Interview With Shelly Malizola

Introduction

Rebekah: I am so excited to get to interview Shelly Malizola, founder of The Beauty Cloud, owner of Allure Designs Salon and Boutique in Libertyville, Illinois. We are here at the Data Driven Salon Summit in Denver, Colorado. Last night we attended the Top 200 Salon awards ceremony and dinner, and Shelly and her salon were awarded, again, the Top 200. And you said it was nine consecutive years that you guys have gotten this award. So I’m so excited to get to talk with Shelly. She’s been a stylist and a salon owner for over 30 years, right?

Shelly: 28 years.

Rebekah: Okay. And a salon owner for 28 years. And with The Beauty Cloud, she does education, and she also does coaching. So we’re going to talk a little bit about that, and talk a little bit about her. She has done some amazing things, so I’m excited to get to talk to you.

Why she got into hair

Rebekah: Did you want to be in this industry, or did you plan this when you were growing up? Tell us a little bit about that.

Shelly: When I was as little as probably three or four years old, I was cutting all my Barbies’ and my dolls’ hair. A situation actually happened when I was in high school. It was a sad situation that had a good ending. Essentially, there was a girl that was being bullied about the way she looked. She didn’t know how to style her hair, and she didn’t know how to do makeup, and all those things that back then we were all experimenting with.

So she was being bullied. She ran out of the classroom. I grabbed my bag, which I called my Mary Poppins bag, because I had curly hair, so I had flat irons in there, hairspray, makeup, everything possible. I chased her into the bathroom. They were making fun of the way she looked. So we ended up coming out of the bathroom, and I did this quick makeover on her.

I walked into the classroom, and I asked my teacher if I could announce her into the class. She had left crying, and the teacher said yes, go ahead. And so I announced her back into the classroom. And seeing the look on her face, and then the kids that were bullying her. Sadly, sometimes how we feel about ourselves on the outside, when you can transform that into how hopefully we feel on the inside. It was that moment that I just realized I have to do something with hair and makeup.

Rebekah: I love what you said about transforming what’s on the inside to reflect the outside. She’s already a beautiful person, but you made that revealed on the outside. That’s so cool. I love that.

Shelly: And to this day, that is part of my mission statement. It’s transforming internal beauty to external radiance.

Rebekah: Wow. So it’s what’s already there. It’s just making it shine for other people to see. So after that moment, you were like, I want to do this.

From trade school to salon owner at 25

Shelly: I was hooked. I started doing all my girlfriends’ and friends’ hair, and that kind of led to a field trip. We went to a trade school. I had never been to a hair salon. My mom had somebody that did hair in their home. So it was like going into a cosmetology school and seeing all this action, and that was it. And from there, I also decided I wanted my own business.

I went to cosmetology school while I was in high school. They had a program where they could bus us over. And so by the time I was 18, I was licensed. I took my state boards and got to work right away. And then I was only 25 when I opened my salon.

I partnered with two other women. They were both about 20 years older than me, so they brought that wisdom to my world. They eventually retired, and I slowly bought them out and then went solo as an entrepreneur in 2008, without any partners.

How Allure got its name

Rebekah: So was it always called Allure?

Shelly: Yes.

Rebekah: Tell us about the name.

Shelly: So back in the day, and I’m going to date myself, we had the Yellow Pages. When I talk about this to some of my younger staff, they have no idea what the Yellow Pages were. Back then, when you went to the category, hair salons, you wanted to be at the beginning. So we knew we wanted to start with an A. And then there was the rhyme: start with A, easy to say.

So we took the A, and then [inaudible], we took the three partners, all of our names, and we just played with the letters. The L-L is from Shelly, and then the U and the E were from Sue and Judy. And so that’s how we got Allure. And then we tagged on Designs and Beauty, because back then we did all things beauty. Massage, spa, we had four nail tables going.

Choosing a name like that has been great, because the business has continued to evolve over the years. Now part of the salon is a full retail boutique, because we’re in a downtown area in our town. So it lends itself to retailing on the front end.

