Out hairstylist and TV personality Tabatha Coffey is back for the third season of her reality show, “Tabatha’s Salon Takeover. ”
A native of Surfer’s Paradise, Australia, Coffey has earned a reputation as a hair-styling industry badass in Australia, Great Britain and the United States, which led to Bravo casting her for the reality hair-styling competition “Shear Genius,” where she was voted a fan favorite. She is also an editorial stylist for fashion and beauty publications such as Seventeen, Marie Claire and Mademoiselle, and leads her own stable of hairstylists at her salon, Industrie Hair Gurus, in Ridgewood, N.J. Coffey also works in Los Angeles at the Warren-Tricomi salon in West Hollywood.
Given her impressive résumé and her no-nonsense attitude on “Shear Genius,” it didn’t take long for Bravo to come calling with its own show for Coffey where, every week, she tries to revamp lives and businesses of struggling salon owners across the country. And as the past seasons have proved, it’s never a walk in the park: Tabatha routinely has to deal with businesses that have questionable — and oftentimes counterproductive — business practices.
Coffey said this season is no different.
“They’re all a little crazy in their own way, but my craziest salon this season was definitely when I went to Provincetown,” she said. “It had a lot of challenges and I have never in my life seen a stripper pole in the middle of a salon. My craziest moment of season three was walking into a salon that was 450 square feet — so it was incredibly small — and smack in the middle was a stripper pole where clients were encouraged to dance for dollars. For every minute they spent on the pole, they’d get a dollar off the haircut.”
Egad!
And how did that promotion go?
“It didn’t work as well as the owner anticipated, strangely enough,” she said. “I actually saw clients fleeing out of the salon when they were offered to get on the stripper pole and dance to get money off their product sales or haircuts. So it wasn’t a great marking tactic at all.”
Other salons in previous seasons have displayed a somewhat disturbing tendency for employees to drink on the job.
“I think what happens is a lot of salons serve alcohol to clients so there is alcohol on the premises where they are getting their hair services done,” she said. “And obviously, having that alcohol around, sometimes people decide that they want to have a drink after work. Then liberties are taken and some of the staff are drinking during the day and thinking it’s OK to sit down and have a cocktail with their clients while they are working. It’s astounding to me sometimes at well how much alcohol is in the hairdressing salons and the fact that stylists are drinking at work.”
Even more astounding are some of the attitudes that Coffey encounters on the show. The occasional disinterested, burned-out and borderline incompetent employees are to be expected but there have been times when the business owners have been downright hostile and inhospitable to the help and advice she is offering.
“I don’t take it personally,” she said. “It frustrates me, as you all see. I don’t hide my frustration very well. I don’t take it personally because it is business and I am trying to help. I also understand that I have a very small window of time that I am with these people and there are a lot of problems that I need to get to the bottom of. So I don’t sugarcoat things. I’m very direct in my approach with people. So I don’t take it personally and I don’t want them to take it personally. It really is done in a tough-love way and a way of helping them see what they need to do to get back on track.”
For the most part, Coffey says the owners of these struggling salons have good intentions but are just in over their heads.
“I think a lot of salon owners become overwhelmed and give up,” she said. “Any business that you have to manage and any time you’re in charge of people, it’s a constant reiteration of rules and constantly staying on top of things to make sure things are done the way you want them done in your business. I think a lot of owners consistently feel bad telling people how they want things done or they feel like they are babysitting and they don’t want to be active in their business. And that seems to be something that runs all the way through. So instead of being proactive and jumping in and getting their hands dirty or making sure people are following through, they kind of throw their hands up and give up a little bit and things spiral out of control from there.”
She added it takes more than talent and passion to succeed in the salon business.
“It’s really preparation,” she said. “Sometimes I think anyone that opens a business thinks, ‘I’m great at what I do and that’s enough to carry me through.’ But it’s really making sure that you have a solid business plan, that you have your finances in place, that you have a company statement and you’ve thought about the location and the demographic of your clients. That’s my biggest key advice to anyone who opens a business. It’s great to have a skill and a passion for what you do, but you need to make sure that you’ve really laid it out on paper and have a true vision of what you want your business to be and what you want it to become so that you can sustain yourself all the way through.”
Not all salons are the same and Coffey has used her knowledge to help many different kinds of salons, including ethnic, high-end and gay with an all-male clientele — and everything in between. Coffey said there isn’t any one-fix all solution that works for every salon.
“The thing that I really love about the show is that it’s always fresh for me because every salon that I walk into is totally different and has its own set of issues. Every single salon I walk into has a new staff, a new personality, a new location, a new problem, a new feeling and vibe to it. So that just happens naturally. The way I handle it personally is every salon I walk into, I have to forget about the one that I was just in. It’s walking in with a fresh set of eyes to help that business that I’m walking into on that day and getting to the bottom of their problems and their issues. I’m looking at everything about that business: I’m looking at the demographic of the client. I’m looking at the location. I’m looking at the income level of the people that are coming into the salon. So if I’m walking into an ethnic salon or a predominantly gay salon, I look at that as well and try to help them build a business model that caters to the clients that they are trying to attract and makes them the best that they can be for that demographic.”
Coffey added that helping these salons get on track also has the added benefit of keeping her grounded in her own businesses.
“I learn all the time,” she said. “When I walk into other people’s businesses I’m always fully aware that I need to make sure that I say thank you to my staff enough and make sure they feel valued or making sure clients are getting a great experience. Sometimes it’s just realizing that you need to step back for a minute and take a break so that you don’t feel overwhelmed. For me it’s always a learning experience and something that helps keep me on my toes and hopefully the rest of the business owners that I go and visit.”
“Tabatha’s Salon Takeover” airs Mondays at 10 p.m. on Bravo. Coffey’s memoir, “It’s Not Really About the Hair: The Honest Truth About Life, Love and the Business of Beauty,” is due out in January. For more information, visit www.tabathacoffey.com.
Larry Nichols can be reached at [email protected].