Bespoke Hair Company: Partners in Good Hair

When walking into the new building, all eyes will go directly to the color bar. Every color imaginable will be available from the Redken collection. Clients will be able to work together with the stylists on their desired hair color, watch the stylists mix the blend together, and begin the process, with the stylists, of custom tailoring their look — all to see a smile at the end.

Five cozy chairs, one for each stylist, will sit at their stations. Four top-notch shampoo bowls will be behind a wall, for more privacy. The stylists want the client’s vision to happen, and the team is there to work together and use their different talents on one client to their best of their abilities. After styling and finishing up a client’s vision, a selfie cam will be waiting for everyone to enjoy and share their new look.

These ideas will be a reality this coming fall for Kelsi Little and Jamie McDaniel, owners of the new salon Bespoke Hair Company. The name comes from a UK term meaning custom-tailored; Kelsi’s fashionably cut brown curls and Jamie’s long, dark brown look attest to the fact that if ten identically-haired clients walk into their salon, each one will leave looking differently according to their bespoke hair needs.

Revelation

Kelsi and Jamie met in 2013, when Kelsi joined the Revelation salon, where Jamie worked. Revelation works with an associate’s degree program that helps stylists, new and old, feel comfortable behind the chair and provides countless resources at their fingertips. The associate program comes from a business center called Summit Salon that supports independent salons, like Revelations, by providing business consulting services to all facets of the beauty industry, including day spas, cosmetology schools, and distributors, with the overall goal of promoting growth and prosperity at all levels.

“It is good for people who are coming out of school,” Jamie explains. “You get more comfortable behind the chair, and this way, if there is a problem, there are people there to say this is how you would solve it. It is more of a hands-on program than rather you diving right in.”

When Kelsi joined the Revelation team, she was working alongside the owner, but when Jamie and Kelsi met, they became friends instantly. “We clicked right away,” Kelsi says. “I spent a lot more time under Jamie’s wing. I grew to know her clients, and I developed my own.” Kelsi moved to Salon Nefisa, on Walnut Street, because she wanted the downtown exposure while continuing the associate program, while Jamie stayed at Revelations until the two eventually rented booths together at Trove Salon in 2015. After years of sitting on the idea, Kelsi and Jamie began planning their new business together — they wanted to change the dynamic of hair.

Becoming Partners

Both Kelsi and Jamie knew they wanted to attend cosmetology school since childhood. “I am a hands-on learner: let me watch and let me try,” Jamie says. “You know how you have crazy hair day in high school? I wrapped my sister’s hair in a wire with a bow tie, and it ended up in the school yearbook.” Jamie gives credit to The Salon Professional Academy, in St. Charles, for preparing her in the business.

The partners have agreed that their talents are different; Jamie loves to style and finish off a look, while Kelsi considers herself a chemist when it comes to coloring hair. “I knew I wanted to go to cosmetology school in middle school,” Kelsi says. “I was helping out at a salon where the owner would go home at 5:00, and then I would run the tanning salon part and then clean up the salon. I went to Sam Brown Cosmetology Institute 30 days after I graduated high school. And later I developed a love for color, because color wasn’t popular in a small town.”

Kelsi and Jamie’s experiences only pushed them even more into becoming business partners. After choosing Redken as their product brand and attending Redken classes and conferences to learn more about the products and their uses, the women continue their Redken education in order to keep up with the newest products for their clients. “Our state supply store is really good at giving us a detailed list of education opportunities around Kansas City, St. Louis, and even Columbia,” Kelsi says. “That is another reason why we chose Redken and its sister brand, Purology, because they really give back to their stylists.”

Finding Themselves

The Bespoke partners connect on the same level of passion and vision for their business. They love the instant gratification of the client’s reaction, the way they can touch people’s lives and can give their clients something that they can control in their busy lives.

First, the pair had to figure out who they were as individuals and as stylists to gain a good balance, which is still one of the things they work on today. Kelsi, a mom of three, knows that being a stylist is her passion, but struggles at times to balance that with her love for being a mother. “There are moments you can’t predict that throw you curves, like kids getting sick or hair taking longer than I thought, so finding a balance is key,” she says. Jamie, on the other hand, has more free time to work on becoming Redken-certified and attending classes to continue her education in the business.

Working with a difficult client is, well, difficult. Jamie busts out her deep laugh, which always gets others to chuckle along, while explaining an incident she had to deal with when she was still in cosmetology school: “A lady fell asleep in my chair and wanted me to cut her hair. She woke up and had a mullet.” The two continue to laugh together after admitting to several other minor accidents.

Jamie says that taking your emotions out of it is the only thing that helps when a client is upset or unhappy. “You really put your heart into it, and when someone doesn’t like it, it can be a punch to the gut sometimes,” she says. “A good response is to take that pause and just get your emotions out of it.”

Another issue is working with clients who want a big change all at once. Going from light to dark or dark to light is a major process, and consultation becomes a go-to for the business partners. “Listening is key,” Kelsi explains. “Sometimes with difficult clients, stylists won’t ask questions, but if you do ask at the beginning, everyone will get what they want and understand the process.”

Starting the Process

Kelsi and Jamie had a lot of help setting up Bespoke. They worked with Gina Rende, from Maly Realty, who called the City of Columbia to find a building while she was in a hair appointment. Jeff Viles, developer and commercial real state owner, worked with Kelsi and Jamie, along with his other architects, to create blueprints for the building. He won an award for his work in building the new salon.

Gina says it was a challenging process, helping the business partners find their new salon, but she says, “I thought out-of-the-box to fit all of their needs.”

Kelsi and Jamie were able to work with Jeff on designing everything inside the building from the ground up. There are still a few things left to do with the building, like boxing it, putting in plumbing and electrical boxes, pouring the concrete floor, and setting up four walls of dry wall. The business partners leased the property for three years. They also need to get a license for their business from the cosmetology state office in Jefferson City and run inspections throughout the building to fulfill their plan of opening in August or September.

They have five chairs to fill with stylists who, the women hope, will share the same dream, passion, and drive. Jamie explains: “You don’t need to have talent. Anything can be learned, but you have to have the drive to the point where you have dreams where some people may look at you and think you’re crazy.”

Bespoke

Teamwork is key at Bespoke, and in order to make that team function, Kelsi and Jamie do not want to be bosses; they want to be team leaders to their salon family. For example, the two recently got back from styling hair for 18 women at a wedding in Branson. Kelsi curled while Jamie pinned, which is how they envision their Bespoke team to work together. They also hope to expand their business to a second location eventually, especially with only five chairs in their current building. For the first location, they thought that quality mattered more than quantity. They both hope to become certified Redken artists, a certification that Jamie recently applied for.

The businesswomen are currently working at Hair Is, off of Peach Way in south Columbia, which they like. They are grateful to end their renting career at at such a welcoming salon. Bespoke is located a little further south, at 210 Corporate Lake Drive, and the women are patiently awaiting its grand opening. “We will always lead by example,” Kelsi says as the women excitedly plan their team of stylists.

For now, they are conducting a Beauty and Bloom event, in which clients can send in their stories and reasons why they or another person needs a day of pampering with Kelsi and Jamie.