A seven-figure salon with a small team

Rebekah: You grew your salon to a seven-figure business with a really small team.

Shelly: Yes.

Rebekah: How did you do that?

Shelly: Part of it, and I know we’re going to talk a little bit about it later, is this highlighting technique that I started doing when I opened the salon 28 years ago. It’s called the layback foil. I learned it from somebody in the industry, and then I kind of coined the name and started using it. It’s a technique for highlighting that enables you to highlight very fast, very efficiently, and double book and not be overly stressed as you have two clients at one time. So it’s a very high profit margin on that service.

I’ve been able to grow it to that seven-figure business with a small team. Right now I have 14 employees. Some of those employees work my store in the boutique, so a large portion of our revenue is product, retail and boutique. And then I have seven hair stations. Only two of my hair stations have full-timers. So we’re able to produce a high amount of revenue in the way we do our services.

The layback foil technique

Rebekah: And you also told me that the layback foil technique helps a stylist to be able to work longer hours without being extremely tired, because they’re off their feet, right?

Shelly: Yes. It’s a technique where you’re highlighting and you’re actually sitting, and the client is in a reclined chair, an all-purpose salon chair. We really work on, even with our education program, proper body positioning, because it’s very, very common in our industry to have all kinds of neck problems, back problems, tendonitis, wrist issues. So with them sitting, we work on body positioning. We get the longevity, and it’s working smarter, not harder. It’s tough standing in one position for hours and hours.

Turning the salon into an education center

Rebekah: You’re going into salons now, and you’re also having them come to you, right, with your education?

Shelly: Our award this year was for our education program. I decided a couple of years ago it could be another revenue stream for the salon to be an educational center. So I host classes throughout the year, and we’ll let other stylists come in and pay a fee, and it helps offset the costs for the classes that my team is also taking.

Rebekah: And so do you teach other elements of the beauty industry, or just the layback foil?

Shelly: We do. We’re just getting started. I have an educator that teaches men’s haircuts and styling, real precision short haircuts. And then I have a curly educator. Some of the classes that we’re teaching our staff, now we’re bringing out into the industry.

Rebekah: That’s great. I’ve heard recently that a lot of hairdressers don’t know how to cut short hair very well, so that’s something I feel is needed. It’s also a trend that I think is going to be coming back pretty soon, but I think it’s partly because they don’t know how. If they don’t know how, then they’re going to continue to do the same techniques and hairstyles that they’ve always done. And then same with curly hair. I think people didn’t have that idea that you have to cut it a different way than straight hair. And you have curly hair yourself, right?

Shelly: Yes.

Rebekah: I do too.

Shelly: And I thought I knew how to cut curly hair until I really got this in-depth training from this woman, Margaret, that came to work for me a few years ago. Her haircuts are like works of art. They’re just beautiful, beautiful curly haircuts.

Coaching: the emotional side of retail

Rebekah: You also offer coaching, and I know that you were able to triple the retail sales of a business that you were coaching within one year of working with you. Talk about that. How did that happen?

Shelly: They didn’t have systems in place for retailing. So it started with working with the leader, and then just really understanding the systems that needed to be in place, having the right retail. There’s an emotional component that I think a lot of business owners miss. It’s one thing to put all these systems and scripts in place. But it’s another thing to really get in the head of the entrepreneur, of the leader, and then really understand the team and what’s going to work. I don’t believe that there is one cookie-cutter business model that fits every business. So you have to figure out the culture of that company and what works, and then also, how does that team feel about the products that they’re selling?

Rebekah: So when you talk about that emotional connection, you’re saying they have to really care about what they’re selling.

Shelly: Yes.

Rebekah: Instead of it just being something that’s in the store.

How she grew her own retail almost 30%

Shelly: Last year we had, I would say, the lowest retail product sales that I’ve had in the life of my business. It was a big wake-up call for me, because, as we know, it’s hard to get the margins that we need from hair salons. So we can’t just have product retail sales decline, coming out of the pandemic and watching so many customers start to buy online. I had to really look at that and figure out what are we going to do differently in 2024? What didn’t work in 2023?

