We are Gorgeous Glo, Charlotte’s premier beauty, blowout, and custom spray tan boutique. We provide skin-nourishing organic tans year round with zero exposure to UVA or UVB rays. We provide an exceptional level of attention to detail in all of our beauty services, and have grown our client base from zero customers to more than 26,000 since we opened in 2010.
We actively partner with Levine Cancer Institute and others organizations to promote skin safe practices all year long. We provide a venue for LCI’s free community head and neck screenings (the initial stages in the diagnosis of melanoma) at our annual women’s empowerment forum.
Thanks to Gorgeous Glo, we hope the community will be more aware of the dangers of melanoma, and the ease with which it can be prevented. We aim to help others feel their “Gg” best, a beauty that is so much more than skin deep.
Our owner Anne Pipkin was inspired to provide her community with a safe alternative to tanning after her father passed away from melanoma in 2000. A month after her father’s death, her sister was diagnosed with melanoma; early diagnosis due to education was the key to saving her sister’s life.
If one was to map the challenges our business has encountered along the way, it would look like a topographical one with many peaks and valleys. We have been able to move the needle in our own community in terms of awareness, and for that we’re grateful. We were unable to move the needle at all in our former Charleston, South Carolina, location, and the acceptance of that has been trying emotionally.
Navigating through COVID was our greatest challenge by far. We were forced by our state board to close our establishments completely for several months, and the impact was profound.
Staffing has been an issue ever since we’ve reopened. Our pre-COVID staff was absolutely incredible for returning to work when and how they did. Each one of our staff members made a selfless decision to keep our business going, considering the fact that they could have made more money by continuing to stay out of work and to file for unemployment.
We owe everything to our staff, we always have, and we always will. Even in 2021 when our salon was inundated with appointments after we reopened, they were patient and kind with a backlog of clients who had not received services in months. Their diligence to keep our salon immaculately clean was key to the successful ramping back up of our business.
Having a mission to leave our community a better place was a major driving force. We are also blessed with an incredibly low turnover rate, and staff who are deeply committed and view Gorgeous Glo as a collective, rather than one owner’s personal business. Our immensely loyal customers were grateful for our return as pandemic restrictions eased and our business recovered completely from a more than 70% drop in total revenues in 2020.
We do everything we can to make sure our staff know they are listened to and appreciated. We allow our employees to customize their services they offer, depending upon what they want to do, rather than a set list for every employee.
The ultimate goal is that our staff knows this is OUR business, not just Anne’s.
Our staffing strategies now include:
- Full respect for a staff that is client-facing every day,
- Accommodation of individualized staff-elected services,
- Business hour changes made to accommodate the staff-driven schedules, and
- The addition of PTO, which was a new part of the staff benefit package.
We have already noticed an incremental increase in services after the past several weeks’ participation in Scale Up CLT. The program provided the push we needed to explore our website data and back-end statistics from our POS system. We’ve now been able to begin pursuing a variety of what we’ve come to call “low hanging fruit” revenue opportunities.
This program has helped us to be more inclusive of all high-level initiatives with our staff, and their input as “boots on the ground” has been invaluable. This is the most motivated and engaged we have ever been, and we believe the future is incredibly bright.
It is exceptionally difficult for an owner/operator to consciously take time from their already jam-packed day to completely analyze their financials, and address their business fundamentals. The Scale Up CLT program has forced us to slow down, and create a research-based recipe for success for our particular business arena. The roadmap we have created from the program’s initiatives has reinvigorated our business goals. We can see the changes we have implemented and they are already making a difference in our business model.
Since we opened in 2010, our client list has grown to more than 26,000 names, and we don’t simply email those clients with spray tan or blowout discounts. We use our collective media accounts for good, and to provide the community with life-bettering information.
Throughout the year, we provide our clients (and any guests at events we attend) ample information about skin cancer research and education. It is our belief that by educating the community on skin safe practices, we can reduce the number of melanoma instances. Each May, in honor of Melanoma Awareness Month, we donate a percentage of our overall profit to the Levine Cancer Institute. In 2020, we established a charitable arm of Gorgeous Glo, elimin8, through which we donate to a variety of causes.
In addition to our melanoma education outreach, we are deep believers in supporting women. As a breast cancer survivor herself, our owner Anne Pipkin found that patients during radiation therapy would benefit from a complimentary beauty treat. In particular, we provide free blowouts for mammosite radiation patients.
We host a variety of annual events supporting women entrepreneurs. Each fall, we donate our SouthPark salon’s space to showcase a panel of local woman entrepreneurs. We highlight women from a wide array of backgrounds and industries, and this year we have branded the event “Women Who Wow”. We anticipate a wonderful turnout on October 17th.
The encouragement and support Gorgeous Glo owner Anne Pipkin has received in Charlotte drives her to pay it forward on a daily basis. If asked for advice by an aspiring entrepreneur, Anne would encourage networking and the education of your network as much as possible, particularly in the early years of your business. This pays dividends over time, and your network will support you in ways you never imagined.
Ultimately, Scale Up CLT has helped us to gather Gorgeous Glo’s loose ends… and now we are able to create a cohesive and easily followable roadmap. We had “split ends” and we are now well on our way to a beautiful, smooth blowout!
Pardon the pun, occupational hazard in the hair industry.
