As restrictions on businesses continue to ease, one local salon owner says her business is thriving after reopening.
Cosmetologist Angelique Pattillo, owner of AA’s Salon at 921 South Highway 160, said both she and her clientele are happy to be back in business.
“We are at the old Shear Talent location, where myself, my husband Billy and my friend Angela Harvey are actually the owners of the salon,” she said. “We opened this month, but we were shut down and deemed non-essential for about eight weeks, and we came back with some pretty heavy restrictions on us.”
As a result, Pattillo said she’s put a very strong emphasis on safety.
“We deep clean the salon every night and also once a week,” she noted. “Everybody is following the standards and our stations are six feet apart and everybody sanitizes in between every single client. It’s amazing how this group of people have come together and really made this happen and it’s working very well. We haven’t slowed down at all since reopening.”
Pattillo also spoke to the challenges of working in a salon, all while practicing social distancing.
“It is very hard to practice social distancing in our line of work,” she explained. “I have to say that the operators here, even when they go out in public, follow it to the extreme measure. We have a large retirement population here in the community and that is the main base of our clientele so when we are out, we try to avoid the big crowds, and a lot of us wear masks. We also make sure that we all have hand sanitizer with us. We use hospital-grade disinfectant and we are disinfecting everything with every client, including the chairs that they sit in.”
As business is thriving, Pattillo said she’s working on expanding her services.
“We are actually starting to get ready to get into the medical beauty aspect of it all,” she said. “I am in negotiations with a medical professional who wants to perform infusions, Vitamin C injections, Vitamin B-12 shots and things of that nature for the community. I am also in negotiations with an eyelash extension technician and she actually works in the medical field as well. We are definitely full service right now and we have six hairdressers, four nail technicians and lots of retail products.”
Additionally, Pattillo said she herself began doing hair in 2014.
“I went to beauty school many years before that,” she recalled. “This is the third salon that I’ve worked at. The last two I worked at closed down, and that made me want to become an owner. I think the location is great and we have great accessibility. We are also wheelchair accessible. It’s a prime location.”
At present, Pattillo said the salon is open Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.
“Our operators can also operate on their own time,” she said. “On Sunday we do close the salon for a complete deep clean,” she said. “We do have a Facebook page and we are working on getting Instagram and Yelp set up too. We are booked weeks in advance, and we do have a girl here who specializes in men’s haircuts and she is fabulous. Our phone number is 775-764-1898.”
Contact reporter Selwyn Harris at sharris@pvtimes.com. On Twitter: @pvtimes