worked for a year for a beautiful lady in a small salon until she sold the business. I had to make a decision to either find another job in a salon or start my own.. Sounds simple huh? I started Angel Touch Beauty in a single room in a building with a Makeup School. Starting out with little money but lots of drive I designed and printed my own service menus and would walk and deliver them around the neighbourhood in between clients to try and build the business, I did this for 6 months and within 2 years I had grown to the point that I was working 6 full days and needed to look for a bigger space and start looking for my first staff member. I found my bigger space in the beautiful suburb of Oatley and I knew the minute I walked in that I had found my place. Over the years we have evolved from a mostly nails and waxing salon with a beautiful renovation and expansion of rooms and rebranding to Angel Touch Skin Boutique in 2018. Now we are mostly focused on Skin Health with HydraFacial, Skin Needling, LED, Peels and Facials being our main treatments.
What does Customer Service mean to you? Customer Service for me is the personal touch to make our clients feel comfortable and welcome. We all acknowledge and say hello to our clients when they come in and always with a smile. Sounds crazy I know but I cannot tell you how many times I have been to personal appointments and the staff do not even acknowledge me walking in. For our facials our beds are heated and the rooms are lit by Salt Rock lamps only, they only have so much time with us and we all know how stressful our lives can be, it’s our job to make them forget their worries and stresses for the time we have them whilst giving them the best treatment possible. When waxing a large towel is laid on the bed so they can cover themselves and be comfortable
when we enter the room. Placing a blanket over our clients when they have a lash tint and tucking their feet in so they are not cold, they are only little things but these things make our clients feel important and cared for and sometimes we are the only people they will see through the day or week and I always walk my client to the door and open it for them when they are leaving, always. This is all along side doing a great job for them also.
How do you like to follow up with your customers after they’ve seen you?
All follow ups for our procedures are through phone calls to check all is working out the way it should be and to see if they have questions regarding their home care and any concerns. We keep in touch with our ladies through email keeping them up to date with new treatments or products and through social media also. For their birthdays we email them a voucher to come and use in the salon and I cannot tell you how excited they are to receive it, they make me laugh. It is for $10 off any treatment or $20 off any of our top 10 treatments. For years we have had a system where every October I sit down and book all of our clients in for their treatments for the following year. This takes me a lot of time but it assures me a full-ish diary for the following year and it assures our clients that they get the times and dates that they want. It also means we see them regularly.
Which signature treatment are you most known for?
We have two treatments that are extremely popular for us. Our HydraFacial is amazing and completely obsessive once you’ve had one and see what comes out of your skin. There is nothing like it that compares and our regular facial clients are now substituting every 2nd or 3rd of their regulars facial for a HydraFacial and this works perfectly. Our other most popular Treatment is our Hydropeptide Facials. I just love this brand, it is highly active yet luxurious and this is where we really get to treat our ladies. I did a survey with our ladies and one of the questions I asked was “Do you come for a facial to treat your skin and keep it looking beautiful or do you come for relaxation and to nurture your soul?” 89% said they come for relaxation and to nurture their soul but loved that it came with the benefits of having beautiful skin also. Almost every treatment we do in the salon has an element of relaxation now.
How has your business evolved and changed over the years?
The evolution of a Beauty Salon over 18 years has been brilliant to watch and work through. Starting out mainly as waxing and nails and the occasional facial then working through the introduction of nails bars and laser clinics that wiped out most of the small salon basic treatments really meant we had to evolve and roll with it. I read every beauty magazine I could to see what the Latest Trends were, (I still do) I went to every Sydney Beauty Expo and tried to be different by introducing new treatments to the salon before most people had heard of them. When LED was introduced to salons I bought The Max7, the technology was so new to our clients that they did not want to even try it though now we use our Dermalux LED almost daily.
Our industry has really struggled to find staff. How do you go about attracting the right team members to your clinic?
Finding the right staff is tricky. I do not hire off skill sets, of course you need to know how to perform the basic treatments but I hire based on personality, attitude and passion. Skills can be taught, love of the job and being able to communicate and care for our clients cannot. We work so closely together, if one staff member is not right for the team it can be destructive to your salon. When reopening from Covid I found myself looking for staff. I hired against my own rules and based my hiring on resume’s out of fear of needing help. This was a huge lesson for me so I wrote down exactly what I was looking for in a therapist and did not waver until I found her, lucky for me she was just around the corner.
What do you see as being a fix for the lack of Therapists in our industry right now?
I had so many resumes coming in when I put an add through Seek so I didn’t have a lack of therapists applying but what I found when talking to so many of these girls was the lack of proper training to get these girls “REAL LIFE” salon ready. Yes they will get training on the job to learn our systems and procedures but… I have a new girl that started with me 3 months ago who is just a delight to work with and she spent $28,000 on her “Private” Beauty training that finished in 1 year and was mostly done online due to COVID. When she and her parents voiced their concern at the end of the course telling them that she did not know what she was doing and she did not feel confident to go and work in a salon, it fell on deaf ears. They were simply told that her course was for a year and it was finished though they were welcome to pay for another course and refresh her knowledge... The sad part about this is her first pedicure training she told me she learnt more in that hour than in the whole year she had been at college. There are girls out there desperate to get into a salon but cannot get jobs because they don’t have experience and we can’t hire them because we cannot afford the time it takes to fully train them especially while we rebuild our businesses after Covid. I would love to see the training standards lift and the hands-on in salon work experience time to complete a course hours extended.
What do you have planned for the future?
I would love to go and learn to become a Beauty Therapy Teacher and work with the hands on skills and reading the skin. I would be a tough teacher though, no-one passes until it is perfect..
