ON THE RO AGAIN

West Coast Beauty’s Ro Lal takes Salon for a spin around town By Greg Robins

Ro Lal pops his Infiniti into gear and slips on his Prada shades. The energetic, confident sales director of West Coast Beauty is about to escort me to a few salons in his home turf of Vancouver, B.C.

“I get out of the office once a week and visit salons,” Lal reveals. “It keeps me close to the action and it’s just essential to understanding what our customers need.”

We pull up to the Willowbrook Shopping Centre and meet Frank Deluca, president of Pizazz Hair Design and Eterna Salon & Day Spa. Lal knows just about everyone in the place, shaking hands and introducing stylists as his long-time buddies. Deluca leans in close and states, “These guys are the best, we’d never be where we are today without them. Business advice, product knowledge, you name it.”

After a quick detail, Lal wheels out of the parking lot and we push south to a new hot shop, Fresh Hair Concepts. He speaks quickly, rattling off his company’s deeprooted philosophy of customer trust and his team’s passion for the business.

“Our job is to help salons get to the next level, to accelerate their business,” he states. “We analyze people’s business before we do anything else and ask a lot of questions like who their customers are, what their price points will be, and the foundations and fundamentals of their business. Our customers are people we help from the open sign to the back door—it’s an expertise we shine on them from the start.”

Lal punctuates his sentences with snappy phrases like “The more you learn, the more you earn” as he describes the basics of helping salons in B.C. grow and develop. Combining fun, enthusiasm and a serious focus on business basics is how Lal describes the West Coast Beauty team. “Salons that work with us carry unique products we test and believe in, join us for seminars and training and benefit from the in-salon time we invest.”

The 42-year-old Lal is about to celebrate 10 years of ownership of West Coast Beauty with his business partner Eileen Jevning. Learn more at www.salon52.ca. S