Michelle Campbell and the business of Beauty Care

Michelle’s Fantasy Hair Care is one of the more recent additions to a growing local beauty care industry that continues to open up opportunities for skilled and enterprising Guyanese seeking to make their way in the world of business.

Situated at Lot 16 Public Road, La Penitence, obliquely opposite the Guyana National Printers,  the beauty parlour is owned and operated by Michelle Campbell, for whom the business of beauty is both a passion and a profession.

She has been in the business for all of sixteen years, serving ‘apprenticeships’ at various popular beauty parlours in the city.  In 1995 she underwent a formal six-month training programme with the now defunct B&J’s, a course of training that earned her a certificate in Cosmetology.

The opening of Michelle’s Fantasy Hair Care on May 4 last, is, she says, the culmination of an ambition nurtured over time and inspired by what she believes is her own potential for success in business.

When we visited her establishment last Friday Michelle was having what she said was “a not too busy period.” She spoke with us eagerly about her painstaking journey to where she is, about the competitive nature of the business and about her confidence in her own ability to do well.

The real challenge for small businesses like hers, she says, lies in raising the capital to start up. Like so many other local micro and small business operators she is concerned about the challenges associated with securing funding from the formal lending institutions. Rather than assume what can sometimes be the onerous  responsibility of securing a start up loan, Michelle says that she decided to do it the hard way, using her own savings to purchase pieces of equipment over time. She estimates that her setting up costs amounted to “around one million dollars.”

The real challenge for Michelle lies in making the transition from being just a cosmetologist to being a businesswoman. These days she is acutely aware of the responsibilities of proprietorship – like meeting the rental on her  premises, utility bills  and the salaries of the three other beauticians in her employ. It is, quite, literally, a different ball game.

She is, however, lacking neither in confidence nor in her ability to succeed. The range of services that she offers includes a broad range of  beauty  care ‘products’ ranging from the various hair care services including barbering to nail and facial care.

And while she recognizes that she is now a player in a highly competitive market that includes approximately fifty other beauty care establishments in Georgetown and its environs, Michelle is continually preoccupied with various ways of matching the competition. She has long come to understand the peaks and troughs of the business, the surge in demand for her services associated with weekends and with the local entertainment calendar. Her current promotional campaign targets Fathers’ Day “specials” for men as well as the months of June and July, the season of brides.

The burgeoning of the beauty care business, Michelle says,  is a reflection of  people’s preoccupation with “looking and feeling good,” though she concedes that the prevailing economic climate impacts significantly on affordability. She understands the habits of her customers; there are those who visit weekly, those who visit fortnightly and then there are the “month end” patrons. “Then we have our walk-in customers. People who just drop in on us.” It is, she says, “a matter of who can afford what”.

Customer retention is one of Michelle’s more important concerns. She expects her employees to match her own high standards which is why she has chosen to recruit former colleagues, persons with whom she has worked before and whose work she knows.  “I  must see a person’s work before I hire them,”    she says. She understands only too well that in the beauty business, less than professional service can cost her much more than just a single dissatisfied customer. In the business, word gets around.

Her beginning, she says,  has been “encouraging,” and she is prepared to be patient, and to allow the quality of the services that she offers to help her secure her share of the market. Even at this early stage Michelle Campbell understands that in the sector in which she has chosen to make a career, only the ‘fittest,’ the most  inventive and the most creative survive.