We’re in May now, and I’ve been analyzing the first quarter of 2024’s retail numbers, and we’re up almost 30%. It’s because of some of the new systems that I’ve put in place, but most of it is the communication that I have with my staff. For our quarterly reviews, which I also just recently completed, I had put into place one-on-one retail training. So it was a lot of time that I invested into my staff.

But the first thing I did was I surveyed all of them and asked, do you like retailing? What do you enjoy about it? What do you not enjoy about it? And I found that every single person that works for me personally likes selling retail. And for some of the ones that struggle with their numbers, it wasn’t about, oh, they don’t like what we have. It was essentially these emotional components and different things that I was missing. So in working on that, in April we knocked it out of the park with retail. So it gave me hope. One of my favorite things to coach and talk about is the art of retailing.

Rebekah: So what do you mean when you say the emotional side of it? Talk about that, or the things that you said you were missing.

Shelly: One of the things that I do is walk you through it. Okay, Rebekah, think about what’s in your bathroom and the products that you have in your bathroom. Especially in the beauty industry, we have tons of products in our bathroom. But why do we have so many products? It’s usually because it’s not the right thing.

With my Italian background, I’ve got dark circles and I get puffy and retain water. So I’m always looking for that perfect concealer. But I found it years ago, and I do not run out of that concealer. I will be scraping it and I’ll have two in the queue that I can use. So there’s that emotional component, that it’s worked for me. I have no problem selling that concealer. I can talk about it all day long. So you probably have products in your bathroom. Same thing. It’s easy because you love them. And that’s the emotional component that is connected to retailing.

Choosing a new product line with the team

Rebekah: So then did you actually bring in new products based on what your team has in their bathroom, or things like that?

Shelly: We have slowly brought in some one-off products, and we’re going to continue doing that and streamlining our product lines, so we have things that we really believe in and that we’re going to sell. You don’t have to have these big, huge lines, and then one-off products are just sitting on the shelf, and they don’t have high turnover.

So we are bringing in a new line this year. I’ve been interviewing different product companies, and the staff had a large voice in it. I brought in testers of one of the final lines that I’m looking at. We got little sample containers, and it’s almost like a little apothecary setup. I also did a vote, and I had one of my team members go around and ask people how they were feeling about it, in case they were afraid to really give me their thoughts on it. But I also met with all of them, and they know they have a strong voice in making those decisions.

Rebekah: I feel like that is so amazing that you did that, because when we have something that we care about, it’s easy to sell. It’s not selling. It’s really just caring for someone else, because you have been impacted by it. It’s something that you value. And I think when a salon has many different products that the stylists don’t even connect with, that’s a sure sign of why they’re not selling. They’re not going to lie about it, and they can’t fake it. What they really love, they’re going to talk about. So why not have products that they actually connect with and that they have conviction about? Because then they’ll sell it easily.

Managing inventory with reports

Shelly: And with the software that salons have now, the reporting is so great. We use [software name unclear], and I can go into inventory and look at how often that product was purchased in the product record. So when I go to do orders, I work closely with one of the women that works for me who does the orders. We’re analyzing how many need to be on the shelf, and how many turns does that product have.

And that’s something else I like to work on with coaching clients, because I think sometimes business owners are so busy. Placing orders is an easy thing to either have your product reps do or an employee do. But it’s a lot of cash sitting on the shelf if we don’t have the right things on the shelf.

How to reach Shelly

Rebekah: So if someone wants to get ahold of you, they want to start coaching with you, they want to bring you out to teach them and their team about the layback foil, they should go to thebeautycloud.com, right?

Shelly: Yes. They can email me.

Rebekah: Awesome. Well, thank you so much for taking time with me, Shelly. I feel like you have so much to offer the beauty industry and salon owners. You’ve learned a lot, and it’s something that you should take advantage of, because it’s valuable.