The Color Room Hair Salon & Skin Center Turns 10: A Milestone Celebration
10 Years, 10 Lessons, and an Epic Giveaway!
It feels like yesterday when we opened the doors to our hair salon in Wentzville, but it’s been 10 years!
The Color Room owner, Toni Peanick, dreamed of opening a premier hair salon and skincare center that provided the latest treatments and techniques while ensuring a supportive work environment that valued its stylists and skin experts.
“In 2013,” Toni said in 2022, when The Color Room turned nine, “our industry was horrible at providing healthy work environments [and] the pay was even worse.” Toni remembers once receiving a $400 paycheck for 10 days of work. She knew there had to be a better way, and opening The Color Room was the answer.
Since 2013, The Color Room has experienced rapid growth, starting with two employees and now employing a team of over 30 people. As of 2021, it’s a seven-figure company that has gone through three expansions, the most recent expansion completed in the fall of 2022.
As you can imagine, there’s much to look back on after ten years. There have been tremendous successes, but also much to learn. When reflecting on the past ten years, Toni thinks about the advice she’d give her younger self about the lessons she learned along the way.
Lesson 1: Always deliver excellence—no exceptions
Building a successful business requires more than installing a sign on a building front and posting curated social media posts. You must provide excellent service to every customer who walks through the door because word-of-mouth is your best referral type. All it takes is one person to have a bad experience to affect your business’s reputation—bad experiences spread faster than good ones. Make it your goal to have everyone on your team believe in what they’re doing and always put the customer first. Also, make sure to give your customers some great promotions!
Lesson 2: Stick to your vision
Never compromise what you deeply believe in for your business. You can change how you bring your vision to life and who you do it with but stick to your guns about what you really want. You can treat everyone kindly, but you can’t please everyone. The people who align with your vision will come to you in time.
Lesson 3: Give back to the community
Find causes and organizations in your community that connect with your business’s mission and values and give back. Some of the organizations that The Color Room supports include: Bree’s Gift, an adoption financial assistance organization, the Hero Network, a non-profit supporting local first responders and military families, The Child Advocacy Center for abused children, and The Backstoppers, providing ongoing financial assistance and support to spouses and children of responders who’ve lost their lives in the line of duty.
Lesson 4: Practice harmony between your career and family
Women have the most important jobs as moms, but we have our careers, too. During The Color Room’s first year, I worked open to close, Tuesday through Saturday, and I didn’t collect a paycheck or tips. I worked a lot to make this dream a reality, but over the last few years, I’ve learned that finding a better balance between work, family, growth, and success is vital.
Lesson 5: Choose your partners mindfully
Don’t partner with anyone. It must feel right and aligned with your business’s values and vision. Set boundaries and have solid agreements in place to ensure professionalism. At The Color Room, we partner with skin and hair care companies like L'Oréal, Aveda, GLO Skin Beauty, ZO Skin Health, Epionce, and recently, R+Co. We also partner with several local businesses, including Estetica Med Spa and The Sculpted Face, Bliss Eleven Studios, The Designery, Wonderfully Made, Voncii, and M&D.
Lesson 6: Dreams don’t happen without action
You must strive and do the work to create what you’ve dreamed of building. Never mistake success for luck and good timing. Those things help, but growth like The Color Room’s experienced over the last ten years doesn’t happen without a lot of hard work and sacrifice.
Lesson 7: Treat people well
Respect your team, clients, and partners. Salon owners take on a lot but don’t unload your frustrations on those who love you the most. They’re your support system. You couldn’t do what you do without them!
Lesson 8: Reinvest every dime you can
Living a lavish lifestyle when your business starts making money is tempting, but live below your means for a while. The business must come before everything else, including the owner’s pay. Set a budget and stick to it—unless you do over-the-top build outs as I did with this third expansion. LOL! But seriously, I took the cut because I believed this expansion was what the business needed to thrive.
Lesson 9: Love what you do by evolving and educating yourself—PERIOD!
No exceptions here. In an ever-evolving industry, education is vital to The Color Room’s success. Ten percent of all our profits from retail and services go toward educating current and future team members. Education allows our stylists and skincare specialists to provide YOU with better services.
Lesson 10: Be good to your staff
Give them what they deserve. We aren’t machines. We are people. We are artists making a living doing what we love. The Color Room team is amazing, and I’m proud of the space we built to pamper our customers. Some ways we give back to our staff include competitive wages, paid sick and holiday time, staff retreats, health and retirement benefits, and wellness offerings, such as complimentary hot yoga classes with one of our preferred partners, Detox Yoga.
When Toni daydreamed in Mr. Sipple’s math class over 20 years ago about owning a spa and salon, there was no way she could’ve imagined what that success would look like, but the view from the top is pretty amazing—and she and her team are still climbing.
Celebrate Our 10-Year Milestone with an Epic Giveaway!
We owe our success to every single one of our supportive guests! We couldn’t do it without you. Help us celebrate 10 years in business with this 10-day giveaway beginning March 17, 2023:
Day 1: Airbrush tan
Day 2: Lash lift & tint
Day 3: Brow wax
Day 4: Blowout
Day 5: Haircut
Day 6: Hair treatment
Day 7: Face mask
Day 8: Dermaplane
Day 9: Single-process hair color service
Day 10: ALL OF THE ABOVE
Details: Giveaways begin on March 17, 2023 (open days only). Winners will be announced via Facebook/Instagram stories. To enter, participants must:
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